Sheet metal roll. Road accidents in Italy (1999)
With its provocative title, this survey addresses issues that are often underestimated or ignored in the debate on road accidents. The improvements made in Italy in the late 1980s and early 1990s are now being replaced by a general slowdown in enforcement, control and prevention, and driving behaviour. The survey analyses, in particular, the data provided by official statistics, in which cases they are helpful and when they risk being misleading, what the human factor means, how selective examinations for obtaining a driving licence are, how insurance companies and institutions deal with accident victims and what guarantees exist for compensation, what condition Italian roads and motorways are in and what stage has been reached in projects to improve them, how safe cars are and what efforts manufacturers are making to make them more reliable. These are just some topics that this research addresses through statistics, interviews, presentation of innovative studies or rediscovery of little known or forgotten records.
Eurispes intends to draw the public’s attention to the urgent need for structural measures to reduce road accidents to their physiological level, in the certainty that the current situation is pathological and has long been unacceptable.
Index
Chapter 1 – The phenomenon
1.1 Danger runs in the city
1.2 But Istat is not the not a basis for law
1.3 The statistics revolution: the Brescia case
1.4 The weak link in mobility: pedestrians, bicycles and mopeds
1.5 The difficult search for causes. The human factor
1.6 Cars and motorbikes: where statistics fall short
1.7 When the road is the one to blame
1.8 If statistics do not enter Europe
Chapter 2 – Roads
2.1 The transport system: road wins over rail
2.2 The Transport Plan
2.3 All the roads in Italy
2.4 Different roads, different accidents
2.5 Motorways: management and recovery
2.6 Anas’ plans
2.7 A focus on safety
2.8 The role of public administrations
Chapter 3 – The victims
3.1 A lifelong accident. Little-known research
3.2 The Guarantee Fund for Road Victims
3.3 Insurance companies between difficulties and resistance to change
3.4 Saturday Night Slaughters
3.4.1 Young people and the car
3.4.2 Traffic police checks
3.4.3 Education: the role of associations
Chapter 4 – Vehicles
4.1 The car
4.1.1 Revisions
4.1.2 Scrapping incentives: an operation to be repeated
4.1.3 New car, but what about safety?
4.1.4 Accidents: the social cost
4.1.5 What if there were simply too many cars?
4.2 Motorbikes
4.2.1 The Helmet
Chapter 5 – The Driving Licence
5.1 Examinations and driving schools: 1997 data
5.2 Fraud and Investigations
5.3 The Rome Case
5.3.1 The Driving Instructor
5.3.2 The Province
5.3.3 The Motor Vehicle Authority
5.4 Controllers and controllers