ADAC (German Automobile Association) has investigated 16 tunnels that German vacationers use most. While doing so, they only accounted those tunnels longer than 1 km. Eight of these tunnels were in Italy, 5 in Austria and 3 were in Croatia.

According to the ADAC investigation half of these 16 tunnels do not even meet the minimum safety standards required by European Union. EU had given a deadline for the tunnels to be upgraded to at least a certain minimum level. That did not happen in 8 of the tunnels.

ADAC concludes that especially the tunnels in Italy are in dire, unsafe situation. ADAC says that tunnels in Italy are privately owned and the owners/operators do not invest the amount of money to maintain these tunnels. Six of these eight failed Italian tunnels are operated by Autostrade. Autostrade is also the operator of the Genoa's Morandi Bridge which collapsed on August 14, 2018 killing 43 motorists. The simple reason for the collapse was the lack of maintenance by the private operator. In Italian tunnels, falling concretes are a common site.

ADAC suspects very much that private operators also in future may not be spending the minimum investment to keep the tunnels safe. ADAC says the worst of the all bad Italian tunnels are the Giovi, Les Cretes and Castelletto tunnels. These tunnels lack emergency exits, breakdown bays and even very basic, easy to install things, like fire extinguishers or telephones. Without video surveillance, loudspeakers etc these tunnels lack almost every aspect of safety.

In Croatia, one of the 3 tunnels fails. The Učka tunnel does not meet European Union's minimum safety standards. There are no emergency exits, no phones, no loudspeakers and no external access for tunnel workers. ADAC also says that the number of lanes before and in the tunnel are different.

ADAC investigated a total of 5 Austrian tunnels. They were all in impeccable, perfect state.

If you would like to read the article with informing charts, please follow the link:

https://de.motor1.com/news/430306/adac-tunnelinspektion-2020-osterreich-italien/