Published on November 18, 2022

The benefits of 30 km/h cities

As we could have easily imagined, the number of road accidents in 2022 has risen dramatically. The post-pandemic, without the presence of travel restrictions, has inevitably brought back to everyone’s memory how this is a phenomenon that still dramatically affects our country.

Regarding this, we should remember that with its resolution of 14 April 2022, the Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning and Sustainable Development approved the National Road Safety Plan 2030 (published in the Official Gazette General Series no. 169 of 21-07-2022) with the goal of reducing by 50 per cent deaths on the roads by the year 2030 (and zero deaths by 2050) and cutting by half the number of serious injuries. In addition, it aims at a general upgrading of road safety with interventions on infrastructure for which an amount of EUR 14 billion is estimated to be realized also using the NRP.

Road safety is a central issue in EU policy. Not only zero tolerance for wrongdoers but also new preventive measures. These include a 30 km/h speed limit valid in all urban centres in Europe on the model of what has already been done in some EU cities. The change in driving style has had the effect of drastically reducing the deaths of weaker road users (pedestrians, cyclists) and has shown beneficial effects on both the environment and traffic: it increases safety, reduces noise and pollution and restores the quality of the road as a public space.

This measure has been introduced since the 1990s in Helsinki and more recently in Bilbao, Stockholm, Paris, Barcelona Grenoble, Brussels and Graz ( to name just a few). The Netherlands and Spain have recently passed a national law to make it mandatory on all urban roads.

And in Italy? Olbia was the first Italian city to introduce the 30 km/h limit in city centre streets by June 2021. Experiments have been carried out in Milan and Turin. And the Bologna Città 30 project was presented in these days (only some streets will remain at a speed limit of 50 km/h), which includes an investment of 14 million euros in road safety. The objective is to make the city safer through communication and road education campaigns, the use of sanctioning devices, the creation of new pedestrian areas and, above all, a drive for connectivity and digital technologies.

Viasat, the Italian excellence in satellite and IoT security services, is well aware of this and guarantees all-round security for the vehicle and its occupants through increasingly high-performance solutions and services.

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