France

Road Safety Vision, Plans, and Targets

The REAGIR (Réagir par des enquêtes sur les accidents graves et par des initiatives pour y remédier) programme was set up in 1983-84, after the decentralisation laws in France (1981-82) to promote mobilisation for road crash prevention. It was created by an interdisciplinary team and through both crash investigation and local government programmes, local stakeholders are involved in road safety.

The IDSR (Inspecteurs Départementaux de Sécurité Routière) comprises around 3000 persons, including civil engineers, police (gendarmes), emergency physicians, automobile engineers, local associations and elected officials. Through this programme, health professionals, for example, are involved in accident prevention and urgent problems have been highlighted and local improvements carried out.

In 1997, the French government set up an interministerial committee on road safety (Comité Interministeriel de Securité Routière, CSIR). The objective of this committee is to improve road safety by proposing concrete targets and road safety measures. The compilation of these proposals constitutes the French national road safety plan, which can be characterised as very concrete in terms of measures, but often hazy in terms of meeting the deadlines for implementation. The 2002 target was set back in 1997: to reduce the number of fatalities by 50%. France does not have road safety plans at the regional level, except contracts between the state and the regions for national and regional roads. Departmental road safety plans are based on diagnosis of a three-year period.

Road Safety Priorities

The priorities identified in 2000 were the following:

• Improved constraints
• Establishment of an independent national road safety council (2001) with its own budget.
• Monthly publication of road accident statistics
• Increased budget for road safety, including research
• Nation-wide road safety publicity campaigns on specific subjects (e.g. phoning while driving)
• Education and training
• Enforcement
• Road infrastructure
• Testing road safety audits for new roads
• Providing real-time traffic information for all TEN roads in France by 2010
• Fitting of adaptive speed limiters in all French governmental vehicles, including evaluation of the effects

Road Safety Management Organisation

There is a general indication of the allocation of responsibilities for the implementation and evaluation of road safety plans to the French Prime Minister, the Ministry of Transport, and the interministerial road safety committee. Howver, quite often the exact allocation is not totally clear. On 25 October 2000, the interministerial committee on road safety decided to set up the National Road Safety Council (Conseil National de la Sécurité Routière, CNSR), delegating three basic missions:

• To propose road safety measures to the government
• To commission studies in order to enhance road safety knowledge
• To carry out evaluations of the various measures

This decision is aimed at transparency, and political credibility of road safety in France. The creation of the national road safety council was effectuated by decree on 28 August 2001. The council consists of members delegated by various governmental and non-governmental organisations. The council or its chairperson can set up expert groups on selected topics.

Links

Ministry of Transport (Ministère d'Equipement, des Transports du Logement du Tourisme et de la Mer, METLTM): http://www.equipement.gouv.fr/

Road Directorate (Direction des Routes), http://www.routes.equipement.gouv.fr/

National road safety council (Conseil National de la Sécurité Routière, CNSR): http://www.securiteroutiere.equipement.gouv.fr/cnsr/index.htm

National transport and safety research institute (Institut National de Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité, INRETS): http://www.inrets.fr/

ITS France http://www.atec-tec.net/fr/its_accueil_f7.asp French organisation of industries and authorities working on developing ITS activities in France.

La Prevention Routiere http://www.preventionroutiere.asso.fr/

French survey from 2004 related to driver behaviour evolution in the last 5 years. The major part of the survey is focussed on speed with a particulary encouraging result on user acceptance of speed-related devices (page 15): 65 % of drivers are interested in having their vehicle equipped with on-board speed information and warning devices.

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