Safe Road Design can Save Europe 50,000 Deaths and Injuries a Year

Publication date: 02 December 2009

•    Half a million killed on EU roads in past decade
•    Safe road design could cut annual road deaths and injuries by 50,000
•    Road crashes cost annual €160bn (2 per cent of EU GDP)
•    Europe’s new 10-year plan must incorporate safe road design
•    Europe-wide maps of risky roads published


The EU must promote a programme of safety engineering on high-risk roads across Europe if it is to reduce the annual €160bn (2 per cent of EU GDP) cost of road crashes by €50bn, according to the European Campaign for Safe Road Design.

The Campaign makes its call for action to MEPs tonight (2 December) as the European Road Assessment Programme, EuroRAP, publishes maps for 15 EU countries showing the busy high-risk roads where deaths are concentrated.

According to the Campaign, in the past 10 years, two million people have been killed or suffered life-changing injury in road crashes in the countries of the EU.  It is asking MEPs to sign a pledge to support the Campaign and make safe road design a key element in Europe’s new Road Safety Action Plan for the decade ahead.

According to John Dawson, chairman of the European Campaign for Safe Road Design: “A safe road needs road users who obey traffic law, manufacturers who provide safe vehicles and authorities who provide safe roads.”  

He claims the way risk on Europe’s roads is managed “would not be accepted in any other field such as air, rail or factory safety and is a quarter of a century out of date. “We need to move from just treating blackspots where some have already died to systematically removing the known high risks that will lead to hundreds of thousands being killed or seriously injured in the decade ahead.

“The public understands the role safe driving can play.  Euro NCAP crash tests have helped the public understand the role that features like air bags and crumple zones play in cars with 4 and 5-star safety.  Now, as Europe prepares a new Road Safety Action Plan for the decade ahead, there is an urgent need for public policymakers to understand the new EuroRAP mapping and how we can cut road casualties by up to a third through affordable safety engineering on high-risk roads,” says Dawson.

At a dinner in Brussels tonight (2 December) hosted by the European Campaign for Safe Road Design, MEPs will be asked to sign a pledge supporting a commitment to  safe road infrastructure.  The Campaign believes this could cut deaths and serious casualties by up to one-third (50,000 annually) in less than a decade.  This will save at least 300 deaths and serious injuries every day in Europe worth 0.5 per cent of European GDP (€50 billion) annually.

Ends


Media contacts:
Rebecca Hadley or David Armstrong: +44 (0) 20 7808 7997


Notes to editors:
•    28% of the EU network has unacceptably high risk (red and black)
•    Only 1 in 10 roads is rated as low risk, 1 in 7 rated as high risk
•    65% of fatal and serious crashes occur on single carriageways, 17% on dual carriageways and 11% on motorways
•    Nearly two-thirds (57%) of the single carriageway network is rated as high risk, compared with one-quarter of duals and 13% of motorways
•    1 in 6 single carriageways rated as high risk compared to 1 in 21 duals and 1 in 54 motorway sections
•    The risk of a fatal or serious injury collisions on the black (high risk) road sections is 40 times higher than on the safest (green) roads

Pan-European mapping can be downloaded from www.eurorap.org
European Campaign for Safe Road Design website www.saferoaddesign.eu
Case studies and photographs from around the world are available.