Skip to main content

New FIA Region I policy position on road infrastructure and tunnel safety

FIA Region I has welcomed the European Commission’s plan to revise and merge the road infrastructure safety management directive and the directive on minimum safety requirements for tunnels since many of the problems that road users face today are linked with poor maintenance of road infrastructure. FIA Region I believes that road management authorities should be obliged by the EU and member states to ensure a minimum level of road maintenance. A well-developed and maintained road network enables safe, e
February 17, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
8054 FIA Region I has welcomed the European Commission’s plan to revise and merge the road infrastructure safety management directive and the directive on minimum safety requirements for tunnels since many of the problems that road users face today are linked with poor maintenance of road infrastructure.

FIA Region I believes that road management authorities should be obliged by the EU and member states to ensure a minimum level of road maintenance. A well-developed and maintained road network enables safe, efficient mobility and sustains the European economy and society.

It says that European policies should sustain a first-class road infrastructure and rid Europe of high-risk roads. It believes uniformly safe roads in Europe should guide policies, regardless of borders.

It is calling on the EU to extend the instruments of the RISM Directive to non-TEN-T roads, at least, to all motorways and enable the use of the RISM for all EU funding of infrastructure projects, including regional funds and European Investment Bank loans.

It also calls for the EU to define a quality benchmark for the infrastructure (for instance, an aspiration to a EuroRAP 3-star rating or equivalent throughout the EU28). It also wants to harmonise the quality of the training provided to road safety auditors across Europe and ensure that member states undertake rapid remedial measures to treat black spots and endeavour to ensure a uniform, efficient delivery of information to road users.

The report also calls for an increase in the focus on protection of vulnerable road users in the RISM and to ensure these safeguards are also applied to tunnels. It also requires the matching of the deployment of intelligent active safety systems in vehicles by adopting high quality standards for road markings and traffic signs.

FIA also calls for reinforcing provisions to ensure the safety of road work sites, whilst only reverting to road closures when absolutely necessary and ensuring that non-TEN-T tunnels longer than 500m are also included in a revision of the Directive on minimum safety requirements for tunnels.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Researchers devise snow ploughing algorithm
    September 16, 2014
    Canadian researchers Olivier Quirion-Blais, Martin Trépanier and André Langevin have developed an algorithm to determine the most efficient routes for snow ploughs and gritters. Snow plough routing has always been something of a ‘black art’: to direct a fleet of show plough to clear priority roads without having the same road cleared several times while others are left untreated. Increasingly, GPS is being used to track the routes the clearing vehicles have taken but until now it has not been possible to ta
  • Land of ITS opportunities
    February 2, 2012
    Geographically, Russia, the largest country in the world, is vast. So too are the opportunities for the global ITS community, which is why ITS Russia has been actively promoting the country and the opportunities that abound there. ITS Russia is reaching out around the world. In October, at the 17th ITS World Congress in Busan, South Korea, a cooperative agreement was signed with ITS America to promote and strengthen research, educational, and commercial cooperation in the ITS field among the two association
  • Land of ITS opportunities
    February 6, 2012
    Geographically, Russia, the largest country in the world, is vast. So too are the opportunities for the global ITS community, which is why ITS Russia has been actively promoting the country and the opportunities that abound there
  • 50 European cities commit to Quest for sustainable urban mobility
    March 22, 2012
    Fifty cities in seventeen countries have signed up to join the EU-funded Quest (Quality management tool for Urban Energy efficient Sustainable Transport) project that will improve the quality of urban sustainable transport. Quest’s overall goal is to set up a quality management tool for sustainable urban mobility which can be applicable for all European cities. The focus is to support cities in making progress in urban transport planning because many cities face problems to organise and manage traffic in a