The petrol crisis made it easier for the government to introduce general speed limits ; thus, in 1973, speeds were limited to 120 km/h on motorways, 110 km/h on dual carriageways and 90 km/h on all other rural roads, on an « experimental basis » ; a year later, after the first shock of the energy crisis died down, the speed limit on motorways was increased to 130 km/h to the satisfaction of car manufacturers and of a large part of the vehicle owners. Simultaneously, seat belt wearing was made mandatory for front seat occupants in cars on rural roads (1973), as well as helmet wearing for motocyclists and moped riders (also outside urban areas). The impact of these measures was immediately visible on accident trends.

Drinking-and-driving laws were strengthened, making possible for enforcement officers to make random checks on the roads (1978). The seat belt law was extended with mandatory wearing in urban areas at night (1975), then in all situations, still only for front seat passengers (1979). New cars had to be fitted with seat belts on the back seats (1977) and ordinary front seat belts were replaced by automatically-retracting ones. Helmet wearing became mandatory for all motorised two-wheelers in all situations in 1980. Transportation of children under 10 as front seat passengers was forbidden in 1975 and the first special restraint systems for children on the back seats were homologated in 1976.

New national exams were organised for the certification of driving instructors (1979) and the licensing procedures for motorcycles were revised (1980). A school certificate of road safety education was instituted in 1977. Annual checks of vehicles were extended to all lorries over 6 tons (1974). Specific speed laws for heavy vehicles were enacted between 1975 and 1980.

Apart from laws and regulations, other measures contributed to the fall of accident and fatality numbers and rates. The motorway building programme, while intended mostly to accomodate growing traffic flows, had a positive impact on safety. Extensive blackspot treatment programmes were carried out on the rural road network and protective devices (guardrails of different types, crash-absorbers, emergency stop-lanes for lorries on downward slopes, fragilized lamp-posts and road-signs, etc.) were tested and started being implemented. In urban areas, specific equipments were subsidised by the national government (junction improvements, traffic lights, anti-skid surfacing, etc.). The selection of locations to be treated in each programme was rationalised on a cost-efficiency basis.

Lack of easy-to-use accident data files in urban areas became sorely felt. In 1974, the central government produced a first set of guidelines for accident data management in urban areas, with supporting subsidies. The new data files were quickly put to use in the national programme of Urban Traffic Plans, which soon evolved towards restricting through traffic from central or commercial areas, improving pedestrian walking conditions, creating pedestrianised areas, sometimes including cycle routes, and introducing extensive public transport facilities. Traffic Plans including the development of public transport systems proved useful to reduce accidents and injuries (for example, the evaluation of the plan for Nantes, a large size city in the West of France, showed a decrease of over 30 % of accidents, attibuted in a large part to changes in the modal split through a transfer from moped and bicycle riding to buses).

ONSER was requested to perform experimental evaluations of a number of safety measures, as a basis for the cost benefit analyses, participated in testing roadside restraint systems, and produced a methodology for blackspot analysis, based on the clinical approach. ONSER also carried out extensive pedestrian and cyclist safety studies for the national road administration, but few were actually followed by action. An a-priori evaluation of the effects to be gained by making periodical technical checks mandatory for cars showed a level of efficiency too low to justify taking a law.

Overall, this period was characterised by multiple forms of action, a large part of which was devoted to « secondary safety » (injury reduction) ; passive restraints met with little opposition. It also saw the first attempts at curbing the prominence of car traffic through limitation of speeds and reduction of traffic in some urban neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, knowledge of the effects of measures was gathered.

As accident figures did not appear to reduce any more, and as decentralisation switched part of the road safety responsibilities to the local level, new (and stronger) policies had to be designed. The Directorate for Road safety and Traffic in the Ministry in charge of Transport was created to this purpose in 1982. Emphasis was placed on greater involvement of all, both in behaving safely on the road and in taking preventive action. Three main incentive programmes were launched simultaneously in 1982-83 :

- the REAGIR programme aimed at sensitizing local actors in different fields of activity (administration, roads, medicine, education, enforcement, etc.) to complex accident generating processes by organising in each département, on a voluntary basis, multi-disciplinary teams in charge of investigating in-depth fatal and very serious accidents cases ; the members of the investigation teams or Road safety Inspectors (IDSR) were trained for the task at the Directorate for Road Safety and Traffic (DSCR) and were asked to produce an input for safety programmes at the city and the département levels. REAGIR was placed under the authory of the Prefect or representative of the central government in the Département and monitored by DSCR. A network of Road Safety Coordinators was built all over France to assist the Prefects and a central data based was built. REAGIR is still going on.

