Local road infrastructure safety management in Europe seminar on 22nd November 2011 to feature Pilot4Safety project

MEP Antonio Cancian (Transport Committee of the European Parliament) and the Italian Association of Road Safety Professionals (AIPSS) are holding a seminar called "Local road infrastructure safety management in Europe: moving towards a harmonised approach" at the European Parliament in Brussels (Rue Wiertz 60 - Room 6Q1) on Tuesday 22nd November from 6.30 – 8.30 p.m.

The European Parliament and the European Council issued the 2008/96/CE Directive on road infrastructure safety management, foreseeing safety checks, training and certification of road safety auditors. Due to EU rules, the Directive is mandatory only in the TEN-T road network (i.e. the major European highways), while the highest number of fatalities occurs on local and regional roads.

Pilot4Safety (http://pilot4safety.fehrl.org) is trying to overcome this “barrier” by using part of the Directive as a template for safety application on regional roads. Following a specific training in Brussels for local road safety experts, based on a common course, an international agreement has been made between five European regions (in Italy, Greece, Spain, Denmark and Czech Republic) which allows the experts to perform road safety operations in their territories.

At the same time, another European research project called Safer BraIn (http://www.saferbrain.eu) is outlining the problems related to the transferability of best practices, taking into account cultural differences and other local factors.

Member States were given until December 2010 to bring into force laws and regulations necessary to comply with the 2008/96/CE Directive. An example will be given about the Italian Law 35/11 for the transposition of the Directive, which foresees the extension of the Directive to national roads by 2016 and to the entire Italian road network by 2020 under the supervision of the regions.

The aim of the seminar is to inform the Transport Committee of the European Parliament about the status of implementation of the Directive across Europe, increase public awareness on the ongoing efforts and enlarge the group of the European regions and stakeholders for future common initiatives. Click on the invitation and agenda below for more details.