Road Safety: An Emerging Public Policy
in Italian PoliticsAll currencies in US Dollar
Every year, road accidents entail enormous social and human
costs. Particularly alarming is the fact that during the 1990s, Italy
was incapable of improving the situation to the same degree as
other European countries. After a long period of inertia and lack of
interest, however, the Center-Left governments of the most recent
legislature have at last taken action. New policies set in motion
could reverse the trend, enabling Italy to respect the European
Union’s goal of achieving a 40 percent reduction in road mortalities
by the year 2010. Nevertheless, within the political system as a
whole, attention to the matter still appears limited, and there
seems to be no bipartisan consensus on the need to address the
problem. The Center-Right in particular, despite frequently
demanding “strong” state intervention in other matters such as
criminality (which nevertheless causes one-eighth the number of
deaths), appears to be strongly influenced by an individualist and
anti-state culture in this field.