Skip to main content

Road safety concerns for France and Portugal following increased crashes

There is concern in France and Portugal following the publication of data showing increases in road deaths. Both countries have been highly effective in recent years in reducing road deaths and injuries following campaigns to crack down on speeding and drink driving. The recent increases in deaths and injuries from road crashes have been of major concern as a result.
August 18, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
There is concern in France and Portugal following the publication of data showing increases in road deaths. Both countries have been highly effective in recent years in reducing road deaths and injuries following campaigns to crack down on speeding and drink driving. The recent increases in deaths and injuries from road crashes have been of major concern as a result.

In France a high-level ministerial committee will address the rise in road deaths. The interministerial committee for road safety (CISR) will be held at the end of the summer, tasked with finding solutions to reducing road deaths, which have risen by 3.5%. It will be the first time since 2011 that such a commission has met.

Meanwhile in Portugal, data for 2015 so far shows that road deaths are up nearly 10% on 2014. During the first seven months of this year, 277 people died in collisions on Portuguese roads, 25 more than the same period of 2014, according to the National Road Safety Authority (ANSR). Fatalities increased 9.9% over 2014 while collisions increased by 5.3%. There were a total of 68,845 collisions logged between January and July this year, up 3,472 on the first seven months of 2014. There was also a 5% increase in serious injuries over the period, with a 57 more people suffering injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation.

Related Content

  • Distraction poses increasing risk to driving safety
    July 21, 2014
    In the UK a number of road safety campaigning groups are warning that driver distraction from mobile phones will become a bigger killer than drink driving by 2015. While cellphone use by drivers is banned in the UK, penalties are still light and enforcement lax. Drivers still frequently use cellphones while behind the wheel. Suggestions have been made to double the penalties facing offenders, but if this ruling is accepted it will still take time to implement. And some say these tougher penalties are still
  • Safety for off-road vehicles
    November 14, 2018
    A new report has highlighted the risk of crashes involving ATVs being operated off-road by young drivers. According to data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in the US, ATV injuries led to over 2 million visits to hospital emergency departments in the period between 2000 and 2015. In 2015 alone, there were 108,000 visits to emergency rooms in the US, as a result of ATV crashes.
  • Tackling Europe’s urban road safety problems
    June 12, 2019
    Urban road safety is a key problem in Europe, an issue that needs to be addressed as a priority. That is the finding of a new report by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC). The ETSC’s report reveals that road deaths on urban roads decreased at around half the rate of those on rural roads over the period 2010-2017. The report also shows that vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, account for 70% of those killed and seriously injured on urban roads. Dovilė Adminaitė-
  • Drink driving a concern for the UK
    August 28, 2019
    The rate of road crashes from drink driving remains a serious concern in the UK. In 2017, there were 220 road deaths in the UK attributable to drink driving, according to the latest figures from the Department for Transport (DfT), the same as for the previous year. However, there were 1,110 crashes caused by drink driving, an increase from the 1,010 from the previous year. In all, there were 8,600 deaths and serious injuries from road crashes in 2017, a drop from the 9,040 of the previous year but still hig