The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) has published a Position Paper titled “5th EU Road Safety Action Programme 2020-2030”. 2016 was the third consecutive poor year for road safety: 25,670 people lost their lives on EU roads compared to 26,200 the previous year. But this followed a 1% increase in 2015 and stagnation in 2014. In addition, around 135,000 people were seriously injured on European roads in 2014 according to European Commission estimates.

ETSC has identified nine main priorities for action with the top three outlined in the Executive Summary: vulnerable road user safety, automation and reducing the numbers seriously injured on Europe’s roads. A new, EU-level road transport agency could be critically important to planning and delivering new measures as well as providing regulatory oversight of the increasingly complex vehicle type approval that will be required to deal with increased automation.