Because there is little commonality in the approach to road safety data collection across the EU Member and Candidate States, the EC has, in essence indicated a fundamental need for the creation of what it terms a ‘European Road Safety Observatory’ (EC White Paper – European Transport Policy for 2010 – Time to Decide. EC 2001). Such an ‘Observatory’ will establish a structure that will bring together EU accident and injury safety data as well as road safety information and support activities under a common independent gateway that will be available for public policy purposes in each Member and Candidate Member of the EU. This Observatory would also be constructed for the benefit of road safety practitioners and the general public.

SafetyNet is being established to meet the demand for road accident and safety data in the EU. The main deliverables of the IP are:

Research and Development activities

• Further enhancement and exploitation of Care including extension to the ten new Member States;
• Development of a methodology to gather risk/exposure data and integrate it to disaggregated datasets;
• The design and implementation of a Europe-wide network for periodical measurements of Safety Performance Indicators;
• Recommendations for independent accident investigation for insurance companies, enforcement agencies and industry;
• Development and implementation of a fatal accident database;
• Development of an in-depth accident causation database

Horizontal activities

• Provision of a Safety Information System to serve as a gateway for the information gathered together within the project
• An example set of validation data analyses demonstrating the effectiveness of the co-ordinated approach to accident and injury data

KfV is working mainly on the direct use and expansion of the CARE database, the collection of “Risk Exposure Data” and the application of modern statistical methods for advanced analyses of road accident related data.

Start of the project: May 2004
The project ends: May 2008