The European Road Assessment Programme, EuroRAP, has won a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in recognition of its “outstanding contribution to international road safety”.

The Prince Michael Award was presented today by Philip Bradbourn, Chairman of the MEP’s Transport Group, to John Dawson, Chairman of EuroRAP during a presentation on the future EuroRAP programme to the new Parliament. EuroRAP’s risk maps have now been prepared and published in five European countries allowing the public to see easily, for the first time, the widely differing risk of death and serious injury that road users face on different roads.

The programme also identifies high risk routes where often small amounts spent on engineering measures, such as safety fencing, improved junction layouts or road markings, can have a high return in lives saved. EuroRAP tracks year by year whether authorities are taking effective steps to improve roads identified as “persistently high risk”. It shows the measures that effective authorities are taking to save lives on “most improved” roads.

Members of the EuroRAP association are European motoring organisations and leading administrations in road safety, including those from Europe’s top three performing countries – Sweden, UK and Netherlands. The main research contractor is the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory, TRL Ltd. The programme is a sister programme to EuroNCAP which has helped raise the typical safety of new cars offered to the public from 2-star to 4-star.

Handing over the award, Philip Bradbourn MEP said: “EuroRAP is an extraordinary programme. In every country it has been launched it has received huge media coverage by making the appalling statistics on road deaths become real at local level to the public and their elected representatives. Knowing which roads are the best and worst for safety on a common European measure has started a new informed dialogue between the public and road authorities.”

Bradbourn continued: “EuroRAP has previously won several popular awards. Now this Prince Michael award recognises the professional esteem in which this innovative programme is held. I look forward to EuroRAP being rolled out into every EU country.”

Receiving the Award, EuroRAP Chairman John Dawson said: “We are delighted to receive this award and to have become a pillar of European road safety action addressing 50,000 deaths a year on Europe’s roads. We believe our job is to show professionals and public where people are dying over and over again often for want of simple, affordable measures. The real test of success will be whether Europe’s road engineers apply improvements systematically and whether the infrastructure is measurably safer at the end of the decade.”

Notes To Editors

1. EuroRAP is an international not-for-profit association registered in Belgium. EuroRAP has previously won the Autocar Road Safety Award, been nominated for a What Car? Award and won a Commercial Motor Award. The EuroRAP website www.eurorap.org has been awarded a Mercury and an iNova award. Financial support for EuroRAP has come from European motoring organisations, the EU, the FIA Foundation for Automobile and Society, and Toyota Motor Europe. EuroRAP receives technical support from national, regional and local road administrations. EuroRAP is managed day to day through the AA Foundation for Road Safety Research (registered in England charity no. 295573).

2. The Prince Michael Road Safety Awards are presented throughout the year to individuals, companies or organisations in recognition of their outstanding contribution to improved road safety. The awards are organised by RoadSafe, a partnership of the leading motor and transport companies in Britain working with government and road safety professionals (www.roadsafe.com). This year there are 15 award winners who will attend the annual awards ceremony at The Savoy in London on 7 December.