The European Commission launched its 3^rd Mobility Package last Thursday, this package has a large safety content, and includes a revamp of the type approval vehicle safety regulations that all motor vehicles have to conform to in order to be placed in the European market. It also includes a review and update of the Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive, this Directive currently deals with long distance TEN-T European funded cross border roads, but ECF has shown that it also has huge interest for cycling and walking. Finally there will be fatality and for the first time serious injury targets for the EU’s member states to aim for.

Safer Vehicles

There will be a revision of the General Safety and Pedestrian Regulations into one regulation and which seeks to make mandatory many positive safety features for cyclists and pedestrians.

The technologies proposed include;

Intelligent Speed Assistance – this technology supplies a haptic feedback to the accelerator pedal when the speed reaches the limit of the road. The accelerator pedal becomes progressively harder to push down to aid the driver in keeping to the limit. Of course the devil will lie in the detail and how much resistance will be applied to the pedal. But it is a technology that has a great deal of potential to reduce speed and calm traffic on the roads. It will also apply to every new vehicle, car, truck, bus and van.

Automatic Emergency braking which would include detecting pedestrian and cyclists. However only a warning turning assist for lorries (no automatic braking) to mitigate right turning blind spot crashes with cyclists.

Safer lorry cab design has been proposed in order to improve the direct vision around the cabs of HGVs to mitigate blind spot crashes.

The design of the front of vehicles is proposed to be updated to widen the crash area tested, this would be good news for cycle safety as cyclists hit higher on the windscreen. Different materials could also be used to reduce the impact forces.

Though this is primarily seen through the lens of safety, the proposal has the possibility to directly contribute to the calming of traffic for calmer streets, particularly with regards to the use of Intelligent Speed Assistance technologies.

All in all this is a good start from the European Commission. This proposal now moves to the European Parliament and the European Council (the EU Member countries) who will make amendments and decide on the final text of the legislation. As always the devil will lie in the detail, and amendments will be made, both better and worse. We will promote, and propose, suggested amendments to both institutions while helping to defend the vast bulk of the legislation.

Safer Infrastructure

The Commission also put forward proposed changes to the Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive. Currently this Directive deal primarily with the TEN-T road network which is a Europe-wide network of roads serving mostly long-distance and international traffic. However, ECF has found many instances where cycling and pedestrian infrastructure  is intimately connected these longer distance routes, often coming into, through or around urban areas as well as incorporating many rural cycling routes and junctions. Construction projects on the TEN-T roads often have a significant influence on how the cycling and pedestrian traffic in the area up to a few kilometres from the (re)constructed road is organised and on their safety, both positively and negatively. The current TEN-T network also includes different types of roads from motorways to express roads and conventional strategic roads, which can “integrate the main urban and economic centres, interconnect with other transport modes” and do therefore have a direct impact on cycling and walking

We have shown that there are many instances where Ten-T routes interact with cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, and many others where cycling and walking infrastructure could be improved or easily and cheaply inserted to improve mobility around urban or popular rural areas.

This seems to have been reflected to a certain extent in the proposed changes to the Directive by the Commission. Cycling (and walking) infrastructure is proposed to be incorporated into the text as being legally required rather than suggested in the annexes. The commission has also proposed to extend its scope beyond TEN-T to national roads. All the more reason to include specifically cycling and walking since this brings these roads in closer contact with active modes.

We will make suggestions to the Parliament and to the Council on how to improve even further.

Road Safety Programme

There will also be a road safety policy framework for 2020-2030 which will also continue the decennial fatalities target reduction, but also include a serious injuries target for the first time. These will linked to a set of “key performance indicators to be connected to target outcomes”. We will seek to be involved in stakeholder consultation in the review of these KPI’s. Since these will be proposed directly by the Commission without input from the decision making institutions.

There is a lot of information to plough through for ECF in this mobility package and our initial review is that this is a good start from the European Commission, we think that we can make it even better and hope that MEPs and Member States will agree with us. We will keep everyone updated through our newsletters with any updates on this important EU policy development.

A full roundup of the European Commission various proposals and communications available here https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/news/2018-05-17-europe-on-the-move-3_en

ECF Position Papers can be found here;

Road Safety Action Programme – General EU Safety suggestions https://ecf.com/sites/ecf.com/files/ECF_position_RSafety_Programme_2020-2030.pdf

Position Paper on the Road Infrastructure Safety Management Programme https://ecf.com/sites/ecf.com/files/rism_position_paper-ECF_0.pdf

Position Paper on the General and Pedestrian Safety Regulations https://ecf.com/sites/ecf.com/files/ECF%20Position%20Paper%20on%20GSR%20and%20Ped%20Protection%20Regs_November%202016.pdf