European countries lower their road accident rates

Two papers have been published by researchers from the Universities of Seville, Barcelona and Castilla-La-Mancha, investigating whether a country's membership of the European Union (EU) can save the lives of its citizens. The conclusion is that countries that join the EU reduce the level of accidents on their roads.

According to the results of the first paper, Could being in the European Union save lives?, published in the Journal of European Public Policy, European countries, including Spain, after joining the European Union experience a significant reduction in the accident rate. In part, explains Professor José Ignacio Castillo, “as a consequence of being able to benefit from the impulse received by the European institutions and from a transnationalization or imitation effect of policies and good practices from countries with lower accident rates to those with less experience in the fight against this scourge”.

According to the results of her second paper,The trend towards convergence in road accident fatality rates, published in Transport Policy and financed by the Directorate General of Traffic, DGT, this process of Europeanization goes beyond reducing accident rates in the countries that join the European Union, since we can speak of true convergence in accident rates between member countries. In this case, the researcher Mercedes Castro points out that “the European Union has brought countries with high accident rates on the road, before joining it, closer to countries such as Holland, the United Kingdom or Sweden, which are world leaders in this field”. Despite the fact that, as the researchers verify, the former were often far from the latter not only geographically, but also politically, economically and culturally.

SPAIN IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

In 2014, Spain has reduced its figures of deaths in traffic accidents, ranking fifth in the world of countries with the best road safety, with 36 deaths per million inhabitants only behind Sweden (28), United Kingdom (29), Denmark (32) and the Netherlands (34) compared to 52 on average in the European Union.