Road Fatalities and Injuries Decreasing

Publication date: 11 January 2010

Preliminary road safety figures released by the FIA European Bureau point to a continued reduction of both road fatalities and road injuries. However, governments must remain vigilant in order to maintain this positive trend.
 
Preliminary figures are for the first six months of 2009 versus the first six months of 2008. Twenty FIA clubs contributed to the report. Preliminary figures were collected from different sources. In Italy, they were collected by Polizia Stradale for highways and main extra-urban roads.

It is important to note there are no harmonized European definitions of fatalities and injuries. Therefore, preliminary figures need to be treated with care.

Nonetheless, it is becoming clear the European Union will not reach its target of reducing fatalities by half by 2010. However, most countries are improving, and it is clear they should continue their efforts.

Road Fatalities

When analysing preliminary figures, it is striking that road fatalities are decreasing in many surveyed countries by around 10% or more.

The best performers are Norway (-29%), Sweden (-24%) and Italy (-22%). Positive results for Norway and Sweden are partly due to a bad previous year in Norway and less traffic due to the financial crisis in Sweden. In Italy, figures only include accidents on highways and main extra-urban roads.

The worst performers were France (+1%), Belgium (-3%) and Austria (-1%). In Belgium, the annual figure of road deaths has been stagnating for some time. The road death toll in Austria can be explained by the fact that road users experienced a mild winter and did not recognise it as such.

Road Injuries
Also road injuries have strongly decreased in the first half of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.

The best performers are Denmark (-18%), Belgium (-16%), the United Kingdom and Spain (both -11%). In Denmark, the better performance compares to two previous very bad years. In Belgium, it seems the severity of road accidents is diminishing even though the number of road accidents is still about the same (±50.000/year).

Official sources speculate the UK’s performance is a statistical anomaly. The weather however may also have played a part during a very snowy week in February 2009, leading to a lower number of both fatalities and injuries. Spain’s performance can be explained by three factors: (1) the introduction of the penalty point driving licence, (2) the modification of the penal code and (3) increased implementation of speed radars.

The worst performers are Malta (-4%), Austria (-4%), Serbia (-3%) and Portugal (-2%). Austria had more road accidents during that period due to a mild winter that road users did not recognise as such.