Skip to main content

EU policymakers must facilitate automated motoring, say European Motoring Clubs

The Eurocouncil of the Federation Nationale de l’Automobile (FIA) claims that EU policymakers must take responsibility for facilitating the deployment of automated motoring. Made up of 73 FIA Automobile Clubs in Europe and with 37 million members, the Eurocouncil believes in the potential for automation to improve road safety, and urges EU institutions to streamline the deployment of this technology. The declaration was adopted at the annual FIA Region I Spring Meeting, taking place in Gammarth, Tunisia fro
May 7, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
The Eurocouncil of the Federation Nationale de l’Automobile (FIA) claims that EU policymakers must take responsibility for facilitating the deployment of automated motoring. Made up of 73 FIA Automobile Clubs in Europe and with 37 million members, the Eurocouncil believes in the potential for automation to improve road safety, and urges EU institutions to streamline the deployment of this technology. The declaration was adopted at the annual FIA Region I Spring Meeting, taking place in Gammarth, Tunisia from 5-8 May 2015.

FIA Region 1 president, Thierry Willemarck, said: “This is the moment when automation is poised to dramatically improve road safety. Policymakers need to create the best legislative environment as this technology becomes a reality. Users must be at the heart of this deployment as well. They need to be informed and ready to adopt this next evolution in mobility.”

The Eurocouncil declaration demands that a concerted effort is made by EU policymakers to create a path to automated motoring, especially by considering the specific driver education and training needs in the revision of the European Driving Licence Directive, seeking international harmonisation of road signs and markings necessary for automated road traffic and enabling wide accessibility to road infrastructure and traffic data needed for automated operation within the provisions of the European ITS Directive and implementation.

They must also direct infrastructure-related investment of the TEN-T programme and Connecting Europe Facility to prepare road and roadside infrastructure for automation, support the development of vehicle design standards that promote driver supervised automation, in particular to safeguard driver vigilance and supp[ort an adapted legal framework, taking into account changing liability rules.

Related Content

  • Cities get road priorities right
    March 22, 2022
    Cities including Paris, Milan and London have all announced serious expansions to their bicycling infrastructure over the last few years. The era of active travel is here, finds Alan Dron
  • Debating the future development of ANPR
    July 31, 2012
    What future is there for automatic number plate recognition? Will it be supplanted by electronic vehicle identification, or will continuing development maintain the technology's relevance? In recent years, digitisation and IP-based communication networks have allowed Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to achieve ever-greater utility and a commensurate increase in deployments. But where does the technology go next - indeed, does it have a future in the face of the increasing use of, for instance, Dedi
  • EU to fund pan-European EV infrastructure demo project
    April 17, 2012
    An innovative project to demonstrate what a pan-European infrastructure and service provision for electric vehicles could look like will receive almost €5 million (US$7.1 million) in EU co-funding from the TEN-T budget. The project, which was presented under the 2010 TEN-T Annual Call, constitutes an essential first step towards a possible viable deployment of open-access infrastructure for electric vehicles across the EU over the next ten years.
  • Deadlines approach for Europe’s automatic crash alert system
    September 15, 2016
    The EU-co-funded I_ HeERO (Infrastructure_ Harmonised eCall European Pilot) project is working to ensure the readiness of national networks of call centres - known as public safety answering posts (PSAPs) - to deal with automated crash alerts arriving via the continent-wide 112 emergency phone number. Following on from its HeERO and HeERO2 pre-deployment predecessors, which enjoyed €16m (US$17.76m) in EU funding, the new initiative runs from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017. It has €30.9 million (US$34.