[NEWS]

ACEM and POLIS partner up on urban road safety project

ACEM joined the POLIS network supporting a Urban Road Safety Project that will investigate accidents in cities. The data gathered will be then disseminated and will serve as a database on safety in European cities.

The signing ceremony took place yesterday, 17 December, in Brussels. ACEM Secretary General Jacques Compagne and Jean-Luc Moudenc Polis President and Mayor of Toulouse.

Representatives of 67 European cities and regions are members of the Polis network supporting innovation in local transport. Within the safety agenda POLIS identified the need to take a strong initiative on road safety, with three objectives: integrate the urban dimension into European road safety initiatives, develop scientific benchmarking for urban road safety and to create an urban road safety database.

POLIS will work closely with the European Road Safety Observatory and with national and regional administrations, harnessing current initiatives of different countries. The activity will include sharing of best practices as well as pooling resources for the exchange of information and communication on the issue, progressively including an increasing number of cities from Europe, the Mediterranean region and beyond.

ACEM’s support for the EURSP project is owed to the fact that figures related to accidents in urban areas where PTW are involved are still insufficient to give a clear picture of the causes and the possible solutions.

Users choose PTW in cities and towns to beat congestion and parking problems making the use in urban areas prevalent compared to elsewhere. This is why a special focus has to be dedicated to an assessment of accidents in cities.

While considerable progress has been made concerning the benchmarking of road safety at national level, no exercise of the same scale and depth exists at the urban level. This is why extending the benchmarking work to examine urban road safety performance, with the aim to consolidate work already started by some cities on Powered Two-Wheelers urban accidents is crucial.

The European Urban Road Safety Platform will furthermore consolidate the database on Powered Two-Wheelers urban accidents already started by Barcelona, London, Paris and Madrid. More cities and local authorities will be joining the project. Genoa, Wales, Transport for London, South  Gloucestershire, Lille, Birmingham and West Midlands, Prague, Tallinn, Trondheim, Rotterdam, West Sussex, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Bologna, Goteborg, Stockholm,  Cologne, Toulouse, Dublin will have their statistics published initially, soon followed by others.

Jacques Compagne, ACEM Secretary: “PTWs are a popular means of transport in European cities. Accidents involving PTWs are proportionately more frequent in urban areas than elsewhere. If we are to implement more effective safety policies in cities,  we must focus on those areas with dedicated tools and authoritative partners. The POLIS network will make it possible first to gather those datas and then to devise the best strategy to curb accidents”.