19. Our Future

Road safety research has been a priority in Europe during the last decade. Especially after the publication of the White Paper on Transport in 2001 (European Communities, 2001, White Paper, “European transport policy for 2010: time to decide”) and its mid-term review in 2006, there where specific targets put for the enhancement of road safety, with the most prominent one being the halving of road accident fatalities in the EU by 2010. The statistics show that there have been significant steps realized towards this direction. However, reaching the deadline of the time horizon, it is evident that the target has not been reached. In the meantime, new research priorities have emerged in Europe, as well as worldwide, such as the environmental protection, which are highly linked to road safety research, especially within the concept of sustainable safety. In this chapter, it is elaborated how road safety has evolved in the latest years, as well as how and why safety research should proceed in the following years, as a priority research area in the EU.