Sometimes, developments in policy are rather abstract or disconnected. But every so often comes a change that you know will make a positive difference to people’s lives.
Every year in Europe, about 35,000 people are killed in road accidents, and about 1.5 million people are injured. That’s a death toll close to 100 per day.
Obviously, when such accidents happen it’s important that the emergency services are informed quickly, so they can get to the crash site and provide help. The chances of survival following serious injury are dramatically better if it’s dealt with during the first sixty minutes—what medical experts call the “Golden Hour”. But what happens if no-one is there to call the emergency services straight away? If there is no witness, and the victim is unconscious or unable to call for help? Read the full entry
Electronic stability control: Mercedes-Benz Electronic Stability Program illustration
No effort should be spared in the fight to reduce the alarming numbers of people who die from road accidents each year. This is something that I really came to understand in the 1980s when I was a transport Minister in the Netherlands. I clearly remember sitting in my car one day – delayed in the traffic. It was because a little girl had been killed on a well-known danger spot on the road. I decided then that I would do whatever I could as a leader to make improvements to road safety so that these tragic events happen less often. It is such as waste of human life and potential.
Now that I am involved again in transport – not so much in road building, but in issues like ICT for car safety and monitoring the effects of extreme weather on roads, I am determined that we do as much as possible.
The UN estimates that more than a million people are killed on the world’s roads each year, 35,000 in Europe. The global figure could almost double by 2020, if no action is taken. Heading off this increase and fighting road deaths is what the UN’s “Decade of Action for Road Safety” is all about.
So I was very pleased that the European Parliament invited me to back the UN campaign using “my” project “eSafety Challenge“.
We have come a long way with seatbelts, crumple zones, anti-lock brakes airbags and more. The next stage is all about ICT like Electronic Stability Control. This ICT potential is why we fund the eSafety Challenge.
It’s also why I make such a fuss about “eCall” – the automatic emergency call system for cars. 21 Member States and 4 additional European countries are now committed to deploying eCall. Moreover, Russia has decided to adopt eCall for its road safety system “ERA-GLONASS”. So it is a terrible shame that big Members States like France and UK, and the holders of this year’s Presidencies, Hungary and Poland, are still dragging their feet. They should not delay any further and should now sign the eCall Memorandum of Understanding and take an active part in the roll-out of eCall.
In fact, that is what the Digital Agenda is all about: finding practical things like road safety and making sure we use ICT to improve daily life, and even save lives.
You can also see my video to the Michelin Bibendum conference about how ICT can improve mobility here.
Some British media wonder today if this is a magic cure to make the trains run on time … in my experience there are never magic cures for anything. But thanks to EU funding, Europeans face less disruption when travelling by train this summer.
The ARRIVAL projecthas developed advanced software that schedules trains more efficiently and handles disruptions, as they happen in real time, more effectively while maintaining the same level of safety. The results of this research are already being applied by railway operators across Europe. The best news is that we might be able to apply the algorithms in other areas such as road traffic navigation systems, industrial work-flow systems, e-commerce, peer to peer networks, grid computing networks and healthcare.
I couldn’t be happier. How does it work? It helps to stop the “domino effect” where lots of trains are help up because one fell behind schedule, partly by giving railway operators more graphic (visual) assistance to make decisions. about train scheduling, platform allocation, staff distribution and freight loads.
IT’S ALREADY WORKING
ARRIVAL has already been successfully implemented in The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. For example, ARRIVAL algorithms were used to draw up a new timetable for the Dutch national railway system which handles 5500 trains per day. In Berlin the waiting time between trains on the U-Bahn underground network has been reduced from 4 to 2 minutes.
