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Road Safety: let's start by respecting the rules

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Subido el 3 de julio de 2007 por EducaMadrid

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Forty thousand people are killed on Europe's roads every year. Although public- awareness campaigns and improvements in vehicle safety have helped to reduce the number of victims over the years, the roads are still very dangerous in many European countries. The European Commission's target is to halve the number of deaths on the road between now and 2010. It is therefore looking into some recommendations for its Member States and is re-examining the directive on commercial transport.

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Every year, close to 40,000 people die on Europe's roads. 00:00:00
That's the equivalent of a medium-range jet crashing every day. 00:00:11
Add to that figure 1,700,000 people injured. 00:00:15
Besides this huge human toll, road accidents cost society more than 160 billion euro per 00:00:19
year. 00:00:25
Roads are getting safer and safer. 00:00:29
It's essentially the way drivers behave which is to blame. 00:00:32
Not surprisingly, excessive speed, alcohol abuse, and not wearing seatbelts are the things 00:00:35
that put people most at risk. 00:00:41
In the light of this, the European Union is proposing a strategy to halve the number of 00:00:45
road deaths by 2010. 00:00:49
Commissioner Loyola de Palacio says the slaughter must be stopped. 00:00:51
When we set out to halve the number of road deaths, we are not talking about utopias. 00:00:56
We are simply talking about the results, the levels of sinestrality or safety that are 00:01:06
achieved in the two best countries in the Union, which are Sweden and Great Britain, 00:01:12
being the levels that are achieved in the rest of the Union countries. 00:01:18
The strategy, the first thing to do is to ensure that the drivers comply with the rules. 00:01:21
When an analysis is made of the causes of the accidents, we find that in most cases 00:01:28
it is simply due to a breach of the rules of the traffic codes of the different states 00:01:35
of the European Union. 00:01:40
Indeed, there is more to safety than simply imposing regulations. 00:01:41
They must also be respected. 00:01:47
The statistics speak for themselves. 00:01:48
Great Britain has an alcohol content of 0.7, while Sweden has the opposite, 00:01:51
one of the lowest alcohol contents in the whole of the European Union. 00:01:58
They are the two countries that do it best. 00:02:01
Despite having somewhat different positions, both achieve good results, 00:02:03
simply because in both cases what is achieved is that the rules are met. 00:02:10
Experience shows that strict enforcement alongside regular publicity campaigns 00:02:17
are the best antidote to reckless behaviour on the roads. 00:02:22
France has been applying this therapy for more than a year, and it's working. 00:02:25
Paris was partly inspired by the Netherlands, which has demonstrated that crackdowns 00:02:29
really do work as a means of prevention. 00:02:34
After Great Britain and Sweden, Dutch roads are the safest in Europe. 00:02:36
The annual death toll is 68 per million inhabitants. 00:02:41
That's nearly three times fewer than in Greece, and 30% lower than the European average. 00:02:45
Holland has achieved this through tough police patrols on the roads, 00:02:52
and making sure that people know about them. 00:02:56
It can't be the case that in the Netherlands people say, 00:02:59
I had no idea that the police were checking. 00:03:03
Everyone knows that the police check a lot, and that you have to behave properly. 00:03:06
The responsibility lies with the officers themselves. 00:03:11
The system is fair, the system is tough, it's very strict, 00:03:15
but there is no secrecy about the checks. 00:03:19
Everyone knows what's going on. 00:03:23
99.9% of all fines are paid. 00:03:25
The administrative system that the Netherlands uses is very effective and efficient. 00:03:29
Repression is not a goal, absolutely not. 00:03:36
It's just a means of getting people to behave better. 00:03:39
It's a means of getting to prevention. 00:03:43
Today, in line with what's being done in the UK, Sweden, France and Holland, 00:03:49
the European Commission is proposing an overall increase in roadside checks throughout Europe 00:03:53
to reduce reckless behaviour. 00:03:58
First, speed. 00:04:02
Excessive speed is responsible for a third of serious accidents in the European Union. 00:04:04
Stricter speed controls could save on average 11,000 lives and avoid 180,000 injuries every year. 00:04:09
Brussels wants to see Member States introducing widespread controls 00:04:16
at stretches of road where speeding is likely. 00:04:20
An example would be to increase automatic radar detectors on motorways, trunk roads and in towns. 00:04:23
Police forces must also have sufficient means to handle a large number of offences 00:04:29
and systematically impose sanctions. 00:04:34
Second, drink driving. 00:04:40
It kills more than 10,000 people a year in Europe. 00:04:42
Among them a worrying number of young people, victims of Saturday night fever. 00:04:45
Statistics on fatal accidents involving 18 to 25-year-olds show two peak periods 00:04:50
in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning. 00:04:56
Every weekend about 40 young people lose their lives on our roads. 00:05:02
It's been proven that regular random controls at critical points and times do work. 00:05:07
They need to be applied systematically 00:05:12
