General safety of vehicles and protection of vulnerable road users

Briefing 24-01-2020

As part of the third 'Europe on the move' package of measures, on 27 May 2018, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on type-approval requirements for motor vehicles and their trailers, as regards their general safety and the protection of vehicle occupants and vulnerable road users. The regulation is part of the EU's efforts to halve the number of fatal and serious injuries in road crashes between 2020 and 2030. It will introduce a number of advanced vehicle safety features that passenger cars, vans, buses and trucks will have to have as standard equipment in order to be sold on the internal market. These include intelligent speed assistance, alcohol interlock installation facilitation, driver drowsiness and attention warning, emergency stop signal, reversing detection and event data recorder. Additional requirements will apply to specific vehicle groups, such as vulnerable road user detection for buses and trucks. The new regulation, adopted by the co-legislators in 2019 and signed on 27 November 2019, will replace three current type-approval regulations as of July 2022: the General Vehicle Safety Regulation, the Pedestrian Protection Regulation and the Hydrogen-powered Motor Vehicles Regulation.