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Statement by Max Mosley, Euro NCAP Chairman and FIA President

1st International Road Safety Exhibition, Verona, Italy

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Like many here today I warmly welcome the recently adopted EU Road Safety Action Plan, its interim target of reducing deaths and injuries by 50% by 2010, and the proposal to launch a Road Safety Charter. These are important incremental steps towards a safe road system. I would also like to congratulate our member club, the Automobile Club of Italy, in organising this event, which brings together key policy makers, ministers and officials from around the EU. They have given us an important and rare opportunity to take stock of the EU’s road safety policies. 

It is, of course, easy to express support and to welcome progress. However, what is far from easy is to be satisfied when 40,000 people are dying every year on our roads and 1.7 million are injured. Please forgive me, therefore, if the tone of my comments today seems somewhat provocative or controversial. Perhaps as one representative of ordinary road users it is my duty to offer a more critical analysis of the road safety situation in Europe today. 

For nearly a decade now I have been involved in road safety issues in the European Union. Primarily this is due to my role as President of the FIA, but also for seven years I have been the chairman of the Euro NCAP crash test organisation, and for three the Chairman of ERTICO Intelligent Transport Systems. For me these activities have been both very rewarding and very frustrating. 

Rewarding, because I know that some of the actions taken during this period have begun to reduce significantly the numbers of people killed and injured on our roads. Frustrating, because I believe that despite some progress, the EU institutions are still failing to take the action necessary to make death on our roads a rare and exceptional incident rather than a daily occurrence. 

There is a risk of complacency, perhaps engendered by recent progress. Consistent reductions in the number of deaths and injuries in some major countries of Western Europe are indeed encouraging. But they also conceal significant differences across the EU. If every member state could achieve the level of the best we would see an immediate reduction of 20,000 deaths - the 2010 target achieved today. This shows clearly how far we are from safe roads in many EU Member States. 

Even more challenging will be the effects of enlargement. Next year, ten new countries will join the EU and significantly disrupt the gently improving trend in road safety. After the end of the Cold War many East and Central European countries experienced a sharp increase in road traffic deaths and injuries. In recent years this negative trend began to stabilise. But the latest available figures for 2002 show the level of fatalities growing again, probably as a result of economic growth and rising levels of motorisation. The road traffic deaths of the new Member States will certainly push the EU’s total fatalities above 50,000 per year. Facing this challenge one must ask the question, “Is road safety really getting the attention it deserves?” On the basis of my experience of working on these issues in the EU, the answer is quite clearly, “No it is not.” 

The plain fact is that, despite a clear and unambiguous legal base, road safety has a low priority among the EU institutions. Let me give you a recent example of this lack of concern. The 3rd Road Safety Action Plan was adopted by the European Commission this summer. It should have been adopted in 2002, but was delivered over a year late. And now the European Parliament is following the Commission’s example. It has managed to delay scrutiny of the document until after next year’s European elections. Another year lost. 

There is also a major problem of co-ordination between Directorate Generals within the European Commission. This results in policy delay, confusion and conflict. Vehicle safety standards are the responsibility of one DG, action to promote seat belt use is the role of another. One DG publishes a communication on telematics and road safety, another publishes a road safety action plan. During early stages in the preparation of these documents the different DGs were working in entirely different directions, with officials barely talking to one another. 

Let me give you another example. Probably my most personally satisfying experience in Brussels has been to chair the Euro NCAP crash test programme since its creation in 1996. After a year’s delay, the Commission began to support our work. In 2000 the Commission estimated that Euro NCAP had become the most cost effective road safety action available to the EU. They commented that it had brought forward the benefits of the new crash test legislation introduced in 1998 by five years. 

Now they acknowledge that it has raised the standards of industry best practice even higher. This year the Commission stated that “cars awarded five stars have a 36% lower intrinsic fatal accident risk than vehicles which are simply designed to meet the legal standard”. It is rare in life to be able to contribute so clearly to saving lives, and that is why I am rather proud of what Euro NCAP has achieved. 

