What is EuroRAP?

Who we are

A quarter of all fatal or serious injuries happen in side impact collisions

The European Road Assessment Programme - EuroRAP AISBL - is an international not-for profit association (Associations internationales sans but lucratif) registered in Belgium. Its members are motoring organisations, national and regional road authorities, and experts who have been elected because of the special contribution they have made to EuroRAP.

EuroRAP is a sister programme to EuroNCAP, the independent crash test programme that star rates new cars for the crash protection they provide to passengers and pedestrians. EuroNCAP demonstrates that well-designed crash protection can make family cars safer. Similarly, EuroRAP is beginning to show how roads can be made safer, so that the car and road work together to protect life.

Our aims

The formal objectives of EuroRAP are to:

• reduce death and serious injury on European roads rapidly through a programme of systematic testing of risk that identifies major safety shortcomings which can be addressed by practical road improvement measures;
• ensure assessment of risk lies at the heart of strategic decisions on route improvements, crash protection and standards of route management; and
• to forge partnerships between those responsible for a safe roads system - motoring organisations, vehicle manufacturers and road authorities.

Thousands die each year on Europe's roads for want of affordable safety fencing

EuroRAP aims to provide independent, consistent safety ratings of roads across borders. Already thousands of road stretches across Europe have been assessed - and the methods used are already being applied in Australia through AusRAP and piloted in the USA through usRAP.

EuroRAP has shown that the risk of death or crippling injury can vary tenfold on different roads in the same country. The public, politicians and road engineers must be able to see clearly where the roads with unacceptably high risk are - and be guided to what can be done to put them right. Sometimes the cost of saving lives can be as little as the paint to provide clear road markings, so that drivers can read the road, or safety fencing to stop people being killed over and over again hitting the same trees or lamp-posts close to the roadside.