Proposal for territorial distribution of the 2010 EU road safety target

European Union (EU) road safety policies include reduction in road fatalities by 50% during 2000-2010. The original territorial distribution of this target is uniform, as all the territories have to halve the number of fatalities regardless of their previous record. We propose a simple method of distributing the total effort required to reach the EU target of halving fatalities in a territory in such a way that those areas with a higher proportion of fatalities (relative to their populations) have the highest targets and the sum of all of the areas is the 50% reduction. The distribution function we use here is based on an inverse logarithmic function selected from among several alternative functions analyzed in an initial study. This use of weighted distribution functions has been applied since 2000 by the EU in other policies, such as the use of renewable energies. We applied the proposed distribution function to two territorial aggregation levels in the EUROSTAT Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS): NUTS0 for EU-15 and EU-25 Member States, and NUTS3 for the 50 Spanish provinces, comparing the new and old targets with the real achievements for the 2000-2006 period, and new and old targets for the 2000-2010 period. This is a simple proposal for modification of target distribution that can be further improved using other parameters, such as road or weather conditions.