No specific measures for road safety

traffic accidentTraffic accident.Photo: Gyda Nesje / NTB scanpix

Transport Minister has no concrete new measures to improve road safety.

So far this year, more people killed in accidents on Norwegian roads than the same period last year, but fewer in compare with 2014.

Transport Minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen has presented on Friday the roadmap 40 about how to organize the work about road safety.

The starting point was a desire from May last year to coordinate these efforts across different sectors. The plan pointed out six general areas of cooperation, without identifying any specific action or inserting additional resources.

– The plan is not clarifying in detail the individual measures and such details should be determined through preparation of the National action plan for safety on the road, the statement said.

Good already

Solvik-Olsen points out to a good and close cooperation between the key players in road safety and that led Norway to become one of the countries with the lowest accident risk in road traffic.

We should further improve the figures which requires cooperation among several sectors and the costs of this should be taken away from individual sectors.

– Increasingly lower accident rate makes it more challenging to find effective and targeted measures, says Solvik-Olsen.

Number of fatalities and serious injuries in traffic has steadily decreased but there are slight variations from year to year.

Preliminary figures from the Public Roads Administration show that 110 persons were killed in traffic during the first nine months of this year, 87 ones for last year which has an increase of 26 percent. In total 117 people lost their lives on Norwegian roads last year, the lowest death rate since 1947.

So far 14 people have died in traffic in September this year, three more than last year but still a decrease compared to previous years.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today