The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has expressed concern that a number of areas for action are missing in the road safety measures recently presented by the European Commission – for example, on tackling repeat drink driving, on certain aspects of lorry design and on the failure to improve crash tests.
In view of the recent poor figures on road deaths and injuries (see EUROPE 11629), the Commission presented a report in December 2016 containing a raft of 19 measures in four main areas for action (active safety, passive safety, heavy goods vehicles and buses, and pedestrian and cyclist safety) to improve the safety of road vehicles. The Commission is preparing to launch a series of impact studies on the effect of the various measures set out.
While welcoming the report, the ETSC highlighted on 19 December that the Commission had failed to propose strong measures on alcohol interlocks, devices which require drivers to provide a clean breath test in order to be able to start their vehicle. Here the ETSC feels that the major obstacle to wider use of the technology is the lack of a standardised connection point on vehicles. Instead of this option, the Commission proposes simply to ask manufacturers to supply device installers with model-specific instructions – a much more cumbersome approach, the ETSC argues.
The second cause for ETSC concern is the failure to include “front underrun protection” for lorries – physical changes that would help deflect vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians in the event of a collision. The ETSC also regrets that the proposed deadline of 2028 for introducing “direct vision” requirements is too far in the future. The failure to include an obligation on “direct vision” was also highlighted by Transport & Environment last year (see EUROPE 11641). “Direct vision” allows lorry drivers to see pedestrians and cyclists around the vehicle (by means, for example, of fully glazed doors).
Lastly, the ETSC regrets that the Commission has not announced any new crash test that is critical to improving pedestrian protection, for example, the “upper leg form to bonnet leading edge test”.
ETSC Executive Director Antonio Avenoso is also critical of the inequality these measures create, with drivers of more affordable vehicles having to wait almost a decade to have guaranteed access to life-saving technologies that are available today on more expensive cars. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)