Spain

Road Safety Vision, Plans, and Targets

Road safety programmes in Spain are developed and decided on an annual basis. The programmes do not give specific targets or time frames. Most road safety measures are defined fairly generally, but some initiatives more concrete.

Apart from the annual Spanish national road safety programme, the various autonomous regions have their own regional road safety programmes. For instance the Catalan road safety programme, approved by the Catalan government on 5 March 2002, is several years long (2002-2004) and has a numerical target: to reduce the number of fatalities and serious injuries by 15% over three years (base year 2000).

Road Safety Priorities

For 2001, the road safety programme identifies the following priorities.

• Education and training
• Enforcement
• Infrastructure
  - Installation of traffic management systems with monitoring equipment for traffic and weather data
  - Vehicle fleet renewal schemes
• Penalties
• Research
  - Stimulation of road safety research in universities and other research organisations
  - Crash investigations with priorities for bus and coach crashes, wrong-way driver accidents, and inattention and fatigue

Road Safety Management Organisation

Safety co-ordination is in the hands of the National Traffic and Highway Safety Council. This council involves 50 members and is chaired by the Minister of the Interior. The Traffic General Directorate (Dirección General de Tráfico) is responsible for the development of road safety programmes for road users and vehicles, while the Highway General Directorate is responsible for infrastructure. Funding is primarily from the national, regional, and local budgets and each administration decides the level of funding for the programmes for which it is responsible. Spain has recently become a member of the European Enhanced Vehicle safety research Committee (EEVC), setting passive safety vehicle standards. The Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) is EuroNCAP partner.

Links

• Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure (Ministerio de Fomento): http://www.mfom.es/ (Spanish only).
• Directorate General for Traffic (Dirección General de Tráfico): http://www.dgt.es
• Road Research Centre (Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas, CEDEX): http://www.cedex.es
• Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya): http://www.gencat.es
• Catalan road safety programme: http://www.gencat.es/transit/pdf/pcsv0204_eng.pdf
• Basque traffic administration (Dirección de Tráfico): http://www.trafico.euskadi.net
• Basque road safety activities: http://www.trafico.euskadi.net/

ITS Españna (http://www.itsspain.com/) is a Spanish organisation of industries and authorities working on developing ITS activities in Spain.