Do you think road safety is an urgent issue?
The situation varies greatly from one country to another. In the particular case of France, the Cour des Comptes recognises that enormous progress has been made over the last few decades in its report on public road safety policy in 2021. Indeed, we have gone from more than 18,000 deaths on France’s roads in 1972 to less than 3,500 today. But they warn that the results are stagnating. Since 2013, the number of deaths has stopped falling and France’s position in relation to its European neighbours has deteriorated, falling from 7th to 14th place in ten years. Some countries, such as Sweden with its “Nollvisionen” project, are well ahead in achieving the goal of “zero deaths, zero serious injuries” on the roads. We still have a lot of progress to make in our country. It is therefore an urgent matter in France.
What are the main causes of accidents on French roads?
A road accident occurs when an element disrupts the combination of user, vehicle and environment in an irrecoverable way. More than 90% of accidents are the result of a malfunction linked to the user, whether it is a human failure linked to the complexity of the task or a deliberate refusal to respect the rules.
Excessive or inappropriate speed is the leading cause of fatal accidents. The police identify this factor in one in three fatal accidents. For this type of accident, this speed factor occurs more often than average on roads limited to 70 km/h, which probably reflects the difficulty for drivers to perceive the specific nature of these sections and to become aware of the associated dangers. It is less present on motorways where the speed limit is 130 km/h.
Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is the second most common cause of death on the roads, after speeding. 43% of deaths occur in accidents with at least one driver under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It is a scourge that is difficult to eradicate other than through prevention measures and driver awareness, because we do not currently have a similar technology as automatic speed control. This is evidenced by the number of licence points withdrawn in 2017. 70% of these were lost for speeding, compared with 0.9% for drug use and 5.2% for driving under the influence of alcohol.
Finally, driving a vehicle requires the driver to be highly concentrated on the task in hand in order to react as quickly as possible and make the right decisions. In France in 2021, the causal factor “inattention or use of a telephone or technological distractors” is identified in 23% of cases. There are several types of distractors (visual, manual, cognitive or auditory) from sources inside or outside the vehicle. In particular, mind wandering, i.e. being lost in thought, is a significant road safety hazard. Studies show that it is present in 25-50% of injury accidents, which is huge. According to a multifactorial analysis of accident causes (ASFA) between 2016 and 2020, lack of attention is involved in 15% of fatal motorway accidents. According to the World Health Organisation, the use of a telephone while driving quadruples the risk of an accident.
What are the most important safety measures to take on the roads in your opinion?
Given that 90% of accidents are generated by a malfunction linked to the user, it is essential to continue to improve behaviour through awareness and prevention operations. Of course, we can continue to communicate on the dangers of excessive speed, alcohol or drugs at the wheel. But this will not be enough. The evolution of technologies and modes of mobility generates new accident-prone situations.
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