Select Committee on European Scrutiny Forty-Second Report


7 Road safety

(27904)

13874/06

COM(06) 569

+ ADDs 1 & 2

Draft Directive on road infrastructure safety management

Legal baseArticle 71 EC; co-decision; QMV
Document originated5 October 2006
Deposited in Parliament16 October 2006
DepartmentTransport
Basis of considerationEM of 31 October 2006
Previous Committee ReportNone
To be discussed in CouncilPossibly December 2006
Committee's assessmentPolitically important
Committee's decisionNot cleared, further information requested

Background

7.1 In the 2001 White Paper on Transport Policy and its 2003 Communication on a road safety action programme[19] the Commission foreshadowed an initiative on road infrastructure safety.

The document

7.2 The Commission intends this draft Directive to complement legislation on driver and vehicle safety by introducing a comprehensive system of road infrastructure safety management. It asserts that lives could be saved and accidents avoided if road infrastructure and design was managed according to the latest best practice of safety engineering. To achieve this the proposed Directive would introduce procedures for road safety impact assessments, road safety audits, management of high-risk road sections and network safety management and safety inspections. These would apply to roads in the trans-European road network (TERN), itself part of the transport Trans-European Network, but not to tunnels, which are already covered by an earlier Directive, 2004/54/EC.

7.3 The draft Directive would provide for:

  • procedures for assessing the likely safety effects of a road project, and alternative designs, before a decision is taken to construct it;
  • procedures to be implemented to expose individual safety problems that have not been foreseen by road designers to ensure that problems are rectified;
  • require road authorities to identify and manage both high risk road sections and sections with the greatest accident cost reduction potential and to warn motorists of high risk sections;
  • procedures for recurrent, routine road inspections and inspection of roadworks;
  • requirements for data collection for individual accidents; and
  • implementation including a requirement for Member States to report their implementation plans, a duty on road authorities to adopt training curricula for road safety auditors and safety inspectors and procedures for reporting on the measures five years after implementation and every four years thereafter.

The Government's view

7.4 The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Dr Stephen Ladyman) first tells us that nearly all the UK roads which would be affected by this proposal are under the control of government agencies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (although the position in Northern Ireland may change) and only very short lengths of the TERN are under the control of local authorities.

7.5 The Minister then comments that the Government recognises that the draft Directive would support action to improve road safety across the Community. But it has concerns that fully implementing the proposal in Member States with mature road safety management procedures may have cost implications that may not necessarily lead to a positive contribution to road safety. It thinks many of the specific requirements would appear to be targeted at Member States with less mature procedures.

7.6 More specific points the Minister makes are:

  • current requirements in the UK for national roads, new roads and improvements, already meet the general requirement to make an assessment of safety impacts. Safety impact is assessed through comprehensive appraisal methodologies that take safety and other factors into account. Cost benefit analysis is also undertaken. A report only on road safety impacts would require a significant change to the current processes and it is unclear what the benefits may be of isolating safety from other project goals;
  • road safety audit procedure to expose individual safety problems that have not been foreseen by road designers is well established in the UK, which is seen as a world leader in road safety audit. There is a national standard that was updated in 2003;
  • in relation to requirements to identify sections of the TERN that are deemed to be high risk and sections with high potential for reducing casualties and to target interventions at those sections, current UK practice is in line with the broad description of those requirements; and
  • in relation to the requirement for warnings, possibly including signposting, to warn road users about high-risk sites or routes, the Government does not support black spot warning signs for several reasons, which include the difficulty of defining a black spot and that a sign on its own would convey no useful message to drivers. Without firm prior evidence, including robust cost-benefit ratios, that costs of sign erection are justified the Government does not support the measures.

7.7 In the light of these points the Minister concludes that the Government thinks it may be preferable to reduce the length and detail of the draft Directive by setting only strategic objectives, such as a requirement to produce national plans to address infrastructure safety. This would allow some of the more detailed concepts to be included in accompanying guidance notes, permitting national interpretation and implementation, whilst ensuring the Commission has sufficient powers to intervene more strongly in those Member States where road safety management is weak.

7.8 Turning to the financial aspects of the proposal the Minister tells us that:

  • the Commission's impact assessment examines the economic, administrative and environmental and other impacts of three policy options — no change, requiring Member States to adopt guidelines and imposing harmonised legislation for common infrastructure management, and concludes that the second option is the best;
  • given the degree of clarification of the proposal needed it is difficult yet to fully estimate the time and cost implications. Many of the costs associated with the proposal are already incurred in the normal course of safety management in the UK. But, dependant on the interpretation of the requirements for road safety inspections, there is potential for additional costs in the order of €3-5 million (£2.01-3.34 million) annually;
  • if implemented in accordance with an extreme interpretation, the draft Directive would have implications of additional bureaucracy and, in some cases, a consequence of inefficient allocation of safety resources; and
  • the Commission says that it is estimated that the draft Directive would reduce the number dying on the TERN by more than 600 annually and injury accidents by about 7,000 annually, with welfare benefits of more than € 2.4 billion (£1.50 billion) annually.

7.9 The Minister also comments on subsidiarity, noting that the Commission claims that ensuring a common high level of safety of roads in all Member States cannot be sufficiently achieved by them. He tells us that:

  • for its part the Government accepts the principle of involvement of the Community in certain matters affecting Trans-European Networks, especially to improve the road safety situations in countries where road infrastructure safety management is weak;
  • the Community has not previously legislated in the area of road infrastructure safety;
  • as far as it concerns the UK, for some of the purposes of the draft Directive action could still be taken effectively at the local level;
  • a substantial amount of detail is yet unclear and until the Government knows exactly how prescriptive the Commission intends the proposal to be, it cannot make a final assessment of the issue of subsidiarity; but
  • it will be a Government objective in negotiation to ensure that practices and procedures that are working well in the UK are not undermined by external burdens.

7.10 Finally the Minister says that the Government has not yet formally consulted interested parties, but it will be engaging in discussions which will inform negotiations on the draft Directive.

Conclusion

7.11 This draft Directive clearly may have some utility. However, there are, as the Minister highlights, some concerns. But we are unable to say at this stage whether there are issues which we particularly wish to draw to the attention of the House. Before considering the matter further we wish to hear from the Minister in due course as to what extent negotiations have:

  • moved the proposal towards a Directive based on strategic objectives and accompanying guidance notes;
  • clarified whether, if there has not been much such movement, the Commission is planning a highly prescriptive approach; and
  • clarified the subsidiarity issue.

7.12 We note that the Minister has not yet conducted consultations on this proposal. But we should like also to hear about any views expressed by UK interested parties and to see in due course a Regulatory Impact Assessment.

7.13 Meanwhile we do not clear the document.


19   (22660) 11932/01 (22776) 12597/01; see HC 152-xv (2001-02), para 2 (30 January 2002) and Stg Co Deb, European Standing Committee A, 13 March 2002, cols. 3-28 and (24592) 9713/03; see HC 63-xxviii (2002-03), para 11 (2 July 2003).

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