For safer roads in cities: European Road Safety Day 2008

Publication date: 13 October 2008

Today sees the second European Road Safety Day. To mark this event, the European Commission is holding a conference in Paris on road safety in cities in cooperation with the French Presidency. This conference will be attended by more than 600 people, including Antonio Tajani, the Commission Vice-President responsible for transport, and Jacques Barrot, the Vice-President responsible for justice, freedom and security, as well as Dominique Bussereau, the French Minister of State responsible for transport, and Altero Matteoli, the Italian Transport Minister.

‘Two thirds of all road accidents and one third of fatal accidents occur in urban areas. This is why we have decided to devote this second European Road Safety Day to road safety in our cities. The event provides an excellent opportunity to raise awareness among European citizens about this issue’, said Vice-President Tajani, who has made road safety one of his priorities for action.

The conference in Paris on road safety in urban areas covers three main issues: the needs of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and users of two-wheeled vehicles; designing cities to improve road safety; improving the behaviour of individuals to develop a culture of preventing accidents.

The event is designed to promote the improvement of road safety in cities by means of dialogue between all road users in urban areas, and between users and policy-makers. On the fringes of the discussions, some forty exhibitors will be presenting the main European initiatives and advances made to improve road safety.

Like last year, some Member States are also organising national events linked to the central event in Paris. Information about these activities can be found on the European Road Safety Day's official website, which is here.

The first European Road Safety Day focused on young drivers. The symposium in Brussels provided young people with a space in which to share their experience and to call on the institutions and the traditional road safety groups to improve road safety in Europe.