Safe and Sober: ETSC’s efforts against drink drivingOslo 23rd of April 2008 Antonio Avenoso
Safe and Sober: ETSC’s efforts against drink driving
Oslo 23rd of April 2008 Antonio Avenoso
1
Introduction to ETSC
Bringing together 39 organisations from across Europe to promote science based transport safety measures at EU level. More then 200 experts contributing to ETSC’s Reviews, Policy Papers, Newsletters, Positions, Press Releases, etc. 10 Secretariat staff members do their utmost to insert the knowledge of ETSC members and experts into EU transport safety policy-making The European Commission, member organisations, member states and corporate sponsors are funding our work. Drink Driving programmes: "Safe & Sober" and " Drink Driving policy network". A science-based approach to road safety policy
2
ETSC: priority-based safety work
ETSC: Priority-based safety work Monitoring EU transport safety policy Protecting Vulnerable Road Users - VOICE Ranking EU countries‘ performances - Road Safety PIN Preventing Drink Driving and Speeding Campaigning for the treatment of high risk infrastructure – R2R
3
The EU actors: the Institutions
Lengthy co-decision procedure The Parliament represents European people The Council represents European governments The Commission is the initiator of new legislation
4
The EU actors: NGOs
Monitoring the EU policy making process Advising decision makers on the best policy options Tools: Science-based Reports, Policy papers, Press releases, Press conferences, Meetings
5
Road Safety in Europe
42,829 deaths in the EU in 2006 Around 3.5 million injuries in the EU EU Socio-economic cost: € 200 billion Non-quantifiable pain and suffering
6
The EU target and Strategy
White Paper (2001) Cutting road deaths by 50% by 2010 3rd Road Safety Action Programme (2003) Sharing responsibility Insufficient progress towards the target…
7
Reduction in road deaths 2001-2006 (%)
8
Reduction in road deaths 2001-2006
Luxembourg - 48% France - 42% Portugal - 42%
These countries have a medium level of RS. They don’t have a long tradition of safety (like SE, NL or the UK) but they have benefited from a strong political support and political will to achieve fast changes.
A widenning gap
But slowest progress has been made in Eastern and Central European countries. In Lithuania, Hungary and Estonia, road deaths were higher in 2006 than in 2001. The gap is widening between the fast movers and the worst performing countries as we can see that Luxembourg, Portugal and France will soon hit the target while the 3 worst countries are going nowhere.
The EU needs further efforts
11 There is clearly the need to accelerate progress during the 4 remaining years of the target period. We estimated that at the current rate of reduction the EU-25 will be able to reduce the yearly number of road deaths to 25,000 only in 2015 whereas the dark fat line shows the trend we should be following.
Drink Driving in the EU
At least 10,000 road deaths (25%) Causes 30-40% of driver deaths Drink driving in traffic flow: EU 1-2% of drivers (illegal BAC)
12 Out of these 41000 road deaths at least 10000 or 25% are due to drink driving (as an influencing factor). This makes drink driving to the second biggest killer after speeding on Europes roads. In terms of driver deaths, drink driving even accounts for 30-40% of deaths. And: In the EU as a whole, 1-2% of all journeys are associated with an illegal Blood Alcohol Content. This number varies greatly across Europe, in some good performing countries like Finland for instance it is much lower with only 0.15%. (and in NL 1.5%).
Drink driving deaths
Each country has its own way of identifying deaths from drink driving accidents, so these percentages cannot be compared. Proportion of drink driving deaths in all deaths (2005) Proportion of drink driving deaths in all deaths (2005) Austria 6% Denmark 23% France 29% Switzerland 19% Slovenia 32%
13 If you take a look at the proportion of DD deaths in the MS, you also see huge differences. As we see here from the 5 examples, the proportion varies between 6% and 32%. But this results to a great extend from differences in the way in which countries define and record a „death related to drink driving". For example, in some countries (Germany), drivers killed on the spot in single vehicle accidents are not generally tested. This makes it difficult to compare the proportions because Each country has its own way of identifying deaths from drink driving accidents.
Changes in drink driving deaths 1
Yearly change in drink driving deaths relative to other road deaths (in %, 1996-98 to 2005) * Yearly percentage change in drivers involved in fatal drink driving crashes relative to drivers involved in other fatal crashes ** Yearly percentage change in driver deaths from drink driving crashes relative to driver deaths from other crashes
ETSC has recently tried to identify Trends for 18 countries in order to reflect the progress on reducing drink driving related deaths. Therefore we used two different methods: Firstly, as we see here on this chart, we looked at European countries progress in reducing drink driving deaths compared with progress in reducing other road deaths, using each country‘s own method of identifying drink driving deaths. We found that in the Czech Rep (11,3%), Belgium (9,4%) and Germany (6,2%) progress on reducing DD deaths has contributed most to overall reductions in road deaths over the last decade. Also some other states follow this positive trend (Poland, Slovakia, the NL, Latvia, Austria, france and greece). In another group of countries changes in DD deaths have not contributed their share to overall reductions in road deaths. This group includes Sweden, Spain, Hungary and some other countries (Slovenia, Finland, Great Britain, Estonia, Denmark, Switzerland and Lithuania). 14
Changes in drink driving deaths 2
Average yearly change in road deaths resulting from crashes related to drink driving (in %, 1996-98 to 2005 ) *Average yearly percentage change in drivers involved in fatal drink driving crashes ** Average yearly percentage change in driver deaths from drink driving crashes
15 Secondly, we looked at the changes in deaths related to drink driving as such. We found out, that the reductions in deaths related to drink driving have been most impressive in the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands where the number of drink driving related deaths has decreased since the mid-1990ies by more than 50%. (Yearly reductions in DD deaths of the order of 12% for Czech Republic, 10% for Germany and 8% for the Netherlands.) In Hungary, Lithuania, Finland, Spain and the UK on the other hand, the drink driving problem actually worsened.
“Safe & Sober” Campaign
"Safe & Sober" Campaign Safe & Sober... is a 3 year programme (January 2007 – December 2009) Safe & Sober aims at… improving local, regional and national policies for the prevention of Drink Driving in commercial transport; identifying and promoting best practice; addressing measures relating to education, enforcement and engineering.
16
Drink Driving Policy Network
The ... is a 2 year programme (January 2007 – December 2008) The targets... high-BAC recidivist drunk drivers young and novice drivers those who are statistically more likely to be involved in alcohol-related road accidents.
17
ETSC Recommendations
Introduce a common BAC limit in the EU of 0.5 mg/ml (0.2 mg/ml for commercial drivers, young and novice drivers). Transpose the EC recommendation on enforcement into a legally binding directive. Promote alcolocks for commercial transport and recidivist offenders and set up best practice guidelines.
18
BAC limits across the EU
Common BAC limits (mg/ml)? 0,0 (Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia) 0,2 (Estonia, Poland, Sweden) 0,4 (Lithuania) 0,5 (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain) 0,8 (Ireland, Malta, United Kingdom) But: A limit needs to be enforced!
19
BAC Recommendation
January 2001: two different BAC limits 0.5 BAC for all drivers 0.2 BAC for: inexperienced drivers and more particularly holders of provisional driving licences, motorcyclists; drivers of large vehicles, i.e. lorries weighing more than 3.5 tonnes drivers of vehicles carrying dangerous goods.
20
Comments