About the Campaign

We all know someone killed or maimed in a brutal road crash. Road crashes bleed away €160 billion a year, equating to 2% of GDP. The cost to each of Europe's nations is typically more than that spent on primary schools or medical doctors.

Europe's roads need a safety overhaul. International research says Europe can do much more on safe road design. The annual toll of 200,000 deaths and serious injuries a year will continue if effective action is not taken on safe road design, particularly on roads outside major towns where two-thirds of European road deaths occur. Concentrated on main national or regional roads, road deaths can be easily targeted.

Serious crashes can drop by more than half when roads are given a safety makeover - for example, safe crossings, crash barriers at the roadside, turning bays at junctions and good hazard markings.

We must be proactive and treat known high risks. We need:

• Safe drivers, safe vehicles and safe roads
• The 'self-explaining' and 'forgiving' roads of top performing countries
• To make road deaths no more acceptable than rail or air crashes.

The European Campaign for Safe Road Design has won overwhelming support from key stakeholders and governments across Europe to commit to a European Safe Road Design Initiative. Europe's motoring clubs are taking poll position in raising awareness and understanding of the how affordable safety improvement programmes can save hundreds of thousands of lives and serious injuries over the next decade by removing the road features that kill and maim.

In the next decade we can save at least 0.5% of European GDP with an affordable, high return programme - saving at least 300 deaths and serious injuries every day.