This paper gives an overview of a recent Phare Multi-Country Road Safety Project which covered 13 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The initial phase of the project included a review of safety in each country and a comparison of crash and casualty rates. These are found, in general, to be higher than in western Europe and range from 3.7 fatalities/10,000 vehicles in the Czech Republic to 24.1 fatalities/10,000 vehicles in Albania (compared to around 1.5 in the UK). The review covered all sectors of road safety and the level of achievement between countries was compared using an assessment framework, to give a snapshot of activity at a particular moment in time. This allows an overview in the region to be given. Six of the countries had been the subject of an earlier project (1993 - 94) and were revisited to see if there had been any change in road safety provision. The second phase of the project included the preparation of Best Practice Reports on: (1) Urban Roads and Traffic Calming; (2) Major Two Lane Roads Outside Built-up Areas; and (3) Law Enforcement. In addition, behavioural aspects of road safety were considered covering issues such as driver improvement schemes, traffic education for children and publicity/information campaigns. The third phase resulted in two year road safety action plans for each of the 13 countries, and a regional action plan focusing on publicity, research, engineering and enforcement.
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