Debate: Road safety
Date: THURSDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2020
Speaker: Adina-Ioana Vălean
Language: EN

As I said from the beginning, only working together and putting enough pressure on all the stakeholders on which depends the safety on the roads, will we achieve results. You were mentioning, for example the targets. We have the targets which are expiring as I said, this year, and maybe one would ask why we would have targets if we cannot achieve them? But I do believe that having a target is an important instrument, an important tool, to design policies and enter into dialogue with the stakeholders in order to have a concrete vision for the future from various areas. So I myself I’m favouring keeping a clear target which can guide our action, and we can remember and recall all the time. We don’t need .... all of you mentioned the numbers, and I mentioned the numbers at the beginning, and I said and I want to repeat that actually any number is not acceptable. And that it was said it is also not acceptable that we get used to hearing about this and numbers of deaths on the roads. So that’s why clear action is absolutely needed, and we need to be committed to that. Several have mentioned the vulnerability of pedestrians or other categories involved in traffic. So when we talk about the safety of course the citizens have to be at the core of our action, and we have several categories of vulnerable road users. So we have also the pedestrians as were mentioned, but the cyclists, the motorcyclists are most at risk, especially in urban areas, and we are also looking into the urban mobility package to see ways in which we can improve the safety inside the city. The problem is, and we all know that where all the categories are meeting together, and now the evolution of the technology we see and the introduction of new ways of mobility in cities, I think these kind of risks are higher. So we have to work very early on devising a policy to accommodate all these categories which would meet in the same space. But since we are talking about that, let me refer also to a topic many of you raised. That technology and digitalisation can help us to improve road safety. Many mentioned the fact that we are looking at autonomous vehicles in the future, artificial intelligence - but this comes also with lots of challenges because we have to admit that at the beginning, all these vehicles, well slowly with the introduction of the infrastructure, will need to co-habit with the traditional ones. And this is also something we have to imagine from the very beginning as being a new risk for the safety on the roads. So this is another angle we are looking at. I’m very much favouring the Safe System as a system approach because it looks at all the elements which are making road safety challenging. Many of you mentioned driving licensing. We are looking into this and I think in 2022 we will come up with a proposal, somewhere mentioning the speed. Of course, speed is one of the most important elements, and we have also, let me give you another figure, an estimation from the EDFC, that only one kilometre per year reduction in average speed in the EU would already reduce the deaths by 2000 a year. So this shows that speed is a very important factor. We are also looking and analysing to see how we can convince and cooperate with the Member States in order to act in this respect. We know that in 2017 there was the Valetta Declaration on Road Safety and the transport ministers committed to engage on the possibility of reducing speed limits. So let’s see where we are after this with each Member State. Personalised analysis for Member States is done, and I encourage you to follow, and I’m sure you’re not already, but maybe we will have another chance to discuss the subject after the annual report and statistics, which is going to be published in April. And also I would like to commit with you that after the Stockholm Conference, I would have probably the next day I am in the TRAN Committee, and I can already report back to you on what was committed to in Stockholm and which are the next steps to be taken together with you in the future to increase road safety in Europe - and why not to the leadership for other continents, because we know and we have instruments and programmes for Asia and for Africa and would like to lead there, so that globally we can contribute to the reduction of deaths and serious injuries on the roads. Thank you very much for this debate and I’m as always at your disposal for this topic or others for discussion in the future.