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DRIVING

Mobile app to help avoid fatal motorway fatigue

Gearing up for a long drive through France this summer? It might be wise to take note of a new study that reveals drowsiness is the biggest cause of death on French motorways. A new mobile app has been created to help drivers avoid the dangers.

Published: 24 July 2013 09:44 CEST
Mobile app to help avoid fatal motorway fatigue
Drowsiness is the biggest cause of fatalities on French motorways. Photo: Mark Winterbourne

Just as thousands of holidaymakers are about to descend on France from all over Europe, a new study should spark an element of caution among motorists.

According to a study publish on Wednesday by the French Association of Motorway Organisations (ASFA) it is not speed which is causing the greatest number of deaths on French motorways,  but fatigue.

Although the number of fatalities on French motorways, or autoroutes as the are called here, is 25 times less than on France’s national or departmental roads, scores of people are still killed on the highways each year.

According to the ASFA study 40 percent of those deaths are due to a lack of vigilance, caused by fatigue, drowsiness or lack of concentration.

Most of the fatal accidents on French motorways occur late at night, in the early hours of the morning, or in the afternoon, when drivers are most vulnerable to fatigue and tiredness.

In all one in three accidents on French motorways are caused by fatigue.

The second cause of death on fatal road accidents on French motorways is drink or drug driving, which is the reason behind one in five deaths.

The study also found that the month of July is the deadliest month on French motorways, with one fatality every two days.

The official advice for drivers to avoid putting themselves at risk of nodding off at the wheel is to stop every two hours to rehydrate.

Smartphone app to help drowsy drivers

In a bid to tackle the problem a French company has created a smartphone so drivers can test their reaction speeds to see whether they are awake enough to take to the road.

Fondation Vinci Autoroutes, which operates motorways in France has developed the smartphone app called “Drive Awake” (“Roulez eveillé” in French), which is already available on iPhones.

It has been designed by neuroscientists from the University of Strasbourg the application is a “simple test” based on measuring the reaction time of the user to a visual stimulus test.

Professor André Dufour told AFP the app had been tested on people who suffered from sleep deprivation and that “it was very sensitive to changes in reaction times.”

For more information on the app, CLICK HERE.

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DRIVING

‘Città 30’: Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna has faced heavy criticism - including from the Italian government - after introducing a speed limit of 30km/h, but it's not the only city to approve these rules.

Published: 23 January 2024 15:12 CET
'Città 30': Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna on January 17th became Italy’s first major city to introduce a speed limit of 30km/h on 70 percent of roads in the city centre under its ‘Città 30’ plan, first announced in 2022, and initially set to come into force by June 2023.

The move made Bologna one of a growing number of European cities, including Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Bilbao, to bring in a 30km/h limit aimed at improving air quality and road safety.

But the change was met last week with a go-slow protest by Bologna’s taxi drivers and, perhaps more surprisingly, criticism from the Italian transport ministry, which financed the measure.

Matteo Salvini, who is currently serving as Italy’s transport minister, this week pledged to bring in new nationwide rules dictating speed limits in cities that would reverse Bologna’s new rule.

Salvini’s League party has long criticised Bologna’s ‘Città 30’ plan, claiming it would make life harder for residents as well as people working in the city and would create “more traffic and fines”.

OPINION: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

Bologna’s speed limit has sparked a heated debate across Italy, despite the increasingly widespread adoption of such measures in many other cities in Europe and worldwide in recent years.

While Bologna is the biggest Italian city to bring in the measure, it’s not the first – and many more local authorities, including in Rome, are now looking to follow their example in the next few years.

Some 60 smaller cities and towns in Italy have adopted the measure so far, according to Sky TG24, though there is no complete list.

This compares to around 200 French towns and cities to adopt the rule, while in Spain the same limit has applied to 70 percent of all the country’s roads since since May 2021 under nationwide rules, reports LA7.

The first Italian town to experiment with a 30 km/h speed limit was Cesena, south of Bologna, which introduced it in 1998. Since then, the local authority has found that serious accidents have halved, while the number of non-serious ones has remained unchanged.

Olbia, in Sardinia, also famously introduced the speed limit in 2021.

The city of Parma is planning to bring in the same rules from 2024, while the Tuscan capital of Florence approved five 30km/h zones in the city centre earlier this month.

Turin is set to bring in its first 30km/h limits this year as part of its broader plan to improve transport infrastructure, aimed at reducing smog and increasing livability.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has promised to introduce the limit on 70 percent of the capital’s roads by the end of his mandate, which expires in 2026.

In Milan, while the city council has voted in favour of lower speed limits and other traffic limitations on central roads, it’s not clear when these could come into force.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala this week said a 30 km/h limit would be “impossible” to implement in the Lombardy capital.

And it’s notable that almost all of the cities looking at slowing down traffic are in the north or centre-north of Italy.

There has been little interest reported in the measures further south, where statistics have shown there are a higher number of serious road accidents – though the total number of accidents is in fact higher in the north.

According to the World Health Organisation the risk of death to a pedestrian hit by a car driven at 50 km/h is 80 percent. The risk drops to 10 percent at 30 km/h.

The speed limit on roads in Italian towns and cities is generally 50, and on the autostrade (motorways) it’s up to 130.

Many Italian residents are heavily dependent on cars as their primary mode of transport: Italy has the second-highest rate of car ownership in Europe, with 670 vehicles per 1,000 residents, second only to Luxembourg with 682, according to statistics agency Eurostat.

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