Bridgestone Unveils Plans for European Road Safety Day

October 13 is European Road Safety Day. To play its part in this event, taking place for the second year, Bridgestone has planned extensive programme promoting the importance of good tyre care in road safety. Activities, it says, will include thousands of free safety checks for motorists across Europe backed by local safety education initiatives in individual countries. The free safety check-ups will be conducted by the company’s First Stop tyre dealer network, with more than 1,700 of its outlets across Europe participating. Work will be carried out within First Stop premises, in store car parks and in various public places over a three-week period.

Bridgestone will combine these tyre care activities with education on environmental protection, integrating the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) campaign “Make Cars Green” into the programme. During the safety check-ups, a display will automatically show drivers of cars with under-inflated tyres the quantity of CO2 emissions that could be saved if their tyres were inflated at the correct pressure.

The second European Road Safety Day, themed on “Road Safety in our Cities”, will be led by a major information event in Paris. Senior representatives of national and local governments, the European Commission and road user organisations will present the facts and discuss initiatives and case studies aimed at reducing Europe’s urban accident toll. Bridgestone will participate with an official road safety booth.

The European Union has set the target of halving the number of fatalities on European roads – from 54 000 to 27 000 – between 2001 and 2010. In support of this target, the European Safety Day aims to raise awareness, give visibility to best local practices and offer an opportunity to work together for safer roads.

Bridgestone says its current initiative is an extension of the company’s “Think Before You Drive” Campaign that was launched in 2005 in partnership with the FIA Foundation. Designed to help reduce road deaths, globally estimated at 1.2 million a year, the campaign promotes simple road safety messages to drivers and car users, focusing on activities, such as using a seat belt and regularly checking tyres, which can reduce the severity of injuries in a crash and even help to prevent a crash from occurring. Free safety checks are a key part of the campaign, and around 70,000 have been conducted by Bridgestone companies since 2005. Last year, during the first United Nations Global Road Safety Week and the following weeks, Bridgestone conducted more than 31,000 free safety checks – and the company says it hopes to do even better in the three-week programme this year.