SAFESPOT for Safer European Roads, Making Europe's roads safer for trucking

The trailer trucking industry of Europe has turned down the road to European cooperative systems for road safety in Europe. Called SAFESPOT or Smart Vehicles on Smart Roads, SAFESPOT is being additionally funded to the tune of about 21 million Euros in this round of the plan. The idea is to add new technologies and systems to extend the senses of an owner operator trucking professional and all truckers in the industry, using systems that provide data and information on the environment and the truck that the driver is operating. This is of course similar in nature to similar initiatives in the United States that are currently undergoing testing in many of the busiest transportation corridors in the United States.

Europe has in recent years documented the fact that the amount of traffic on European roads increased by an estimated three hundred percent between 1970 and 2000 and by now this number has certainly gone up even further. In addition, about 40,000 people are killed and over 1.5 million people are injured on the roads of Europe each year and Europe wants to put a dent in this number and see if they can implement new ideas and systems that can reduce the number of incidents. There were no numbers on the percentage of the above numbers that are related to the trucking services industry, but hopefully in the years ahead, this kind of information will become available.

Europe started down the SAFESPOT roadway in 2006, and the plan gathers together over 50 entities from the academic, trucking transport industry and European road administration agencies. Plans are to continue down the SAFESPOT road until they reach their goal of making the roads of Europe safer for all users and this is going to be a tough road to haul that will take a few years to traverse. Europe is definitely on the road to a safer transportation system for all though and hopefully in a few years they’ll have a system in place that will teach the world a few things about making roads safer.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/headlines/new...9_08_24_en.html