Road safety and road safety education

Recommendation 644 (1971)

Author(s):

Parliamentary Assembly

Origin

See Doc. 2971, report of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development. Text adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf of the Assembly, on 8 July 1971.

The Assembly,

1. Greatly perturbed by the steadily increasing number of road casualties in Europe which are now in excess of some 80,000 persons killed and 2,000,000 injured each year ;

2. Convinced that the continuing explosive increase in the number of vehicles on Europe's roads will lead to an aggravation of these casualty figures unless measures contributing to road safety are pursued even more vigorously than hitherto ;

3. Convinced of the vital importance in the longer term of a comprehensive, vigorous, and continuous programme of road safety education starting at school level and being pursued throughout the individual's life from his school years to his old age ; deploring the lukewarm support, and in some cases actual obstruction, manifested in the past by certain educational interests to the implementation of Resolution (64) 12 of the Committee of Ministers which called for the inclusion of systematic instruction on road safety in school curricula ; and persuaded that road safety should be taught as a specific subject at least in secondary schools ;

4. Having regard to the importance of the 2nd Joint Conference on Road Safety Education in Schools organised by the Council of Europe and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport ;

5. Believing that the sharp increase in the volume of motor traffic crossing national frontiers in Europe necessitates the establishment of a common Europe-wide approach with regard to traffic rules and road signs ; and further believing that a Europe-wide approach to road safety education would be greatly facilitated by the adoption of a common "Model" (loi-type) Highway Code,

6. Recommends that the Committee of Ministers invite member governments :

a to give urgent attention to the need to greatly develop road safety education, and in particular :

to review, in the light of the report of the 2nd Joint Council of Europe - European Conference of Ministers of Transport Conference on Road Safety Education in Schools, the practical effects so far given by their educational authorities to Resolution (64) 12 of the Committee of Ministers calling for the inclusion of systematic instruction on road safety in school curricula ; and

to examine what further steps can be taken to develop post-schooling education in road safety ;

b to sign, and ratify at the earliest possible moment, the draft European Agreements supplementing the Vienna Conventions of 1968 on Road Signs and Signals and on Road Traffic Rules opened for signature by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe ;

c to invite the European Conference of Ministers of Transport to exercise a full co-ordinating role so far as international work on different aspects of road safety in Western Europe is concerned.