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Ellen Townsend, Policy Director
of the European Transport Safety Council
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As the EU’s ten-year road safety campaign draws to a close, and a new plan is drafted, European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) Policy Director Ellen Townsend calls for a new set of measures covering enforcement, drink driving and speeding.
Almost a decade ago, the European Union agreed its Road Safety Action Programme, with its target of halving the number of fatalities on Europe's roads by 2010, cutting deaths to 25,000. It has achieved some measure of success, but as the European Commission ponders a successor scheme, European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) Policy Director Ellen Townsend is pushing for new ambitions. “We’re very keen on a new target, and we want a 40% cut in road deaths over the ten years until 2020,” she says. “We also want a 20% reduction in severe injuries and a 60% cut in child deaths.”
Townsend admits that the EU’s Road Safety Action Programme had mixed results: there are still about 39,000 road deaths a year in the EU. It’s a big improvement on the 54,000 in 2001, which was when the EU committed to cut road deaths by 40% by 2010. But Townsend says that the 40% reduction will only be seen in the EU15, not the EU27. Indeed, although fatalities have dropped dramatically in countries like France, Portugal and Spain, road deaths actually increased in Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia between 2002 and 2008.
The European Commission will release its planned programme for the 2011-2020 before the summer. Townsend wants the plan to focus on the most life-saving measures. “One of those is traffic law enforcement,” she says. “What is it that makes people think twice about speeding, about drinking that second pint, about wearing that seatbelt? It is not ‘I might die’, it’s not ‘what might others think?’ or even about being fined. It is the nervousness about being checked by a police officer.”
The ETSC is a Brussels-based independent non-profit making group dedicated to cutting transport-related accidents. Its 40-plus members – mostly universities, road safety institutes, campaigning NGOs – work to help shape EU legislation and raise awareness about how to improve road safety. Townsend says the challenge is to make sure the EU remains focused on the most effective road safety measures. “It is important to look at the real causes of death and then see where the EU can actually do something,” she says. “The main causes are: alcohol and drugs, not using a seatbelt, and not properly using child safety restraints.”
These issues have been said many times before, but they need repeating, Townsend says. The balance also needs to be right to ensure the maximum effect. “One of the Commission recommendations in 2003 was linking enforcement with campaigning,” she says. “There were TV spots and posters saying there will be a lot of checks over the next few weeks. The measure showed that it was not about catching someone out, it’s about preventing them from breaking the law.”
Townsend says that laws are slowly improving. For example, when it comes to alcohol, there is an EU recommendation for 0.05% Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) for everybody, or 0.02% for a novice or commercial driver. Now, only three countries left with 0.08% - UK, Ireland and Malta – but Townsend expect them to change soon.
At the same time, she says people still drink drive too much and too easily. “Some people, who even know I work in road safety, will go out and at 1.30am say, ‘Now how do we get home?’
Seatbelts are another ETSC priority, Townsend says, pointing to statistics showing that most deaths are with those who don’t wear them. “People say, ‘I’m a safe driver’, and get offended if I put on a seatbelt. But it is not just about you but the whole environment and all the unknowns,” she says.
Townsend also puts faith in technology to help cut road accidents. One is the alcohol interlock, or alcolock, a device that will lock the ignition when it detects high alcohol levels. “Alcolocks are brilliant,” Townsend says. “We’d like to see them rolled out first for commercial vehicles. And there are already being used in the context of rehabilitation: laws are now ready that involve offering convicted drivers the option of having alcolocks installed in their vehicles.
She is keen on a technology called Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA), a system that implements an action when a vehicle is detected to be exceeding the speed limit. “When you go past a sign, it can give you feedback on your speed limit,” Townsend says. “In the most basic level, it is voluntary, telling you, for example, that you are going 40kmh in a 30kmh zone. A more radical one will make it harder on the accelerator if you try to go faster than the speed limit. And the strongest ISA is when it won’t allow you to accelerate. But all have an override function if you are in an emergency.
Townsend says transport safety also involves thinking of pedestrians, who are vulnerable road users and make up between a third and 40% of all road fatalities. “Cycling and walking are relatively dangerous in road safety terms. The EU can help them by promoting safe routes, to school for example, and by encouraging reflective vests,” she says.
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