New EU vehicle safety standards essential to reducing child road deaths

26 February 2018

A new report published by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), shows that more than 8,000 children aged 0-14 years have been killed in road traffic collisions over the last ten years in the European Union. Half of the children killed were travelling in cars, a third were walking and 13% were cycling.

The European Commission is expected to announce a long-overdue update of vehicle safety regulations on the 2nd May 2018, almost a decade since the last update. The EU is also currently preparing a road safety strategy for the next ten years.

ETSC says that measures that can reduce speeding are critical to preventing the deaths of more children and is calling for the EU to require vehicle safety technologies such as Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) and Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) that can detect pedestrians and cyclists to be fitted as standard on all new cars.

Antonio Avenoso, Executive Director of ETSC said:

“Smart, cost-effective and proven vehicle safety technologies such as Automated Emergency Braking and Intelligent Speed Assistance could be as important for saving kids lives as the seatbelt. But the real change will only come when, just like with seatbelts, these technologies are fitted on every car as standard, not as an optional extra on a select few.''

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