Analysis of the road safety in the EU countries and the impact of PBM on its improvement

Abstract

The occurrence of a large number of road fatalities necessitates making improvements in road safety conditions. Governments and experts of European countries have been involved in this activity by investing efforts to increase security as well as achieve the goals of the European Commission (EC) to reduce fatalities by 50% by 2030.They aim to achieve road traffic without any fatalities occurring by 2050. Including a series of innovations for safety in the auto industry, deploying ITS technology, enforcing stringent legal regulations, emphasising on higher education of all traffic participants and undertaking other such important actions help achieve the set goals. Furthermore, adequate road maintenance with the use of modern models will definitely contribute to improving road safety. Moreover, it is necessary to regularly monitor road safety indicators and react accordingly on time. This paper presents a current state safety analysis from the perspective of road fatalities and road maintenance investments (RMIs) in the European Union (EU) and in European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. The main objectives of this paper are to analyse road safety aspects and emphasise on the relation existing between road fatalities and RMI. Concurrently, the objective of this paper is to verify the possible influence of the performance-based maintenance (PBM) model on improving road safety in the European Union. As part of the research, 27 EU member states and 3 EFTA members were analysed in the period 2010–2021. The results indicate a connection between road fatalities and RMI. Thus, this particular one is almost linear at the average EU level and that PBM models can directly contribute to improving traffic safety and indirectly by savings in maintenance costs.