article

What role for the European Union?

Posted: 27 September 2006 | Stefan Tostmann, Brussels | No comments yet

Safe roads – the black sheep of the integrated approach?

Road safety policy is widely based on the ‘integrated approach’: we must act at the same time on vehicle safety, road user behaviour and the roads themselves to conduct successful road safety policies. The road safety policy devised at European level is also following this approach2.

Through stringent type approval legislation, our cars and trucks have become much safer in recent years. The European Commission is counting on further improving vehicle safety by proposing to equip not only new, but also existing trucks with mirrors reducing the blind spot to better protect cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians. Further actions concerning daytime running lights for all vehicles are in the pipeline3.

Safe roads – the black sheep of the integrated approach? Road safety policy is widely based on the ‘integrated approach’: we must act at the same time on vehicle safety, road user behaviour and the roads themselves to conduct successful road safety policies. The road safety policy devised at European level is also following this approach2. Through stringent type approval legislation, our cars and trucks have become much safer in recent years. The European Commission is counting on further improving vehicle safety by proposing to equip not only new, but also existing trucks with mirrors reducing the blind spot to better protect cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians. Further actions concerning daytime running lights for all vehicles are in the pipeline3.

Safe roads – the black sheep of the integrated approach?

Road safety policy is widely based on the ‘integrated approach’: we must act at the same time on vehicle safety, road user behaviour and the roads themselves to conduct successful road safety policies. The road safety policy devised at European level is also following this approach2.

Through stringent type approval legislation, our cars and trucks have become much safer in recent years. The European Commission is counting on further improving vehicle safety by proposing to equip not only new, but also existing trucks with mirrors reducing the blind spot to better protect cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians. Further actions concerning daytime running lights for all vehicles are in the pipeline3.

Driver behaviour is subject to the EU Driving License Directive, which is undergoing a major upgrade just this year. Methods and practices of road safety enforcement within a cross-border context will be subject of a Commission proposal in 2007. Professional lorry and bus drivers’ training is subject to EU legislation, as are professional drivers’ working hours and rest times.

Contrary to the fields of vehicle safety and behaviour, there was until a few years ago little EU activity in the field of safe roads in Europe, for several reasons. Infrastructure planning and building is as a rule a responsibility of Member States, and not of the European Union. Furthermore, road building and engineering traditions vary widely within Europe. This makes a common European approach far from easy. Finally, the emphasis in road safety policy has been traditionally on vehicles and behaviour, while the status and conditions of roads were often seen as a simple ‘given’, and not subject to intense scrutiny, research and strategies.

However, research suggests that this has to change if we want to seriously improve our road safety record in Europe. In more than 30% of all accidents, the road infrastructure is a contributing factor. Major tunnel accidents have revealed the dangers that infrastructures can present to road users, and the catastrophic consequences of sometimes trivial causes. On the other hand, building and maintaining safe roads yields very substantial benefits in terms of saved lives, less accidents and injuries and damage to the infrastructures themselves. Even in a country with a good safety record, deaths could be slashed by around 20% by a suitable and comprehensive road infrastructure safety approach.

The Trans-European Road Network – a European commitment to road safety

In 1996, the European Community legislator – the Council of Ministers of Member States and the European Parliament – agreed to upgrade the patchwork of many national transport networks into a truly integrated trans-European network (TEN) to improve trade, travelling and integration throughout Europe4. Not surprisingly, but sometimes overlooked, the legislator stressed the right for citizens to travel in best safety conditions throughout the network. Article 2(2)(a) of the TEN-Decision states: “The network must ensure the sustainable mobility of persons and goods within an area without internal frontiers under the best possible….. safety conditions.” Indeed, it is difficult to understand that for the European citizen driving on the trans-European road network, they are three times more likely to be killed in a road accident in Lithuania than when they cruise on a road in Finland.

