Spanish road safety shows continued improvement

Provisional data from Spain shows a continuing drop in fatal road crashes during 2014. Of note is the fact that the country has already achieved the 2020 target of reducing the death rate to 36/1,000,000 inhabitants. The drop in the death rate was slight, just 2%, but still of importance. The provisional data shows that there were 1,131 fatalities and 4,874 people seriously injured in 2014. And this last is of note as the number of people seriously injured in crashes dropped 8% during 2014 compared with the
January 5, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Provisional data from Spain shows a continuing drop in fatal road crashes during 2014. Of note is the fact that the country has already achieved the 2020 target of reducing the death rate to 36/1,000,000 inhabitants. The drop in the death rate was slight, just 2%, but still of importance. The provisional data shows that there were 1,131 fatalities and 4,874 people seriously injured in 2014. And this last is of note as the number of people seriously injured in crashes dropped 8% during 2014 compared with the previous year. Also of note is that 981 of the road fatalities occurred in non-urban areas.

This casualty reduction has also been achieved despite an increase in traffic volumes. The number of long distance journeys made by road increased by 5.5 million in Spain during 2014. Analysis of the incident data shows the risks posed by older vehicles. The average age of vehicles involved in fatal crashes was 12.3 years for cars and 11.8 years for vans. The data slow showed that there was a rise from 47 to 92 in the number of fatalities in vans; and there were 131 deaths in cars and 23 deaths in vans of people not wearing seat belts.

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