ETSC welcomes the inclusion of best practice guidelines in the new programme. These should comprise a synthesis of universal road safety principles in key areas of road safety work and illustrative case studies for voluntary use by safety professionals.

The purpose of these is to promote key road safety best practice in the European Union to help to reduce the large differences in road crash injury risk between different Member States and encourage the take up of best practice everywhere including on EU-funded infrastructure. These would assist professionals at local and regional level involved in the specification and implementation of road safety measures.

Priority areas include guidelines at road safety engineering at high risk sites, safety audit, urban safety management, speed reduction and forgiving roadsides.

The development of an EU road safety information system and further development and use of the EU road accident data base (CARE) are essential activities.

ETSC believes it is important that the crudeness of the ranking exercise is understood. Experts were invited to rank different measures in the action programme against different criteria. However, the individual measures were not precisely defined, making expert assessment difficult. For example, measures to improve seat belt use were treated as one action despite the fact that different activities will have different costs and benefits. Seat belt publicity in isolation may not effective in increasing seat belt use, yet seat belt publicity supporting police enforcement has been shown to be. In-car seat belt reminder systems are even more effective and, if introduced on a mandatory basis should score high on all counts. These different possibilities needed to be ranked separately rather than as one.

A wide range of cost estimates is presented for some of the measures. These will often reflect different assumptions about what the measure might comprise e.g. in some instances estimates will apply just to new models of cars, in others to existing models. Some will represent industry estimates, others will be estimates from independent studies. In these cases, it needs to be understood that the differences may be political rather than scientific and may be as a result of not comparing like with like.

It is hoped that any future analysis will be based on objective assessments of costs and benefits, will start off from the basis of casualty reduction priorities and focus on measures which can be more easily identified.

4. Need for a road safety strategy to 2010

4.1. Target setting

There is growing acknowledgement that improvements in road safety will only be brought about by adopting a more rational, systematic management approach. This means defining target levels of safety, defining priorities for resources and implementing cost-effective measures according to proven casualty reduction benefit and regularly monitoring progress.

Several Member States are now setting longer term road safety strategies with road numerical safety targets. The EU needs to do similarly.

Research and experience show the value of targets at local and national level. ETSC represents the opinion of most safety professionals and experts that the EU needs an aspirational numerical target to reduce deaths in the European Union.

ETSC supports the European Parliament’s call in its last opinion on road safety (1997) for a long term target to reduce deaths to no more than 25,000 by the year 2010. This now represents around a 40% reduction in deaths based upon the current annual total of 42,500.

A target at EU level would provide a stimulus for EU activity where the Union has exclusive responsibilities for road safety, and for shared activity with Member States in the other fields. To date, the Commission has been reluctant to propose a target since this could not be achieved by EU action on its own, but as happens nationally where responsibilities are shared with local authorities and others, a set target would provide focus for all the players involved.

Numerical targets have been set in several areas of EU policy, including for vehicle emissions. Until there is a target at EU level to reduce road deaths, it is going to be more difficult to obtain the commitment of all those that need to be involved in the process of delivering this strategy. In ETSC’s view it is no coincidence that the five best performing Member States in road safety – Sweden, UK, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark - have used numerical targets in their strategies for some years.

While cost-effectiveness is important, we believe that this is just one criterion which needs to be considered in setting priorities for the road safety action programme. The starting point should be to identify the most important road safety problems, to identify the actions which deliver the highest casualty reduction benefit and then determine which add most value most cost-effectively. A long term road safety strategy needs to be determined along these lines.

The international best practice reviews which ETSC has carried out during the last seven years indicate that despite some differences in levels of motorisation, the road safety problems and solutions in most Member States have many similarities. Examples of key problems and solutions which have been identified are as follows:

· Excess and inappropriate speed is widespread
ETSC estimates that better speed management across the EU which reduces average speeds by just 5 km/h has the potential to prevent over 11,000 deaths and 180,000 injury accidents annually.

· 9000 lives are lost annually result from crashes involving excess alcohol
Despite the significant reductions experienced by different countries over the last 10 years, many accidents still result from drinking and driving. While less than 5 per cent of drivers drive with excess alcohol, they are responsible for at least 20 per cent of the serious and fatal traffic injuries in the EU - some 9,000 fatalities per year. A minor reduction in drinking and driving would make a large contribution to the improvement of road safety.

A recent ETSC review on intelligent transport applications and road safety also highlighted the future potential of electronic driving licences as a key method of managing exposure to risk improving enforcement by prevent unlicensed driving.

EU wide SARTRE surveys of driver opinion indicate that 93 per cent of drivers recognised that seat belts can reduce serious and fatal injury for drivers and passengers in car crashes. The emphasis in road safety activity should be on measures to change behaviour – attitudes already seem to be sympathetic to the need for seat belt use.

ETSC estimates that if the lower wearing rates were brought up to the best rate which has been achieved internationally at any one time, then around 7,000 lives could be saved annually in EU countries.

Eighty per cent of the motorcyclists and moped riders killed annually in the EU sustain fatal head injuries. Crash helmets have the potential to reduce the incidence of fatal head injuries by 50 per cent. An EU Directive should be introduced requiring compulsory crash helmet use.

Even in those countries where low cost measure programmes are being taken forward, the resources allocated to such programmes are still very limited. For example in the UK, where such work has been going on since the 1960s, first year economic rates of return of 200 per cent are still being achieved. This is a clear indication of the impressive potential for improvements.

EU added value:

Non-legislative

Best practice guidelines for remedial treatment at high risk sites

· Insufficient crash protection provided by vehicles and infrastructure
Accident analysis shows that if all cars were designed to give crash protection equal to the best in their class then 50 per cent of fatal and disabling injuries could be avoided.