New technology to reduce road accidents

European road transport is set to become much safer in the future as designers, engineers and national and European politicians work towards safer vehicles that aim to sharply cut the number of fatalities. But EU member states are still set to miss a 2010 target to halve fatalities in accidents across the bloc.

Today vehicles are safer as ever – manufactured in a different way from earlier eras and with new techniques that help save lives and prevent serious accidents. But there is still room for improvement, according to the statistics.

The greatest focus is on road transport, as about 97 percent of deaths within the transport sector in the EU occur on the roads, according to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC).

More than 40,000 people die each year from road accidents across the European Union and a further 1.7 million are severely injured, according to Eurostat figures.

Around 8,000 of the fatalities are pedestrians and bicyclists, who also account for 300,000 of the injured.

In 2001, the European Commission set an aim of saving 25,000 lives on European roads annually by 2010.

To achieve this goal, Brussels wants all the vehicles in Europe equipped with Electronic Stability Control [ESC], a computerised technology that improves the safety of a vehicle's handling by detecting and preventing skids.

The system automatically applies individual brakes to help 'steer' the vehicle where the driver wants to go when it detects loss of steering control.

In normal driving conditions, ESC can reduce accidents by more than 20 percent, while its benefits are even more significant under wet or icy conditions, where the accident reduction rate increases to between 30 and 40 percent.

The European Commission proposed recently that ESC should be mandatory on all new types of vehicles entering the EU market from 2012 and on all new cars sold in the EU by 2014, saying that it could help save 4,000 lives and prevent 100,000 injuries each year on European roads where, currently, less than half of cars sold are fitted with the ESC.

Some cars are sold with ESC as standard equipment on all variants in some countries, while it is completely unavailable to those buying cars in other member states, according to a survey by EuroNCAP – a European car safety performance assessment programme.

Of these cars, ESC is still most often unavailable in Ireland, Malta and Greece, whereas it is most often fitted as standard in Denmark, Sweden and Germany.

The commission also intends to introduce requirements for the so-called Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems – a technique that improves vehicle safety and aids drivers in maintaining their vehicle tyre pressures.

The French road safety body Sécurité Routière estimates that nine percent of all road accidents involving fatalities are ascribed to tyre under-inflation, while the German DEKRA estimated that 41 percent of accidents with physical injuries are linked to tyre problems.

The move is also part of the integrated approach to reduce CO2 emissions from cars in Europe, as the system also increases fuel efficiency.

Emergency call

Another commission project currently underway, 'E-Call', would aid in the delivery of rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere in the EU bloc.

A black box installed in vehicles would wirelessly alert and send information such as airbag use, crash sensor information and GPS coordinates to local emergency agencies.

Developers hope the system could cut response time by ten minutes on average – a factor that is expected to reduce fatalities by 10 percent. E-Call is expected be up and running in 2010.

External airbags

A Swedish company that produces auto-safety parts has developed an external airbag that can be installed on the bonnet of a car in order to protect pedestrians and cyclists when hit.

Earlier this year, the Dutch Cycling Federation called for such airbags to be mandatory on cars, saying the devices could save 60 lives and prevent 1,500 serious injuries a year in the Netherlands.

"In the past, many measures have been taken to protect those sitting inside cars but hardly anything has been done to protect people outside cars," the organisation said, according to Reuters.

A few carmakers have already installed in some of their new car models a 'bouncing bonnet' that rises very briefly in the event of a collision with pedestrians or cyclists, making the landing on the bonnet somewhat softer.

In another attempt to cut pedestrian injuries, carmakers have agreed to voluntary meet the European front-end design standards by 2010, hoped to cut injuries by 20 percent.

The focus of the new EU standards has been on safer front-end design to minimise injuries to the legs and head during 40km/h crashes – the speed in which most accidents involving pedestrians happen.

Results are yet to show

However, most member states are lagging behind the 2001 EU goal of halving fatalities by 2010. For the first time since 2001, 2007 saw no reduction in the total number of road deaths in the EU.

So far, only France, Luxembourg and Portugal are on the way to reaching their target, according to ETSC.

Belgium, Germany, Latvia, Spain and the Netherlands have also reduced their road-death toll considerably since 2001 and may yet be able to halve the number of their fatalities by 2015. However, the number has risen over the last six years in Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Last year also saw a rise in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.