Skip to main content

Improvement in road safety in many counties worldwide

Official data shows an improvement in road safety across Europe as well as many other key nations worldwide. Of the 36 nations worldwide contributing data on road safety, the consensus is that conditions are improving, albeit with greater effect in some countries. Some countries have been particularly effective in reducing road deaths in this period, most notably Iceland which has seen a drop of 71.9% in road deaths. Spain, Denmark, Portugal and Ireland have also seen huge improvements in road safety with
April 13, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Official data shows an improvement in road safety across Europe as well as many other key nations worldwide. Of the 36 nations worldwide contributing data on road safety, the consensus is that conditions are improving, albeit with greater effect in some countries.

Some countries have been particularly effective in reducing road deaths in this period, most notably Iceland which has seen a drop of 71.9% in road deaths. Spain, Denmark, Portugal and Ireland have also seen huge improvements in road safety with reductions in road deaths of 67.1%, 66.5%, 65% and 61% respectively.

In all, 14 countries have seen a drop in road deaths in the 55-45% range during this period. These are France, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Germany Sweden, Greece, the Czech Republic, Japan, the UK, Hungary, Italy, Belgium, South Korea and Austria.

Some countries have been less successful however in cutting road deaths, with Jamaica achieving a drop of 22.2%, the USA a drop of 20%, Chile a drop of 10.3% and Colombia a drop of just 9.6%. Most shocking of all however is the figure for Malaysia, which has seen a 14.6% increase in road deaths during the 200-20012 period.

Related Content

  • Checking out Europe's motorway service stations
    February 14, 2012
    A survey of a number of Europe's motorway filling stations have thrown up surprising results: some good, some bad. Experts from EuroTest have travelled almost 34,000km to check out 77 filling stations along the most important travel routes in Europe. Keeping a close eye on cameras and staff that might "blow their cover," the results they brought home with them showed that not a single facility [visited] warranted a very good rating.
  • Safety: 'roads a major factor'
    July 23, 2012
    Road infrastructure has a core role to play in improving road safety and accident statistics often understate this. Marco Mongiello reports Everybody agrees that road safety is a very important issue. In 2006 in the European Union (EU 25) there were 38,400 casualties and 1,700,000 road injuries, with a total cost of E160 billion. For most people there are no doubts: the driver's behaviour is to blame. However, "road infrastructure has a core role to play in improving road safety and this has been recognised
  • Italian crash rate reducing
    May 24, 2016
    An in-depth analysis of crash statistics from Italy shows that road safety is improving in the country, albeit slowly. The Italian National Statistiscs Institute has published the yearly report (2014) covering road crashes. The data reveals that in 2014 there were 1777,031 crashes involving injuries. This represents a drop of 2.5% compared with the figures for 2013. In all 3,381 people were killed in road crashes in Italy during 2014, a drop of 0.6% compared with 2013. The number of serious injuries from ro
  • Western construction firms operating in developing nations face extra challenges
    January 9, 2024
    Contracting firms carrying out road construction works in developing nations can face extra challenges - Gordon Feller reports