June 23, 2008

Road infrastructure Safety Directive

A new directive on road infrastructure safety is expected to be adopted soon. On 19 June the European Parliament adopted a report at first reading that reflects a co-decision agreement reached with the Council of Ministers on a series of amendments to reduce the scope of the original Commission proposal. This means that the Member States will be allowed to keep their existing safety management systems where appropriate and consistent with the philosophy of the new directive. A set of safety criteria which had been proposed as binding has now been watered down to “be taken into account” through a series of safety impact assessments, audits and other inspections to take place at every stage of the life cycle of road infrastructure, from design to construction. While the scope of the directive will be limited to roads making up part of the (existing and planned) Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), Member States will be able to apply its good practices to other road infrastructure that was built using Community funding. The most dangerous sections of roads will have to be identified based on a review of the road network every three years while ‘safety auditors’ are to be appointed by Member States to assess infrastructure projects. The Commission will put in place a system for the exchange of best practice between the states. http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l24233.htm

Posted by iroronan at June 23, 2008 04:45 PM