Improving road safety throughout Europe, and in individual countries, will involve considering many, or all, of the issues discussed here. It will be especially important to try and improve driver awareness of the various issues, so that behaviour can be improved, and the numbers of accidents reduced. Two additional measures also need to be considered. The first is the use of new technologies and the second is to harmonise traffic legislation on the European level.
Traffic regulations promoting safety
There are many factors that influence a drivers' behaviour, both individually
and within different countries. One major factor is how traffic laws
are enforced. Here both the actual amount of enforcement and the drivers'
perception of enforcement activity, or fear of being caught and punished,
are important and both these vary considerably between countries.
The SARTRE 3 survey makes it possible to compare how various violations are controlled
by the police in different countries. The survey provides information on:
speeding, seat belt use and driving under the influence of alcohol.
In all of the countries taking part, regulations related to speeding were
most heavily enforced, in terms of the number of drivers being penalised.
Overall, drivers reported that they were twice as likely to encounter speed
enforcement than drink-drive enforcement. In general, drivers sanctioned
for speeding felt that they had been unlucky, and that their behaviour had
not been particularly dangerous, while driving over the legal limit was viewed
as being unacceptable and those detected deserved their punishment. In fact,
there was a very wide support for more enforcement of drink driving and even
strengthening the regulations, with almost half of all drivers thinking that
it should be illegal to consume any alcohol before driving.