and the police must have breath-testing equipment that's accurate 00:05:14
and reliable enough to prove an offence on the spot. 00:05:17
As to seatbelts, their value is no longer in question. 00:05:24
They must be worn by law throughout the European Union, 00:05:28
in front seats and also it must be underlined in the rear. 00:05:31
When you realise that the impact of a collision at only 50 km per hour 00:05:35
is equivalent to that of falling from a four-storey building, 00:05:39
it's disturbing that many people simply forget to fasten their seatbelts. 00:05:42
The European Commission wants every country to run intensive police controls 00:05:50
several times a year for a minimum period of two weeks. 00:05:54
Linked to awareness campaigns, this crackdown on seatbelt wearing 00:05:58
could save the lives of 10,000 absent-minded people every year. 00:06:02
And every offence must be followed up by an effective punishment. 00:06:13
Without that, the checks are meaningless. 00:06:17
Here again, the Netherlands seems to have got it right. 00:06:22
The Hague has removed highway co-defences from an overloaded judiciary system 00:06:25
and has chosen instead to impose administrative fines. 00:06:29
It's tough to be a policeman. 00:06:37
The judiciary system has never been developed to process large amounts of fines. 00:06:40
That means that the fines cannot be processed in the judicial system. 00:06:46
Then the system blocks. 00:06:50
And the result is that people no longer receive those fines at home. 00:06:52
That the fines don't arrive. 00:06:55
And that the opposite happens. 00:06:57
That the system doesn't become credible, but more unbelievable. 00:06:59
That people get the idea that you can be checked, 00:07:03
but you have a good chance of getting out under those fines. 00:07:06
And what about trucks on the roads? 00:07:10
Increasing traffic, market demands and fierce competition 00:07:12
experienced by transport operators must surely have an impact on road safety. 00:07:16
To get a feeling for this, we took our cameras to a roadside checkpoint. 00:07:22
They drive 24 hours non-stop. 00:07:37
We have infractions in the driving time, we have frauds, taxidermists. 00:07:39
It's outright falsification of names, 00:07:42
disc changes in the middle of the day. 00:07:46
On Tuesday, we had an Italian driver who apparently removed the fuse 00:07:50
from his taxidermist device while driving. 00:07:54
That way, the recordings don't get lost. 00:07:56
We have to. 00:07:58
Do you know how to eat? 00:07:59
You have to work 8 hours a day. 00:08:00
You have to be paid 250 francs per hour. 00:08:02
You have to be able to work for 48 hours. 00:08:04
Otherwise, you have to work as hard as you can. 00:08:08
If you start your day at 5 o'clock and finish at 8 o'clock, 00:08:10
I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, you're on your truck. 00:08:13
Driving and rest periods for truck drivers 00:08:16
are strictly regulated throughout the European Union. 00:08:18
For their own safety and that of others, 00:08:21
drivers can spend no more than 10 hours behind the wheel per day. 00:08:23
Unfortunately, some drivers exceed this limit. 00:08:27
This is unfair competition and also puts other people in danger. 00:08:31
And it's a factor in 50% of all offences involving trucks. 00:08:35
Ignoring road safety takes its toll. 00:08:40
In that sense, digital tachographs will be a key instrument 00:09:01
to improve this situation. 00:09:05
In particular, it wants to triple the number of checks 00:09:31
at the roadside and on transport company premises. 00:09:35
It also wants to promote better cooperation 00:09:38
between the enforcement authorities and member states. 00:09:40
This is already happening between 8 countries 00:09:43
under the auspices of Euro Control Route. 00:09:46
Well, Euro Control Route brings together 00:09:49
the road transport enforcement agencies of the 8 member states 00:09:51
in a spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance. 00:09:54
Well, the strongest point is the cooperation that's taking place, 00:09:57
the networking between officials from different jurisdictions, 00:10:02
the transfer of information, 00:10:06
getting information, particularly in your own country, 00:10:09
about how your operators behave 00:10:12
while they're travelling in other member states, 00:10:14
and following up on that kind of information 00:10:17
and paying visits to the premises of operators 00:10:20
who have broken the rules while they're abroad, that sort of thing. 00:10:25
These measures could well be unpopular, 00:10:30
but no one can deny the benefits for road safety 00:10:32
and a reduction in the human cost of accidents. 00:10:35
If we want to save 20,000 lives every year by 2010, 00:10:38
it's clear what needs to be done. 00:10:41
The Commission is giving member states 3 years 00:10:43
to obtain significant results. 00:10:46
If not, it already has in mind more radical measures, 00:10:48
and there's no time to be lost. 00:10:51
For with every day that passes, 00:10:53
100 more people will lose their lives on Europe's roads. 00:10:55
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Idioma/s:
en
Niveles educativos:
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Autor/es:
The European Union
Subido por:
EducaMadrid
Licencia:
Reconocimiento - No comercial - Sin obra derivada
Visualizaciones:
2208
Fecha:
3 de julio de 2007 - 14:28
Visibilidad:
Público
Enlace Relacionado:
European Commission
Duración:
00′ 23″
Relación de aspecto:
4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
Resolución:
320x240 píxeles
Tamaño:
55.04 MBytes

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