Italy Faces Hurdles in Reducing Road Deaths

Country will fall short of E.U. goal of cutting auto fatalities in half by 2010.

Despite a significant reduction in accidents in 2008, Italy will not meet the European goal of halving road deaths by 2010 compared to the level in the year 2000, underscoring the pitfalls nations are encountering when they fail to implement all E.U. auto safety regulations, according to iSuppli Corp.

Italian regulatory bodies Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) and Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT) in November reported an across-the-board decrease in the number of accidents, injuries and deaths on Italian roadways in 2008 compared to 2007. According to a release from ACI-ISTAT, Italy in 2008 experienced a 5.2 percent decrease in the number of accidents, a 4.6 percent decline in the number of injuries and a 7.8 percent drop in road deaths. In 2008, 4,731 people lost their lives in Italy as result of motor vehicle accidents.

Despite the statistical improvements cited by the authorities, Italy is still far from realizing the collective European objective of halving road deaths by 2010 compared to 2000.

“We will not reach the European objective of reducing by half the victims of the road within 2010,” warned Enrico Gelpi, president of ACI in a press-release statement.

Rescue 112
On the plus side, ACI played up the positive aspects of Italy’s safety initiatives. “…the decrease in the number of accidents registered in 2008 demonstrates the effectiveness of the measures adopted,” Gelpi noted.

The European Union, including Italy, has worked hard to implement a number of policies aimed at elevating road safety levels. Statistics show these efforts are bearing fruit, with a European average of 31.2 percent fewer deaths.

However, despite efforts from the European Union, not every member state has succeeded in adopting all advised or required measures. The European Union this month stepped up legal action against Italy because Italian emergency services still do not receive information about the location of motorists who dial the 112 emergency number from their mobile phones.

The pan-European emergency number 112, the equivalent of 911 in the United States, was conceived to make emergency services more accessible to anyone in Europe. The automatic provision of location information is paramount for anyone unable to tell emergency services precisely where they are.

While Italian authorities tout the effectiveness of the measures adopted thus far, one wonders how many of its roadway victims would have been saved had they implemented the system advised by the E.U. It also stirs speculation regarding how many lives may have been saved had Italy followed the last ruling by the European Court of Justice issued in January of this year.

The 2010 Objective
Since 2005, the European Commission has launched 14 infringement proceedings regarding 112 caller location against member states, including the most recent actions against Italy and Lithuania. Thirteen of these cases are now closed. Only Italy remains unresolved. At the same time that the European Union reprimanded Italy, it closed a similar case against Lithuania. After a ruling in September 2008 claiming that Lithuania had failed to ensure that authorities were provided with location information for all 112 callers, the Baltic state took the necessary steps to correct the shortfall and was cleared of legal repercussions from the European Union.

Several other European member states have complied with regulations and advice set forth by the European Union, with varying levels of success. ACI-ISTAT reports that Luxembourg, Portugal and Latvia all have reduced road deaths by more than half. France, Spain and Germany have achieved more than 40 percent fewer deaths, well above the European average of 31.2 percent. Even Italy is above average, with 33 percent fewer deaths on its roadways since 2000.

Ideas from Italy
Despite its failure to provide 112 caller location information, and in light of its progress in reducing road deaths, Italy has suggested several actions it can take to further improve road safety.

The ACI-ISTAT report asks for a uniform Highway Code in Italy and Europe that guides driver behavior, better and ongoing young driver training, modernizing roads and infrastructure—and perhaps most surprisingly—an outright ban on smoking and telephone use while driving, not even with an earpiece or hands-free system.

ACI-ISTAT claims that smokers provoke twice as many accidents as non-smokers and that use of a telephone doubles reaction time. At least the country appears to be working toward improving the safety conditions on the road, even if some 112 emergency calls still cannot bring actual emergency services to sites of accidents.

Saving Lives
While the pan-European goal may have been optimistic, several member states have done their part and significant lifesaving has taken place on European roadways over the last decade. No matter the final figures, and whether the 50 percent goal is reached, the European Union has saved many lives.

Yet news of Italy’s emergency caller location problem surely will make some countries think about other E.U. advice that may not have been followed by other member states and whether more lives could have been saved. Other nations will look at the expected results and be proud of their efforts and their results.

Still others will look forward to the next step, wondering how to save another European life. Perhaps European eCall will play a role. eCall is a system designed to give automatic, wireless notifications of car accidents to emergency services, similar to General Motors’ OnStar service in the United States.

Then again, that would require the automatic provision of location information to Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), and at least one European nation hasn’t yet figured that out.