Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-17-Speech-2-452"
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"en.20080617.42.2-452"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Ferrari, on behalf of my group for his excellent, constructive cooperation, including with my colleague Mrs Ayala Sender, who was unable to join us here this evening. I wish to thank him in particular for having succeeded in bringing the Commission and Council together and ensuring that we have been able to incorporate a set of amendments by Parliament at first reading that further improves the text. This is an important dossier that, being very technical, may not make the headlines, but will help prevent the loss of a great many human lives and the resulting family tragedies. Last year, a staggering 43 000 people lost their lives on Europe’s roads and, as the Commissioner has already said, 8 000 of them were pedestrians, vulnerable road users.
As we all know, preventing this requires a combination of a great many measures. Changes in driver behaviour are needed – that goes without saying – but it has also been proven that technical innovations and all manner of rules also have an important role to play in preventing major accidents. The vehicle’s design can make a big difference in the event of an accident: the bumpers, the whole design of the vehicle front end, the bonnet and so on. Under this regulation, design engineers will have to comply with stricter standards and to prove this compliance through various crash tests.
The main innovation of the proposal is that, besides the choice of materials and the rules governing this, it also works on active safety, namely by making Brake Assist systems compulsory from next year or thereabouts. This is another important innovation.
One thing that is essential as far as our group is concerned is that this also be applied to vans, that it be phased in. We think that this is a good deal, therefore. We are not yet at the end of the road – we expect to see even more rules in the coming years to the benefit of human safety, and for these, too, you can count on our support."@en1
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