After the Mont Blanc disaster – from words to action

In 2004, in the wake of the catastrophic accident in the Mont Blanc road tunnel, the European legislator followed up on the general safety considerations concerning road infrastructures on the trans-European network. It adopted the Directive on Tunnel Safety, N° 2004/54,5 which contains the following main requirements:

  • For each tunnel, an Administrative Authority, a Tunnel Manager and a Safety Officer shall be designated
  • Member States shall designate the Administrative Authority, which has responsibility for ensuring that all aspects of the safety of a tunnel are assured and take the necessary steps to ensure compliance with the Directive
  • The Administrative Authority identifies a Tunnel Manager, which is responsible for the management of the tunnel in the design, construction or operating stage
  • The Tunnel Manager nominates the Safety Officer, who will coordinate all preventive and safeguards measures to ensure the safety of users and operational staff
  • Regular inspections, evaluations and tests shall be carried out by an Inspection Entity
  • Member States shall ensure that tunnels in their territory meet the minimum safety technical requirements laid down in Annex I of the Directive
  • Every two years, Member States shall compile reports on fires and accidents in tunnels, which clearly affect the safety of road users in tunnels, and on the frequency and causes of such incidents
  • Where certain structural requirements laid down in Annex I can only be satisfied through technical solutions which either cannot be achieved or can be achieved only at disproportionate cost, the Administrative Authority may accept the implementation of alternative risk reduction measures. These must result in equivalent or improved protection. The efficiency of these measures must be demonstrated through a risk analysis.

Member States had to transpose the Directive into national law by 1 May 2006. Not all have yet done so, but overall, there is good progress made in many Member States. Interestingly, while the Directive formally only applies to tunnels on the trans-European network, many Member States have indicated that they would apply the regime they are now devising for the trans-European network tunnels to all other tunnels in their country. This seems a practical approach; it does not make sense to apply different safety regimes to similar infrastructures. Furthermore, several different administrative frameworks also increase costs and bureaucracy.

Infrastructure Safety Management – getting serious about safety of roads

In terms of speedy legislative procedure, practicality of rules and flexibility left to Member States in implementation, the Tunnel Safety Directive seems a good piece of legislation. However, what is its impact on safer roads everywhere in the European Union, in our every day life on the roads? 64% of the tunnels falling under the Directive are situated in one Member State only – Italy. The tunnels, to which the Directive applies, have an overall length of 800 kilometres. Compare this to the overall EU road network, which boasts 523,360 kilometres (motorways and main roads) or the designated trans-European road network, with 85,000 kilometres, and the conclusion is that the Tunnel Safety Directive can just be the beginning of an overall process to improve safety of road infrastructures in Europe.

This is not to underestimate the importance of the Tunnel Safety Directive. Beyond making our tunnels on the trans-European network even safer in the future, the Directive is a milestone for road safety policy: First, it creates a valid precedent for putting the commitment to best road safety on the trans-European road network into legally binding practice; Second, it also shows, as mentioned above, that infrastructure safety practices and methods on the European network have a clear catalyst role for all infrastructures. This enhances the benefits of European legislation for all road users, eventually also for those using smaller tunnels, to which the Directive does not legally apply.

However, to really make the difference for safer roads, a broader and more systematic approach to this issue, encompassing all roads on the trans-European network, needed to be devised.

The Consultation Paper of Spring 2006 – safety life cycle management of roads

For a few years now, the European Commission and Member States experts have discussed a common strategy concerning safety of roads. Several European research projects have been launched to explore issues around road infrastructure safety6. In April 2006, the road safety services of the Directorate General for Energy and Transport launched a public consultation on a possible EU approach to safety of roads7. Broadly speaking, the approach proposed is one of ‘safety life cycle management’ of roads. Rather than defining specific safety standards and prescriptions for roads, a common method or toolbox is suggested, ensuring that roads are maintained in good safety conditions throughout the planning, construction, and use phase. The safety standards and details are left to the Member States’ road authorities and infrastructure managers, but the application of the method would be ruled by law and enforced within the European legal framework.