- the « Minus-ten-percent » Contracts were introduced to promote safety policies in urban areas : a city (or a grouping of towns) received from the central governement a lump sum of money, proportional to the number of road accidents on its territory, in order to initiate road safety policies (build a local accident data base, perform a diagnosis, take a first set of measures) ; then every time that the local authorities could show a decrease of at least 10 % of victims over a period of a year, additional funding was provided ; local authorities were supposed to put in equal funding in the implementation of measures. The central governement had no power to check what was actually done and had only access to the global effect on accident figures. This programme was terminated in the late 80’s.

- « Safer Cities with Accidentless neighbourhoods » was an experimental programme aimed at promotive innovative area-wide safety improvements in urban neighbourhoods including a stretch of heavy-traffic arterial ; the measures taken were supposed to reduce speeds, attract the attention of drivers to local activities (pedestrians, two-wheelers, local traffic, etc.), facilitate movements of the unprotected road users, and, in addition to safety, contribute to improve environmental and living conditions ; in order to design and implement the plans, and particularly to be able to include in them design features not yet experimented or provided for by standards and regulations, a multi-sectoral working group had to be created at the local level, associating to the usual local actors professionals in relevant disciplines and representatives of the population. The plans submitted to the national commission in charge of selecting the experimental neighbourhoods included multiple measures (roundabouts, humps, chicanes, road narrowing, « banalised » squares and streets, streetside amenities and urban furniture, use of varied paving materials, special street lighting, etc.). The two main innovative aspects were the local decision-making processes and the fact that speed-reducing measures were applied to arterials with traffic flows up to 10 000 vehicles a day. Over 60 urban areas, ranging from 250 inhabitants to 300 000, participated to the experiment and results were widely spread through seminars, courses and conferences organised by DSCR, as well as technical manuals produced by the Centre for Urban Transport Studies (CETUR, now become CERTU). After the closure of the programme in 1989, a large number of local authorities has continued implementing are-improvement plans along the same lines.

In the beginning of the 90’s, DSCR introduced, in addition to REAGIR, the annual Département Road Safety Action Plans (PDASR) which were supposed to coordinate all safety measures taken in each département and thus get the local decision-makers to all work together. This was completed in 1994 with a three-year General-Orientation Document (DGO), based on principle on a thorough road safety diagnosis. Funding had to be made available to promote these two activities as well as implementation of information and communication measures ; infrastructure, transport and planning improvements were to be financed through the regular budgets. Unfortunately, available resources from the government have gradually reduced, which tends to de-mobilise local actors. Local partnerships have been organised with variable levels of success. Evaluation of the measures taken locally has remained limited.

On the regulatory side, alcohol laws were again strengthened in 1983 (introduction of a legal level of alcohol in the air expired), 1986 (immediate withdrawal of driving license), 1990 (facilitation of checks by enforcement officers), 1994 (special law for recidivists), 1994 (lowering of legal blood alcohol content from 0.8 to 0.7 g/l), and 1995 (lowering of legal blood alcohol content to 0.5 g/l). Seat belt wearing was made mandatory for back seat passengers in 1990 and children in the back had to use homologated seats and restraint systems (1992). Penalties were increased for offenders against the seat-belt and the helmet laws (1994). Specific speed limits on rural roads for bad weather conditons were introduced in 1982 (110 km/h on motorways, 100 km/h on dual carriage-ways, 80 km/h on other rural roads). The speed limit in urban areas was lowered from 60 to 50 km/h in 1990, and 30 km/h zones were made possible (as well as 70 km/h on sections of arterials).

Periodical mandatory checks of cars were gradually introduced by successive laws in 1991, 1992, 1995 and 1996, in order to reach European standards. Speed limitors for vehicles over 10 tons were made mandatory in 1983. A number of laws and regulations regarding speeds of lorries as well as training and the working conditions of professional drivers were negociated and enacted in 1994 (working and rest periods), 1995 (training), 1996 and 1997 (traffic restrictions).

