eurealist.co.uk

I was struck by a piece on BBC news last night about road safety and new car design, not that this is anything unusual in itself, but the BBC were quoting European figures for road deaths rather than British figures. This seemed to be a bit odd and a new departure for the BBC, but then as transport is now an EU competence not all that surprising.
It seems that a Transport Research Laboratory study concluded that 1,700 fatalities and 42,000 serious injuries to pedestrians and cyclists could be prevented across Europe each year if manufacturers produced cars meeting design requirements of car fronts scheduled to become mandatory in 2010. The BBC did not mention the British share in this projected figure which would be 255 dead and 6,300 seriously injured. If of course the projected figure has any basis in fact and is not just plucked out of thin air.
The Telegraph point out that a health campaign group, Headway, said road accidents were a major contributor to brain injuries which left 11,000 Britons a year needing permanent care, obviously Headway are not talking about the same set of statistics.
The Transport Research Laboratory the BBC were quoting the EU backed Euro NCAP which provides motoring consumers with a realistic and independent assessment of the safety performance of some of the most popular cars sold in Europe. Established in 1997 and now backed by five European Governments, the European Commission and motoring and consumer organisations in every EU country, Euro NCAP has rapidly become a catalyst for encouraging significant safety improvements to new car design.
I would be much happier if the EU were not involved with producing figures from agencies financially supported by them, which just happen to confirm, that what they are already going to do is the right thing, it has about it something of propaganda.
The EU transport policy now under the control of the recently cleared Jacques Barrot, the Commission wants every effort to be made to halve the number of road deaths by 2010. A laudable endeavour no doubt, but when we look at the white paper “for 2010 : time to decide “we realise that it encompasses much more than the redesign of car fronts. The proposal are for appropriate signposting of blackspots, combating excessively
long driving times, harmonising road transport penalties at European level, the
protection of vehicle occupants in the event of impact, harmonising taxes on diesel for professional use, Satellite radionavigation The Commission is proposing that the Galileo system should be operational in 2008.

So on the back of a reasonable policy and a laudable endeavour to save lives we can see that the Commision is also making moves to harmonise taxes, harmonise law, harmonise policing practices and also to promote the Galileo satellite system which will eventually be used as a military resource and cause problems with the USA which has threatened to knock it down if it becomes a treat to their security, and as China is also involved in the system it could well do so.