Four different safety management activities are proposed for all roads on the trans-European networks:

  • Road safety impact assessment: analysis of the impact that different variants of a project have on the safety performance of the adjacent road network (early planning stage).
  • Road safety audits: systematic safety analysis of the design characteristics of a road project, at different stages from feasibility to early operation.
  • Network safety management: management of sites or parts of the existing road network with large number of fatal and severe accidents (high risk sections).
  • Safety inspections: periodical review of a road in operation by trained experts.

The responses to this approach received from stakeholders were largely positive.8 Two major findings from the consultation are especially noteworthy:

First, a sizeable minority of comments advocated harmonisation of safety standards for roads on European level, and thus favoured a strong regulatory intensity. Such an approach is understandable: either a road infrastructure is safe, or it is not. The laws of gravity, resistance and physics are the same in Sweden and in Portugal. Climatic conditions may vary, though. Furthermore, practically and historically, there are differences in road safety management in the various Member States. There are also differences in resources and budgets. A uniform or common recipe for safe roads would possibly be difficult to agree upon and be fraught with high implementation costs. The ‘toolbox’ approach is forecast to also deliver important benefits for road safety, at much lower implementation costs.

Second, several Member States’ responses to the consultation put into doubt the fashionable political wisdom that most problems in road safety can be resolved by simply sharing ‘best practices’. Some Member States with the best road safety record and the proudest road engineering traditions touted the exchange of best practices as the key to safer roads throughout Europe. On the other hand, Member States in need of upgrading their road safety record were amongst those to call for a more regulatory and prescriptive approach. If those at the receiving end of best practices call for regulation, something may indeed be wrong with the voluntary transmission of knowledge and experience in the sector.

Next steps

Taking into account the results of the consultation of spring 2006, the Commission is currently working on a proposal for a Council and Parliament Directive for Safety Management of Road Infrastructures, due to be issued in autumn of this year.

The proposal will be an important stepping-stone towards an integrated safety management on the trans-European network. Whatever the shape and contents of the final Directive will be, the safety of roads is on the European political agenda. The future framework will be especially useful for user-oriented initiatives to improve safety of roads, such as the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP), co-funded by the European Commission9. Such initiatives, run from the perspective of consumer protection, conduct the necessary detailed assessments of single roads, in dialogue with the road administrations and managers. These discussions and findings are beyond the remit and the means of European legislation. But the law needs detailed and user-driven groundwork. Without consumer pressure, it may stay largely theoretical. The European law, in turn, will provide EuroRAP and other such programmes with a stronger focus and stringent terms of reference, which they need to be successful.

The logic of the integrated approach would demand that enforcement of traffic safety rules on the trans-European Network follows the same model as the one taken for safety management. Is speeding in Poland less dangerous than in France? Should European citizens not be equally protected in both countries from dangerous and drunk drivers, at least when travelling on the European Network? The Commission will launch this necessary discussion still this year,benefiting from its experiences with road infrastructure safety management.

References

  1. Dr. Stefan Tostmann, LL.M., Head of Unit, Road Safety, Directorate General for Energy and Transport, European Commission; all views expressed are personal, and cannot be interpreted as representing views of the European Commission. The author wishes to thank Sandro Francesconi for providing valuable input for this article.
  2. For an overview on the integrated approach and more information on vehicle safety and behaviour in traffic including the legislative bases and proposals, see: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety/index_en.htm.
  3. The road safety services of the European Commission launched a public consultation on daytime running lights on 1 August 2006, see: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/ roadsafety/vehicle_safety/introduction_en.htm
  4. Decision of Council and Parliament 1692/1996 (EC).
  5. For a more detailed discussion of the Tunnel Safety Directive, see: Schmitz/ Theologitis, Tunnel Safety in Europe, in: Intelligent Transport, (3/2005), 16–22.
  6. See: ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety/infrastructure/ projects_en.htm.
  7. The consultation paper can be found at: ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety/infrastructure/ safety_mgnt_en.htm
  8. For a full account of all comments received, see: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety/infrastructure/ safety_mgnt_en.htm
  9. For more information about EuroRAP, see: www.eurorap.org