70 People Still Die Every Day on Europe’s Roads

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]espite significant progress in preventing road casualties in recent decades, there are still on average around 70 deaths and several hundred serious injuries every day on Europe’s roads.

The concept of a ‘European Day Without A Road Death’ was devised, with the goal of reaching as many road users as possible and encouraging them to spare a thought for road safety. A date of Wednesday 21 September was chosen, and Road safety and breakdown recovery provider, GEM Motoring Assist will be supporting efforts by police officers, road safety professionals – as well as all road users – to make it a day without road death.

Neil Worth, GEM Motoring Assist road safety officer, comments: “Achieving zero fatalities on 21 September is unfortunately not a likely prospect, but our goal is to make as many people as possible aware of the risks they face – and the risks they may pose to others – when they are driving and riding on the roads, or as pedestrians when they are crossing from one side to another.

“We are proud to be supporting TISPOL in this initiative. We firmly believe that if each road user can make small changes to reduce risk, then together we can make some big improvements – and reduce the number of people who die or are seriouly injured on Europe’s roads.”

The GEM Motoring Assist Road Safety Charity has provided financial support to the European Traffic Police Network (TISPOL), the organisation co-ordinating Project EDWARD activity across Europe. The donation has been used for the production of 10 awareness-raising videos, which are being shared across social media in the days leading up to Project EDWARD. Each video, lasting less than 30 seconds, takes as its focus a key aspect of road safety – and offers road users a great opportunity to reflect on how they can be safer in what they do.

The videos are available as follows. They can be downloaded and shared freely.

Neil Worth concludes: “More than 96,000 people have pledged their support for Project EDWARD online via a pledge page on the TISPOL website (www.tispol.org/edward). We invite every road user to support Project EDWARD and take a moment to sign the pledge.”