Save Our Lives. A Comprehensive Road Safety Strategy for Central Europe

Every year more than 40,000 people lose their lives on Europe’s roads. In the EU, 1 out of every 5 child deaths due to injury are a result of road crashes. While many western European countries are making continuous progress in reducing the number of lives lost, fatality rates in many new Member States in the Central Europe Programme area remain high and in some they are even increasing. With the exception of Hungary all other new Member States in Central Europe have been confronted with a rise in the number of fatalities on their roads in 2007 (in the Czech Republic by 15% and in Ukraine even by 38%).

Central Europe clearly shows a higher number of road fatalities per million inhabitants than Western Europe. Within Central Europe, the highest value is observed in Poland (143 road fatalities per million inhabitants), followed by Slovenia (129), Hungary (128) and the Czech Republic (126)” compared to Italy (96), Austria (88), and Germany (62).

In Central Europe road safety challenge has reached a magnitude that even puts the overall competitiveness, the attractiveness as location for working and investments as well as the quality of life in the most seriously affected parts of the cooperation area at considerable risk. Road crashes have a severe negative impact on the social and economic situation in all countries, costing up to 2 percent or more of the GDP. Even though there are some good practice examples also in the new Member States of the Central Europe area, where road safety has been addressed successfully in the past years, severe joint efforts will be required by all relevant stakeholders on all levels to make a contribution also within Central Europe to reach the overall policy goal set by the European Commission (EC) in 2003 within the 3rd Road Safety Action Programme: to halve the number of lives lost on our roads from 50,000 to 25,000 per year by 2010. 