Citation

Pihlak I. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2005; 13: 9p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare and analyze the road safety situation and traffic behavior of road users in the Baltic Sea region. EU enlargement took place at 2004 with ten new members, there are also four new countries directly connected to the Baltic Sea- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Two old and two new members of EU have been selected to compare the road safety situation. Finland and Sweden are the old members of EU and having high motorization with very good road safety level characteristics. Estonia and Poland are the new member states of the European Union (EU) having a medium motorization level but relatively poor road safety indicators. After 1991 the motorization level has been raised rapidly in Estonia (from 211 to 387 per 1000 inhabitants) and Poland (from 192 to 359) when moderately highly motorized countries, like Finland (from 441 to 505) and Sweden (from 456 to 542). The differences in road safety situation between the old and new EU members are moderate (2 to 3 times) in population-based safety but high in vehicle based (3 to 4 times) and travel based (3 times) fatality rates. All the selected countries are highly urbanized. The share of urban fatalities in Poland is remarkably higher, probably because of speed limit of 60 kph in urban areas, when all other selected countries have introduced the speed limit of 50 kph. The differences in fatality rates by road user groups between the selected countries are low in the group of motor cyclists, medium in cyclists, motor vehicle drivers and passenger groups, but extremely high in the pedestrian group. Drinking and driving accidents are common in all selected countries. In Estonia, Poland and Sweden BAC level 0,2 per mill and in Finland 0,5 per mill level is introduced. In spite of this drinking and driving is still remained to be a very serious problem. In Estonia and Finland it is playing a part in almost 20 to 25% of fatal accidents. The results presented above indicate remarkable differences between old and new EU countries in road safety situation. Estonian Road Administration has set up targets for improvement of safety on roads. Estonian National Road Safety Program declares that in 2015 the number of fatalities should be decreased by half or from 200 to 100. According to the target set by the Council of State of Finland in 2001 the aim is to reduce the number of fatalities from 400 to 310 by the year 2005. It seams to be very hard to fill this target.