In 2010, the European Union renewed its commitment to improve road safety by setting a target of reducing road deaths by 50% by 2020. However, since 2014, progress has virtually ground to a halt.

This is of great concern to Brake the road safety charity. “We are calling on the European Commission to introduce new vehicle safety standards,” said Jason Wakeford, spokesman for Brake, “including mandating Intelligent Speed Adaptation - helping drivers stay within speed limits.”

The executive summary of the report commented that the political will to improve on this poor progress is important. It highlighted that the lack of it at EU member state level has contributed to a decline in levels of police enforcement, a failure to invest in safer infrastructure and limited action on tackling speed and drink driving in a number of countries.

The UK is one of the EU countries making the “slowest progress” towards targets to reduce road deaths, according to a new report from the European Transport Safety Council. As Wakeford points out: “Reductions in the numbers killed on UK roads have stagnated in recent years. Road deaths fell by just 1.4% between 2010 and 2016 - way short of the EU target.” All other EU countries, with the exception of Lithuania, Malta and Sweden, have made better progress than the UK.

“It’s a disgrace that there are currently no UK targets for reducing the number of road deaths,” continued Wakeford. “We are calling for a UK target to be set as a priority for the Government.”

Alongside extra police resources for traffic enforcement, one of the suggestions from Brake is a Road Collision Investigation Branch, to help better understand road crashes. The lessons learnt from such an agency would help prevent future deaths.

EU transport ministers recently urged the European Commission to come forward with a serious injury reduction target to cover the period 2020-2030. As the report said: “It is now critical that the European Commission bring forward the above initiatives and a long-term road safety strategy for 2030 within the coming months.” Brake would certainly agree.