European Commission calls for road safety KPI proposals

The European Commission has launched a call for proposals to support member states in collecting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for road safety.

Road safety KPIs are said to be an integral part of the “Safe System” approach to road safety, which are represented in the European Commission’s Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 and Strategic Action Plan on Road Safety.

The approach aims to put the road user at the centre of all activities to prevent fatalities and serious injuries by building layers of protection (in relation to infrastructure, vehicles, road use, post-crash care) that can compensate for each other if another element fails. It is based on a performance framework with a hierarchy of targets and the tracking of progress towards these targets.

In order to gain a clearer understanding of the different issues that influence overall safety performance, the Commission has elaborated, in cooperation with member states, a first list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are defined in the Staff Working Document ‘EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030’.

The aim of the support action is to assist member states’ authorities in the collection and harmonised reporting of these indicators and to contribute to building the capacity of those member states’ authorities which have not yet collected and calculated the relevant data for the KPIs.

“Urgent action on road safety is needed: more than 25,000 people die on European roads every year – a figure that has hardly decreased over recent years – and we need to make serious inroads into this figure by 2030 in order to meet the EU’s long term strategic goal of “Vision Zero”, i.e., no deaths and serious injuries on European roads by 2050,” the Commission wrote in a statement.