VISION: Road Transport in Europe 2025 - FEHRL

SAFE Travel
Requirement
The infrastructure and operations should be inherently safe. They should provide as much protection as
possible against driver error and aberration.
Developments
Most countries, and the EU, have targets for improving safety on the road network and this is an area that could
see considerable advances over the next twenty years. A range of safety measures will act on the
infrastructure, the vehicle and the road user. In most European countries the accident rate per kilometre has
been declining. Actual casualty levels will depend on the extent of traffic growth in conjunction with these
rates per kilometre. Casualties will continue to fall in Western Europe, provided that technological and societal
changes continue. In Eastern and Central Europe there is a risk that increasing motorisation will drive casualty
numbers upwards.
Methodologies for collecting crash data are important. Annually within the European Union, there are over
39,000 fatalities in road accidents and well over a million other casualties. The majority of these are either to
the occupants of cars or are sustained by other road users in collision with a car. Accidents cost the European
community over 160 billion annually more than twice the annual budget of the commission, and they are the
leading external cost of road transport. Casualty reduction strategies need to be based on a full understanding
of the real-world need under European conditions and their effectiveness developed and evaluated. A coordinated
set of targeted, in-depth accident data systems exists to support new safety actions and to provide
a resource for analysis.
Intelligent monitoring of the infrastructure could provide information not only on the maintenance, use and
impact of the road network but could also be used to provide data on safety.
Consumer-driven safety programmes like EuroNCAP for car secondary safety and EuroRAP for the safety of
road sections are likely to contribute to greater safety. In-car systems will use data on the conditions on the
road and the interaction between the vehicle and the road to advise the driver on the safe speed and safe
distance from the vehicle in front. The success of the EuroNCAP car secondary safety programme in recent
years has shown that there is a market for improved safety.Thus manufacturers will be encouraged to continue
to improve the design of cars so as to protect the occupants when the car is involved in a collision. By 2025 it
is very probable that cars will be able to communicate to avoid collisions. In-vehicle restraint systems will be
developed to anticipate and respond to collisions when they do occur so as to minimise injuries to occupants.
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