The present Review examines the current situation in the 25 countries of the European Union in relation to data on road safety and draws up a concrete set of actions for improving these data, paying particular attention to the SEC Belt countries (Southern and New EU Member States). The Review covers all aspects from data collection, gathering and entry into databases, to their processing, analysis and dissemination of results. The objective of this Review is to evaluate existing methods for accident data collection and analysis, in order to identify the potential for road accident investigation at the national scale in the European countries. This evaluation of the national potential for accident investigation can help to propose guidelines for improved procedures of road accident data collection and analysis. At the same time, it will assist with accident research at European level. The set of actions will be explicitly formulated as policy recommendations and will be promoted as part of an overall strategy to increase road safety in Europe. This strategy aims to contribute to halving the number of road deaths in the EU by 2010. (Author/publisher)
Abstract