Jean-Yves Le Coz, Head of Road Safety Policy at Renault, speaking at seminars in Australia; March 2005

Mr Jean-Yves Le Coz, Head of Road Safety Policy at Renault was the keynote speaker at the "Road Safety... The Future" seminars, held in Melbourne and Sydney, this week.

The seminars were organised by the Australian French Association for Science and Technology (AFAS) with the support of the Stay Safe Committee of the NSW Parliament, Renault Australia, the French Trade Commission, NRMA and Engineers Australia, and also included presentations by leaders in the fields of road safety, injury risk management and road trauma.

At the seminars, Dr Jean-Yves Le Coz declared a holistic approach is necessary if the worldwide road toll is to be curbed.

Le Coz has worked in the field of road safety since 1980 and was last year appointed to direct Renault's road safety policy and development. The French giant spends $160m per annum on road safety research and development, including 400 physical and 3000 virtual crash tests.

Declaring road safety a public health issue, Dr Le Coz stated that the worldwide community needed a global, holistic approach which includes enforcement, education, infrastructure development, traffic management and control, coordination of accident response and development of safety-

Jean-Yves Le Coz, appointed as Renault safety chief in April '04

Photo: Renault Presse

related technologies. While car makers can develop and incorporate safety technologies into their vehicles, the wider community also has a responsibility to develop safer infrastructure and provide better road user education.

Renault uses safety as a cornerstone of its brand in Europe and has recently extended this push to the Australian market. The maker's most recent motor show stand (at Melbourne) featured the slogan "Four cars... Five Stars" in reference to the four models it markets Down Under which achieve five-star Euro NCAP crash test rating. According to Le Coz, however, five-star NCAP test ratings is not what drives the manufacturers development.

"Five stars are not the target. What we want is [our cars] to be efficient [in crashes] on the road. It is very important what we put into our cars correspond to real roads."

Le Coz is also a proponent of Active Safety ie: mechanisms and technology that prevent collisions in the first place.

"We don't do passive safety without active safety. We don't do active without passive... It's a global approach and by using both we can reduce fatalities by 50 per cent tomorrow," Le Coz said.

In terms of reduction of fatalities and injury, Le Coz says Emergency Brake Assist is the number one active safety development. Pioneered in production cars by Mercedes-Benz, EBA boosts braking performance when it senses a panic application of brakes. According to Le Coz, EBA can decrease the number of collisions, or at least significantly reduce the speed at impact.

The road safety chief claims the adoption of EBA systems has significantly contributed in the reduction of France's road toll -- from 8700 to approx 5000 in the last two years.