The European Commission has set itself the objective of reducing the number of road deaths by half between now and the year 2010. A better enforcement of the existing rules on road safety is a key factor contributing to the achievement of this objective, which inevitably means a stricter application of the rules related to speeding, drink driving and seat belt use. Indeed, these three areas appear to be the source of most fatal accidents. In this context, the European Commission instructed Clifford Chance with a view of collating the rules related to speeding, drink driving and seat belt use, for all the Member States, as well as the actions implemented in order to comply with such rules. More precisely, Clifford Chance has been charged to collect the following information on the three above-mentioned topics: • the existing traffic rules as laid down in relevant legal rules; • the sanctions and penalties (administrative as well as judicial) laid down for infringement of these rules; • the practice of checking infringements to these rules; • the practice of sanctions and penalties actually applied, including court decisions. For that purpose, Clifford Chance Paris drew up a questionnaire, which has been approved by the European Commission, and sent it to the Clifford Chance offices or correspondent law firms in the 14 other Member States. The First Part of the report contains the answers of all the Member States to this questionnaire. It is important to recall at this stage that among the collected data are certain strictly legal elements, but that a significant share is also constituted by factual, practical and statistical data, concerning the practical implementation of road safety rules and the organization of public and private entities involved in such matters. These considerations, of which the Commission is aware, explain the difficulties that Clifford Chance and its correspondents have encountered in gathering practical and statistical data. This problem was moreover reinforced by the diversity of the organization of Member States in matters of road safety and the heterogeneity of existing, available data. In this respect, it should be noted that some questions remained unanswered in certain Member States. Indeed, the required information is sometimes non-existent or collection requires seeking it from public authorities, not always prepared to cooperate. The present part of the report includes, for each theme, all the answers to the questionnaire provided by the European offices of Clifford Chance and their correspondents. The Table of contents above reflects the questionnaire, as approved by the European Commission. The Second Part of the report presents, for each theme and more synthetically, the answers to the questionnaire mentioned above. It consists mainly of tables aiming at facilitating comparisons among the Member States. Useful details have sometimes been added at the end of tables. Transversal questions are contained at the beginning of the two parts of the Report. The three parts thereafter are devoted respectively to drink driving, speeding and seat belt use. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting