Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-08-Speech-3-138"
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"en.20031008.12.3-138"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, despite the lack of money in the public kitty, scarcely anyone can really object to improving safety standards on Europe’s roads in view of the yearly accident statistics, which show over 40 000 dead, and 1.6 million injured, some of them seriously. In Thuringia, the German province from which I come, the longest motorway tunnel in Germany was opened a few weeks ago. Even though it is also – as predicted beforehand, the safest – many drivers still find using it highly stressful.
When the Commission launched its draft directive on the improvement of safety in tunnels, I was, on the one hand, glad that it is fundamentally in accordance with the third action programme to improve road safety, which we had welcomed, but I was also concerned and disturbed by the prospect of an enormous increase in bureaucracy and of the high costs resulting from it, which, it appeared, would devolve upon the Member States. After all, tunnel routes were not and are not among the most dangerous or accident-prone stretches of road in our Community.
Today, my fears have been allayed, as the rapporteur – to whom let me now express my particular gratitude and appreciation – has managed after all to tighten up the draft directive, to further develop and restructure it, to make it less bureaucratic and its technical provisions more flexible. In this process, vitally significant safety aspects have not been disregarded; on the contrary, it has been possible to extend them, for example, by taking into account the safety needs of people with disabilities, which makes sense and is – and, I think, in view of this being the European Year of People with Disabilities – positively necessary. It remains to me to urge that this be speedily transposed into national law and to express the hope that it will have a tangible and positive effect on our road users, both in psychological and in real terms."@en1
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