Finland’s commitment to child road safety seals EU award

Published on 06-09-2024 at 09:28

Finland’s commitment to keeping children safe on the roads has helped it gain a major European award.

Winning the 2024 European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) prize for outstanding progress in road safety highlights the country’s long term targets and its comprehensive strategy for protecting all road users.

It has reduced road deaths by almost a third – 29 per cent – over the past ten years, almost twice the average.

Finland’s National Traffic Safety Strategy 2022–2026 includes a commitment to improving across the board the traffic skills of different road users and different age groups.

Crucially, this strategy includes two indicators aimed at the road safety of children: the proportion of schools that have traffic education as part of their year plan; and the number of collisions involving a child or young person.

Winning this accolade, known as the Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) award, is a major coup for Finland. Its Traffic Safety Strategy is guided by Vision Zero, a plan that by 2050, no one should die or be seriously injured on the road, regardless of the mode of transport.

‘Ambitious targets’

Antonio Avenoso, Executive Director of the ETSC, said: “In Finland, they say ‘vahinko ei tule kello kaulassa’ which roughly translates as ‘accidents don’t come with a bell around their necks’. That may explain why the Finnish take such a comprehensive and strategic approach that seeks to cover many different aspects of road danger.

“The effort doesn’t end when crashes happen either; Finland is the only country in Europe that does an in-depth investigation of every single fatal collision. We congratulate Finland on their progress over the last ten years, and hope they will be inspired to redouble their efforts to reach their ambitious targets for the future.”

The ETSC says there were 20,418 deaths on EU roads last year, a fall of only one per cent on 2022, and this it says ‘falls far short’ of the 6.1 per cent annual reduction needed to achieve the EU target of a 50 per cent reduction by 2030.

Among the goals of the ETSC is the establishment of an EU road safety agency, with specific powers such as managing the roll-out of automated vehicles, and carrying out crash investigations. While the other main transport modes in Europe (aviation, maritime and rail) have dedicated EU agencies responsible for safety, there is no such agency for road transport.

It also wants the European Commission to start work on a new revision of vehicle safety regulations to account for rapidly advancing safety technologies and to push ahead with reforms to periodic technical inspections of vehicles to ensure these technologies are maintained over a vehicle’s lifetime.

Antenio Avenoso added:“Road safety needs to be a priority once again. 100,000 people died on EU roads over the last five years, and 100,000 more will die over the next five if nothing changes. The newly elected MEPs and appointed Commissioners must hit the ground running.”