Road safety is at the heart of the aims of the European Union and its functioning. The Preamble to the Treaty on European Union resolves ‘to facilitate the free movement of persons, while ensuring the safety and security of their peoples’. The EU shares responsibility for road safety with its Member States and, in common with other shared activities, is guided by principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. The EU has clear competence to act within the broad multi-sectoral context needed to prevent death and mitigate serious injury in road collisions, a problem acknowledged as having an unacceptably high cost in humanitarian and economic terms, but one known to be largely preventable. Over the last fifteen years, successive EU road safety action plans have been implemented by the European Commission and Member States, with support from the EU institutions. The first EU target of a 50% reduction in road deaths between 2001 and 2010 led to a large 43% reduction in deaths. The ambitious target helped to mobilise effective action at local, national and EU levels. A substantial 54% reduction in road deaths has been achieved since 2001 with the latest provisional figures indicating a 19% reduction between 2010 and 2014. EU road safety progress during the last two decades is an internationally acknowledged success story. In 2011, the European Commission introduced the current road safety strategy - Policy Orientations on Road Safety 2011-2020 with an ambitious quantitative target to reduce the number of road deaths by 50% between 2010 and 2020. In addition to the 2020 target, the Transport White Paper in 2012 set out, in line with good practice, a highly challenging, long-term goal for EU road safety activity of virtually eliminating road deaths by 2050. It also envisaged the setting of a quantitative target to reduce road injuries. A systematic, high-level scan has been carried out of EU road safety activity within the framework of Policy Orientations. This independent study is a largely qualitative assessment, supported by quantitative data, where possible. It has assessed what has been achieved so far by the EU, whether this is sufficient to meet the 2020 target and in what areas improvements can be made across the good practice road safety management dimensions of results (Section 3), interventions (Section 4) and institutional management (Section 5). Progress towards road safety targets is influenced by many factors. These include external factors such as economic, traffic and demographic trends; the level of ambition and close management of objectives; the scope, quality and amount of systematic intervention and how far it addresses goals and targets, the evidence base and the needs of all road users; and the quality of implementation and institutional delivery. It is outside the scope of this short study and currently available information to assess the specific and relative quantitative contribution of each of these, or to look beyond EU activity. A best judgement assessment has been made. In 2013, the latest year for which full figures are available, 25,966 people were killed in road collisions in the EU 28, representing an 18% decrease in deaths since 2010. The socio-economic value of preventing all these deaths is estimated at almost €50 billion for 2013. In most EU countries, road traffic injury is the 1 st or 2nd cause of death for school-age children and young people (between 5 and 24 years), and amongst the first three lead causes for those aged between 5 and 49 years (2010). While there is wide variation in death rates across the EU and inequalities in risk, the EU achieved the lowest road death rate (5.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants) in 2013 of any world region and a world’s lowest country death rate at 2.8 (Sweden). The average rate of deaths per billion vehicle kilometres travelled for countries where information exists was 8.4, with Sweden, Ireland and the UK having the world’s lowest death rate of 4. An average annual reduction of around 6% between 2010 and 2013 indicated an encouraging course for the EU towards the 2020 target. However, provisional figures indicate that 25,500 EU citizens died in road crashes in 2014 representing a substantially reduced average annual reduction of 2%, compared with the 2013 outcome. This means that for the remaining years of the strategy an average annual reduction of 8% is needed to reach the target. While the low decrease between 2013 and 2014 might be an annual random fluctuation, key indicators suggest otherwise with external factors exerting a strong influence on results. In particular, a causal relationship between changes in GDP and changes in the number of road deaths in Europe, North America and Japan has been identified recently by the ITF/OECD. The research identified particularly sharp reductions in young driver and rider deaths and decreased involvement of heavy goods vehicle traffic in fatal crash outcomes which coincided with the onset of economic recession and which are strongly associated with GDP changes. Whilst research indicates that economic recession worked positively for road safety in EU between 2007 and 2012, the latest results indicate that stronger economic development, compared with the lowest levels of GDP experienced in recent years, may now be starting to demonstrate negative effects for road safety. Other important results, including serious injuries and factors causally related to the risk and number of fatal and serious injuries (e.g. speed, sober driving, protective equipment use, the safety quality of vehicles and roads and efficient emergency medical response), were also reviewed. Substantial progress in reducing road deaths has been achieved across the EU since 2001 aided by the establishment of EU road safety targets and strategy. The EU has a world-leading road safety record which the Commission and all road safety partners want to maintain and further improve. The current target and strategy period, however, coincides with particularly uncertain and uneven economic developments across EU 28 which are influencing levels of road deaths. A significant slowing of annual progress below that needed to reach the 2020 target can be expected in the event of stronger economic development, sustained lower fuel prices and a less than urgent approach to implementing new, appropriately targeted intervention at EU and national levels. (Author/publisher)
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