Croatian tunnels meet EU safety rules

Most Croatian road tunnels already meet EU tunnel safety rules, which will come into effect in 2014, the Croatian Automobile Club (HAK) said earlier this week presenting the results of this year's European tunnel safety test EuroTAP which ranked the Croatian tunnel Sveti Rok third safest among 26 tunnels in 13 countries.

Croatia has 45 kilometres of road tunnels, of which 22 tunnels are longer than one kilometre, HAK's EuroTAP project coordinator Darko Brozovic said.

Brozovic said that all Croatian tunnels were excellent, as confirmed by the results of EuroTAP tests over the last few years.

This year's EuroTAP test was carried out from April 12 to May 20 by a consortium of 16 national clubs from 15 European countries headed by the German specialised company DMT GmbH & Co.

The Duplex tunnel in France was ranked first, followed by Spain's Cantalobos and Croatia's Sveti Rok. The Hvalfjordur tunnel in Iceland finished at the bottom of the ranking.

The test showed that 40 per cent of the inspected tunnels did not score highly, a fifth did not have appropriate lighting and loudspeakers, many lacked hydrants, had dark walls and poorly marked evacuation routes.


(Hina)