The European Commission announced it would take an initiative on road infrastructure safety in its 2001 White Paper on European Transport Policy for 2010 and in its Communication on a European Road Safety Action Programme of June 2003. The European Parliament invited the Commission to provide guidelines for high-risk spot management and road safety audits. Besides action on the driver and the vehicle, infrastructure should be the third pillar of any comprehensive road safety programme. Physical features of a road network together with associated traffic volumes are important contributing factors to accidents. Much progress has been made in terms of vehicle safety. Car occupants run a much lower risk of death or injury in case of crash than ten years ago. Test and training requirements have been gradually increased to ensure that European drivers can cope with the dangers of road traffic. Because speeding, non-wearing of seat belts and drink-driving are the main causes of death on European roads, enforcement of traffic rules has been stepped up. However, for road safety infrastructure, no such joint effort has yet been carried out at European level, although the legislator called for a high level of safety on roads in the trans-European network Guidelines of 1996. Apart from research and the creation of an internal market for construction products, the European Community has not yet taken necessary action in this field. Progresses in terms of road safety have been registered for the roads equipped with traffic management and control systems based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), but the implementation of ICT tools is not yet systematic. While the general trend is to decrease budgets for road infrastructure, road users pay more attention to the quality and level of safety of roads. Many road authorities are in a dilemma because they have to provide an infrastructure corresponding to the latest state of safety under budgetary constraints. Road authorities are taken to court by citizens who have suffered injuries in road accidents. Against this background, the objective of the proposed directive is to ensure that safety is integrated in all phases of planning, design and operation of road infrastructure in the Trans-European Network (TEN-T). It shall ensure that safety is regarded in its own right in parallel with economic and environmental analysis. This directive will ensure that managers of road infrastructure are given the guidelines, training and information required to increase safety in the road network to the best benefits of road users and the public at large. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting