Brazil sees major road safety improvement

Brazil is benefiting from a boost in its road safety levels. Official data shows that vehicle crashes accounted for 40,500 fatalities in 2013, a decrease of 10% from the previous year. The figures show that this is the biggest drop in road fatalities since 1998, when the death rate was reduced by 13%. The road safety gain has been achieved largely by much tougher enforcement of existing rules banning drink driving and speeding. Brazil’s road safety levels are not good, with an average of 20 fatalities/100,0
November 14, 2014 Read time: 1 min
Brazil is benefiting from a boost in its road safety levels. Official data shows that vehicle crashes accounted for 40,500 fatalities in 2013, a decrease of 10% from the previous year. The figures show that this is the biggest drop in road fatalities since 1998, when the death rate was reduced by 13%. The road safety gain has been achieved largely by much tougher enforcement of existing rules banning drink driving and speeding. Brazil’s road safety levels are not good, with an average of 20 fatalities/100,000 inhabitants, compared with an average of eight fatalities/100,000 inhabitants for developed countries. However this improvement is a notable gain and has been achieved by a proven approach that has shown similar benefits in France and Portugal in recent years.

Related Content

  • World road safety status hits plateau
    May 27, 2016
    The World Health Organisation has published a new report on road safety during 2015. Its global status report uses information from 180 countries and indicates that the total number of road traffic deaths has plateaued at 1.25 million/year worldwide. The annual global road fatality rate has remained roughly the same since 2007, a point worth noting considering growing vehicle numbers around the globe. Low income countries remain those of most concern for this report as in previous years. But some progress i
    Read More
  • Concern at poor US road safety
    August 29, 2018
    Concern is being expressed in the US by the National Safety Council (NSC), which believes the country’s road safety is making no progress. According to the NSC, the current trends suggest that the US will see no reductions in road deaths for the third consecutive year. Its preliminary estimates suggest that the US will again have a road fatality rate of around 40,000 for 2018. There were around 18,720 road fatalities for the first six months of 2018, according to the NSC’s data, compared with around 18,770
    Read More
  • Single vehicle crash risk too high in Europe
    July 13, 2017
    Research shows that single vehicle crashes (SVCs) are a serious problem for road users in Europe. According to crash analysis, around 7300 road users in the EU were killed during 2015 in SVCs. The data also shows that around 94,800 people were killed in SVCs in the EU over the last 10 years.
    Read More
  • US road safety concern for 2017
    February 23, 2018
    The US is making only slow progress with regard to road safety. During 2017 there were 40,100 road deaths, according to the National Safety Council. This is the second year that deaths from motor vehicle crashes have topped 40,000. There has been a slight improvement for 2017 from 2016 with road deaths dropping 1%. However 2016 was a poor year for road safety, with a 6% gain in road deaths over 2015. This means that the figures for 2017 represent a 6% increase in road deaths from two years before in 2015.
    Read More

Highlighted Content