European road tunnels in worrying state: study

(VIENNA) - The state of European road tunnels is worrying, a study showed Thursday, listing chronic safety lapses and limited escape route signs that endangered the lives of motorists.

Carried out for the 12th time, the EuroTAP study looked at 26 tunnels in 13 countries, giving top marks to the two-level Duplex Tunnel near Paris, which opened last year.

Sixteen of the tunnels were given a "very good" grade and four received a "good" mark.

"(But) the joy is limited, as three tunnels were deemed poor and one tunnel in Iceland was even judged to be very poor," said Willy Matzke, an expert with Austria's automobile club OeAMTC, which participated in the study.

Two tunnels received an "acceptable" grade.

Iceland's Hvalfjorour tunnel scored the lowest, with poor video monitoring and no automatic fire warning system, which meant that closing the tunnel and alerting the fire department needed to be done manually, thereby wasting time, the OeAMTC noted.

"An alarming number of operational tunnels across Europe will not be ready to comply with EU tunnel safety rules when they come into effect in 2014," the study said.

"It is necessary to speed up the process of refurbishment of tunnels already in operation in order to meet requirements of the (EU Tunnel) Directive and to improve the safety of all motorists," noted Wil Botman, director of the international automobile federation (FIA) in Europe.

Lack of loudspeakers to warn drivers about accidents, missing fire hydrants and poor lighting were among the most common failings, the EuroTAP study found. Tunnels were tested in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland.

EuroTAP Tunnel Test 2010 - European Tunnel Assessment Programme