Road safety and driving licence
The European Commission has set itself the goal of making the roads of the Union as safe and clean as possible, with the final idea of eliminating deaths on the roads by 2050; when you consider that more than 20,000 people died on EU roads in 2022, even just a sharp reduction would be a big step forward. Road safety and driving licenses are the main points touched upon by the new Commission proposal, let's see in more detail what is hoped for the future.
First of all, a reform of the driving licence, allowing young people to start driving at the age of 17 with the supervision of an adult and allowing to take the exam for the driving license in advance of the 18th birthday: in this way the useful period for supervised guides is lengthened and more prepared young people are brought onto the roads and who have had more time to get used to the traffic.
Furthermore, the Commission has proposed the introduction of a digital driving license which thus allows all replacement, renewal or conversion operations to be carried out directly online.
Mobility in large European cities has changed a lot in recent years and there is a need to review the behavior of everyone on the road, in order to protect the most vulnerable users such as pedestrians, cyclists, or car drivers a scooter or an electric bicycle; moreover, it will be necessary to include a module dedicated to ADAS, the driver assistance systems which are becoming more and more frequent on new cars, in the teaching program for obtaining the licence. Finally, greater attention should be paid to driving style and how this affects fuel consumption and, consequently, polluting emissions.
Finally, we return to talk about road safety and offenses that have gone unpunished in foreign countries: to date there are many shortcomings in cooperation between the Member States of the Union and this prevents us from going to catch offenders once they return to their country of origin, but new legislation could change this situation forever, extending the range of action of law enforcement agencies to the whole Union, at least as regards traffic offences.