Road transportation in Europe is a high value sector area, having a turn-over of almost €2.5 trillion in 2006, with an estimated 293 million vehicles travelling on over 5 million kilometres of road-network. In the same year, just under 43,000 people were killed on European roads. In 2001, the European Commission drafted an objective to reduce the present number of deaths by half to 25,000 by 2010. Rural roads constitute a large percentage of the total 5 million kilometres of route network throughout Europe. The European Commission has promoted a series of initiatives, research programmes as well as directives to help improve safety along European route networks. The road infrastructure directive is due to be implemented across Europe in December 2010. One of the four corner-stones of this directive revolves around road safety inspection (RSI). Road safety inspection procedures along rural road corridors vary across Europe.