Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-03-Speech-4-155"
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"en.20030703.8.4-155"2
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"Mr President, ladies, gentlemen, and visitors, in the EU’s 15 Member States, we tolerate 40 000 deaths on the roads every year. This situation amounts to a war on Europe’s roads, and it cannot be allowed to continue like this. Over recent months, a series of accidents involving buses has occurred, in which people have died or been severely injured. I believe this to be an issue with which we should concern ourselves more and more. Buses and coaches – for which I, as a Green, have a particular fondness – are among the most environmentally friendly ways of travelling, but they must become even safer than they have been to date. Another reason why we have to give attention to this issue is the fact that we will see much more traffic on the roads in the coming years as a result of the eastward and southward enlargement of Europe. As shown by the people in the visitors’ galleries, bus and coach travel is on the increase, as people make more journeys with them, and so we have to do more to make it safer.
If I may say something about human error, we know that social dumping on the roads presents us with a major problem. Working times are not adhered to, which is another way of saying that legislation in this area is not stringent enough. Nor are there enough controls. I can do no other than appeal to the Italian Presidency of the Council to at last take the Markov report on working hours seriously and give it priority, rather than doing as the Greek Presidency did and putting it on ice for months on end. Only if we improve working hours will we have better-rested coach drivers on the roads and be able to do something about exhaustion. This will of course involve more controls, and I am glad that the Commission wants to do something about these.
The second aspect of safety that we have to get to grips with is the requirement to fit seatbelts, which at present applies only to new coaches. We cannot wait ten or 15 years for coaches to be replaced by new ones. We have to take action now and make use of all the technical possibilities offered by present-day coaches. Accidents over recent months have shown that many people have died because they were catapulted out of coaches that had been overturned. Safety belts will enable us to tackle this, and I hope that both the Commission and the Council of Governments will summon up the energy to do something about this."@en1
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