A new form of licencing for young drivers, the Anticipated Driving Apprenticeship (AAC), enabling the youngsters to gain some actual traffic experience (while accompanied by a licensed driver) before they reach 18 and pass the test, was introduced on an experimental basis in 1994, then extended to the whole of France in 1988, and to all ages over 16 in 1991 ; the same procedure has been experimented for motorcyclists since 1992 ; effects on safety of AAC are, however, only expected in the long term. Conditions for obtaining the motorcycle driving license were revised several times, the last time in 1996 in compliance with European legislation. Traffic safety education in schools was re-inforced by creating in 1992 and 1994 two levels of School Safety Certificates for children aged 12 and 14, and a special exam (Brevet de Sécurité) for those wanting to use a moped. The National Road safety Programme, designed jointly by DSCR and the Ministry of Education, aim at providing continuing traffic education from primary school to driver licensing and after. Locally initiated actions in road safety education have also become frequent since 1983.

The point demerit system was introduced in 1992, and modified several times afterwards. The main offenses reducing the number of points of the driving license are related to speeding and drinking-and-driving ; points have also been withdrawn for not wearing the seat belt or the motorcycle helmet since 1994 ; attendance to recycling seminars is one way of regaining lost points.

On the research side, ONSER was merged with the Institute of Transport Research to form INRETS (the National Institute for Transport and Safety Research) in 1985. INRETS participated in monitoring « Safer Cities with Accidentless Neighbourhoods », in designing the National Education Programme, in initiating and evaluating REAGIR, in following up and evaluating AAC and the point demerit system, in assessing the whole system of safety laws and penalties and their application. Inrets has also been intensifying its programme of « accidentology » (accident modelling, in-depth accident investigations, risk analyses, etc.), and developing methods for road safety auditing and for urban road safety management.

This last period is both one of intensified action in areas already tackled before, and one of greater involvement of people, users or decision-makers, at all levels. Efforts were made at generating new forms of action at the local level, based on a large partnership, but the involvement of a greater number of non-professionals in road safety work may have resulted in part of the action taken being more spectacular than efficient. This raised questions about road safety management and programme design and monitoring, and research became more involved in the analysis of whole programmes and implementation methods than in the effects of simple measures.

Even though road safety has been improving in France, it is clear that there are other European countries that manage lower levels of risks on the road. After a change in government in June 1997, the new prime minister convened a meeting of the CISR and, for the first time in the French road safety history, a quantitative target was fixed for road safety policies : getting under 4 000 fatalities over five years (in 2002), which meant reducing the current figure by half. Clearly, this ambitious target calls for more in-depth knowledge of accident generating processes with a view to design new safety measures targeted to precise accident factors, for increased involvement of actors at all levels, and also for additional funding. The problem is now to create a permanent road safety fund as it seems that the budget needed exceeds what the national government is prepared to spend from public money for road safety.

It can be seen that road safety policies in early years (before 1973) had to fight against current infrastructure solutions, and a legal framework taking into account primarily the development of car traffic and ignoring measures that appeared restrictive, either to traffic or to individual freedom (of the drivers). Between 1973 and 1982, road safety policies were somewhat hesitant and obviously slowed down by lack of acceptance of the public. Moreover, the logic of road safety policies was not clear : measures were implemented according to what knowledge was available rather than to any problem-oriented priorities. After 1982, preventive action intensified, not only at the local level, but also in the legal area and in education programmes, sole responsibilities left fully to the State. Clearly, all possible means were tried to obtain again a decrease of the accident and fatality trends. Building partnerships was the motto. The incentive programmes built up mostly to that purpose were entirely new and certainly succeeded in raising awareness and interest for safety at the local level, but the resulting action escaped monitoring and evaluation.

In all three periods, the national road safety programmes included a large variety of measures, but although they were inter-sectoral, they were never completely integrated. One should notice however the efforts to coordinate education and driver training, to build up a consistent legal system and to maintain some relationship between the centralised and local road safety action. However, one negative effect of trying to establish wider partnerships with and between actors at the local level was added complexity of the decision-making system and, in some areas, lack of scientific or rational methods to select and design courses of preventive action.

It is to be noted that, although not mentionned here as part of national safety policies, biomechanical research carried out both at Inrets and by car manufacturers have led to substantial improvement of vehicle performances, both in primary and secondary safety. This has also contributed to the reduction of accidents and fatalities.

In order to reach the target of 4 000 fatalities in 2002, it seems that marginal benefits may be obtained by further improving the vehicle fleet (new technologies should take effect somewhat later) and making the law and enforcement system more efficient, while the best chance of progressing could be in speed control and infrastucture changes (road audits, roads that « forgive »), with better account taken of the influence of road and roadside design on behaviour both in urban areas and on rural roads. This means continuing to mobilise interest and sustaining action at all territorial levels.