IRELAND IS set to miss by more than a decade a European Commission target of halving road deaths by 2010, according to a report published in Brussels today.
However, the report also finds that Ireland and Spain achieved the highest reduction in road deaths across 30 countries in 2007, bucking a rising trend across Europe last year.
The report by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) places Ireland in a group of 15 states that will not reach the ambitious target until after 2020. The group includes the UK, Norway, Greece, Malta, and Cyprus, as well as nine eastern European states.
Fifteen other states will reach the target earlier, but only three will do so within the envisaged timeframe, according to the progress report.
France, Portugal and Luxembourg have cut road deaths by 43 per cent, 42 per cent and 38 per cent respectively between 2001 and 2007. France and Luxembourg will reach the EU target this year, while Portugal will do so next year.
Ireland has cut deaths by 18 per cent between 2001 and 2007, placing it 13th on a list of 30 countries comprised of the 27 EU states along with Israel, Norway and Switzerland. However, based on average progress over six years, it will be after 2020 before Ireland reaches the target of cutting road deaths in half.
"It seems that the push for safer roads, which citizens were led to expect with the setting of the 50 per cent target, has lost momentum in the majority of EU states," said Graziella Jost of the ETSC. "All countries must now redouble their efforts if they are not to thwart the progress of others and hold back the union as a whole."
The target to reduce road deaths by 50 per cent by 2010 was first proposed in a European Commission white paper on transport, published on September 12th, 2001. It was formally adopted in 2003.
Despite the bad news for Ireland on progress towards achieving the 2010 target, the Republic recorded the highest reduction in road deaths out of the 30 countries in 2007.
For the first time since 2001, last year saw no reduction in the total number of European road deaths, with some 43,000 people dying on the roads.
However, Ireland bucked the trend and saw a 7 per cent reduction in 2007, equalled only by Spain.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA), which supplies the Irish data used by the ETSC, welcomed the good news for Ireland's progress last year but accused the Brussels-based group of taking a "very simplistic view" on the reaching of the 2010 target.
RSA spokesman Brian Farrell said some countries were starting from a low base and could more easily achieve large percentage reductions. "It would simply be impossible for the likes of UK, Sweden and the Netherlands to cut their road deaths by 50 per cent.
"If you track our progress in Ireland since 2005 there is a realistic chance we will achieve the European target by 2010. We have been making consistent progress since 2005."
