|
Citation
|
Grzebieta R, Czapski R, Burlacu FA, Sakashita C, Soames Job RF, Burlacu A. J. Road Safety 2020; 31(3): 85-97. |
|
Abstract
|
Key Findings
•Romania's road fatality rate per capita is the worst in the EU and third worst compared to 35 OECD countries.
• Ineffective leadership and lack of commitment to strong actions to reduce Romania's road fatalities were observed at various levels of government in the first half of the Decade of Action for Road Safety.
• Main causal factors are inadequate financial commitment, poor road safety education and knowledge among practitioners, high speed limits, weak speed enforcement and unforgiving road infrastructure, combined with risky/ aggressive driving behavior.
• From 2016-2020 valuable actions were undertaken, adopting key recommendations of the road safety management capacity review undertaken in 2015/16.
• Well financed structured programs implementing Safe System road infrastructure, a centralised road safety regulator, lower speed limits, and stronger speed enforcement will be needed to further reduce fatalities.
This article outlines a capacity review of Romania's national road infrastructure and road safety in general. Romania's road fatality rate per 100,000 population has improved overall from a 2008 high of around 15 to the current 2019 value of 9.6. However, the rate has flat-lined with no real improvement for the last decade, stalling at around 9.7 over the period 2011- 2019 and around double the EU rate. Moreover, Romania's total annual number of road deaths has remained at an average of around 1900 fatalities per annum over this period. Romania has been the worst performing country in the European Union (EU) in recent years, and one of the worst performing countries compared to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations in terms of road safety. The review performed in 2016 found inadequate political leadership and commitment to effective actions to reduce road fatalities, fragmented government road safety activities across a number of regulatory entities, speed limits set at levels that exceed internationally accepted survivable limits, weak traffic law enforcement including a lack of speed enforcement cameras resulting in a failure of drivers to comply with speed limits, and a lack of structured programs to implement human error tolerant road infrastructure constructed according to Safe System principles. A series of recommendations from the capacity review were adopted (as described here) since 2016, although much remains to improve road safety in Romania.
Keywords Romania, Road Safety Review, Safer Road Infrastructure, Safer Speeds, Enforcement, LMIC
Language: en |