From this, one would assume that the European Commission is also doing all it can to assist the work of Euro NCAP. Indeed the 3rd Road Safety Action Plan gives this impression. It states that the Commission “provides financial support and takes part in the technical decisions”. Yet, until Tuesday of this week, the Commission still owed Euro NCAP €300,000 for tests carried out in 2001. Faced with insolvency, Euro NCAP secured payment only after its Board threatened to cease all future co-operation with the Commission. Even now, Euro NCAP has not been paid in full. 

If I had more time I could explain the history of the EU crash test legislation. In a nutshell the Commission delayed introducing Directives for front and side impact crash test standards despite the fact that it had funded research and, by 1985, knew exactly what standards were required. But it was only in 1998, after years of intensive lobbying of the European Parliament by the FIA, our clubs and other safety groups that the EU adopted the appropriate crash test Directives. It is this legislation, of course, that is the basis of the tests used by Euro NCAP. 

These examples demonstrate that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way in which road safety is dealt with by the EU. In all these remarks I have been careful to avoid criticising any individual. I have no doubt that the Commissioner and her colleagues in the road safety unit do the best they can in difficult circumstances. 

The problem is that from a systemic point of view the EU neglects road safety. I have already mentioned the difficulty of the split in responsibilities within DGs. Another problem is that the subject is regarded as only a minor part of other portfolios. The Commissioner is responsible for the entire transport sector, the energy sector and for relations with the European Parliament. Road safety is but a sub-sector of her extensive responsibilities. The same diminishing agenda of time and resources applies to DGTren and the hard-pressed road safety unit. 

Next year we face elections to the European Parliament, the appointment of a new European Commission, and the outcome of the Intergovernmental Conference. It is a time for new thinking and new approaches. I would like to propose radical change. Road safety should be given the urgent priority it deserves. Responsibility for it should be established in a single directorate or agency that can deal with all the relevant issues, combining vehicle standards, telematics, passive and active safety. One political figure should be made accountable for road safety promotion within the EU. He or she should publish an annual report on road safety that includes league tables that clearly show which Member States are performing badly. If we can have inflation targets and budget rules debated in the ECOFIN Council why not a similar range of road safety indicators in the Transport Council? 

There already exist some models for the reorganisation that I am proposing. In Sweden, the Swedish National Road Administration combines responsibilities in the way I suggest. In the US, the National Highway Safety Administration set up by the Johnson Administration in the late 1960s performs a similar role. Why not a European Road Safety Agency? After all, new European agencies for Maritime Safety and Aviation Safety have just been created. Is there not an overwhelming case for a European Road Safety Agency? Remember, it could save over 20,000 lives each year just by bringing EU road safety standards up to those already in place in two Member States. 

Some may respond that I am over dramatising the situation; that progress is being made and we should not rock the boat. But I want you to think about the reality of 50,000 deaths on our roads and over two million injuries that we will face in the EU next year. Think about the human misery and waste that entails. Think of more than 50,000 individual families for which life will never be the same again. Given that we know that most of these deaths are preventable, how can we possibly tolerate it? Surely it is the duty of politicians and the EU to act? 

Would the public understand if they knew we already have specific EU agencies for the environment, for training, for evaluating medicines, even for community plant varieties, but no agency for safety on our roads? 

Or let me put it another way. If a terrorist organisation announced that it was going to kill 50,000 of our fellow citizens next year, to eliminate by violence 137 people every day, what would the European Council decide to do? Would they add the subject as a minor part of a Commissioner’s portfolio, authorise the establishment of a modest unit within a DG and ask it to report back in 2010? I don’t think so. The response would be on a par with 9/11, it would be overwhelming. So should it be for 50,000 road deaths. 

So please Commissioner, Ministers, and colleagues, let’s stop being complacent, let’s extend our horizons, and recognise the need for radical change. Let’s find new ways to work together for safe roads in Europe.

Source:  FIA Foundation