—The VII Road User Anthropology Symposium, organised by the abertis foundation, stressed the importance of education to reduce traffic accident rates, promoting a new road use culture.

—The Chairman of the Spanish parliament’s Road Safety Commission, Jordi Jané, called for a state pact on road safety.

—Salvador Giner, Chairman of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, underlined the need to establish social limits and more detailed legislation.

The VII Road User Anthropology Symposium, organised by the abertis foundation, and held today under the slogan Security and good citizenship: the great challenge for road use, underlined the need for road safety training that boosts awareness of risks on the road and so reduces accident rates. Spain is the third-worst country in the EU –only “beaten” by Portugal and Greece– in terms of accident rates, something that, participants argued, does not fit with the country’s level of socioeconomic development.

The Symposium stressed the need for promoting new initiatives aimed at encouraging a new road use culture based on responsibility and good citizenship through, amongst other tools, dissuasive measures such as the points-based driving licence. Other proposals were also considered, such as reinforcing road safety education during the compulsory stage of schooling or the possibility of setting aside income from traffic fines to improving road safety.

The Chairman of the Spanish parliament’s Road Safety Commission, Jordi Jané, made a call for political consensus on the creation of a state pact on road safety, which should enjoy the participation of all political parties and the support of public administrations.

Also highlighted during this VII Road User Anthropology Symposium was the role of the authorities in reducing accident rates through measures such as the legislative regulation of the use of vehicles or reducing mobility at dangerous points.

Also participating were Josep Olives, Symposium Director and Chairman of the Catalan Road User Anthropology Society, Josep Pérez Moya, Director of the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Catalan Traffic Service, and Josep Lluís Giménez, Director-General of acesa and aucat.

The Road User Anthropology Symposium, which has been organised since 2001 by the abertis foundation in collaboration with the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC, the International University of Catalonia), is one of the activities of the Foundation’s Road Safety Programme. This programme is structured into four main areas: road safety education in schools (in which 66,190 school students aged between 8 and 12 have participated over the last two school years); research studies; promotional activities (with books and other materials); and technical events such as the Road User Anthropology Symposium, held for the seventh time this year. 

Conclusions of the VII Road User Anthropology Symposium

“Safety and good citizenship: the great challenge for road use”

 Barcelona, 9 November 2007

1. Underlying the serious problem currently caused by traffic on the public highways, the matter of the social limits of growth should be considered.[1] External limitations should be imposed wherever individual ambition finds no limits. Here, as in other spheres of contemporary life, the concept of “sustainability” must be applied. Otherwise, we will cause the destruction of nature and anomie.

2. There is a need to establish proper social control by the authorities, regulating by legislation vehicle use, inhibiting traffic or mobility where required, improving penalties and broadening the application of physical dissuasive measures. The points-based driving license has been a good measure that we must improve. In any case, neither public education nor campaigns encouraging good conduct are enough; the rhetoric of persuasion is poor: there is a requirement for boosting direct control of public spaces.

3. The new reform of the criminal code is significant: it emphasises the importance of community work as an alternative to prison time. Account should be taken of the Portuguese experience, with its new on-the-spot fine system.

4. None of this reduces the importance of education in encouraging a new road use culture (awareness of risk, responsibility, good citizenship, etc.), which is in theory desired by the majority. There is a need for road safety education as part of the compulsory school syllabus.

5. Also necessary is greater media involvement, but the message must be improved, e.g. by presenting accidents more qualitatively, and not so much in terms of figures, showing specific cases to show how the poorly-labelled “accidents” actually occur.
6. Also still important is improving infrastructure and traffic by the public authorities. All levels of government must be involved in this. Income from traffic fines could be set aside to improving road safety.

7. There is an urgent need for the greater involvement all civic levels in road use, the cutting of accident rates and improving traffic conditions and elements on roads and highways. Given the great dispersion of powers in this area, all political forces should commit to a State pact on road safety, which could take the form of a list of “ten commandments”.

8. We should also seriously ask ourselves about our continuingly high accident rate within the context of the European Union (in which we are only outstripped by Portugal and Greece): this does not fit with the cultural and economic development achieved in recent decades. Research into this point is necessary, as is the implementation of the required measures.

[1] This means exponential growth of the per-person cost of transport, mobility and wheeled traffic.