Key Messages
September 2006 - Road Safety Investment
Most people wrongly believe that investment in safer drivers is the most effective way to save lives, compared to safer roads and safer vehicles. Although most crashes stem from driver error, Europe's national safety strategies show that safer road design and layout would do most to reduce the rate of death and serious injury - especially in countries where messages about better driver behaviour and safer vehicles are generally understood and accepted. As the major failures in driver behaviour - seatbelts, drink and excessive speed - are tackled, some experts believe that safer roads could reduce deaths by up to 80 per cent in the coming decades.
July 2006 - Cost of an Accident
Most people are unaware of the real cost of a single serious accident when the cost of the police attending, ambulances, hospital costs, legal costs, insurance claims and other personal costs are taken into account. Across the 15 countries of the EU, road deaths and injuries are estimated to cost EUR160 billion a year, or 2% of the gross national product. In these countries 1.3 million crashes a year cause 40,000 deaths and 1.7 million injuries. We asked almost 2,000 people across Europe what they think is the cost of a single serious crash. A typical cost for Europe is likely to be about EUR200,000. However, more than half believe the cost in their country to be significantly lower - between EUR10,000 and EUR100,000. On average more than 60% of those questioned estimate the costs to be less than EUR100,000, approximately half the real cost. The public in Great Britain is the least aware of the true cost of a serious road accident. Almost 90% believe the cost to be less than EUR100,000, whereas the actual cost in Great Britain is EUR240,000.
June 2006 - Road Safety Awareness
People are blissfully unaware of how the road layout and surrounding infrastructure affect their chances of surviving a crash. When planning a motoring route people are more concerned with speed and comfort than safety and cost. When motorists in nine European countries were asked what factors affected their choice of route their answers ranged from journey time and traffic congestion to road type and condition, and from fuel, toll and congestion costs to the risk of having a crash. The pan-European result shows that journey time (21.7%) and traffic congestion (21.2%) are of most concern, while fuel, toll and congestion costs and crash risk are of least concern.
May 2006 - Main Types of Accident
There are just four main types of crash responsible for most deaths and serious injuries:
On single carriageways the risk grows rapidly as traffic flow increases. Safety fences down the middle can reduce risk significantly. Thousands die each year from hitting trees at the side of the road. Affordable safety fencing would help enormously. Traffic lights on high speed roads have risk of death built-in. Well-designed roundabouts are much safer. Pedestrians do not survive if struck by a vehicle at over 40km/h. In built up areas, cars and pedestrians can be separated by good road design. Drivers must always behave responsibly, wear seatbelts and obey speed limits. Vehicle manufacturers must design for safety. But road infrastructure holds the key to reducing death and serious injury when ordinary drivers make ordinary mistakes.
April 2006 - Scale of Death and Injury
Almost all of us know someone who has been killed in a road crash. In the last decade alone, half a million Europeans have been killed on our roads. This reservoir of human suffering rarely surfaces in the media - each personal tragedy is endured by the few involved. The European Community has set itself a target to halve the number of road deaths by 2010, saving 20,000 lives on the roads. Across nine European countries, only 13% of those asked were able to provide a reasonable estimate, within 10%, of the number of people killed annually on their country's roads. In Europe wide market research undertaken by EuroRAP, the public in Ireland had by far the greatest knowledge of the number of road deaths in their country. Some 43% of the population was able to estimate the number within 10% either side of the actual number. While in Belgium and the UK, knowledge was practically non-existent: only 1%. |
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