Skip to main content

Europe’s road safety improves

Europe’s road safety is seeing steady improvement.
By MJ Woof September 1, 2020 Read time: 1 min
Road crashes, injuries and fatalities have been reduce in Europe over the last 14 years - image © courtesy of Mike Woof

Road safety in Europe has seen steady improvement over the last 14 years, according to the latest official data. While vehicle numbers have continued to increase during this period, fatalities from road crashes have fallen.

Since 2006, vehicle numbers have increased by around 45 million, a jump of 16.8%, to around 312 million. However, in spite of this, road fatalities have fallen 42.4% to around 25,000.

This shows the continued gains in road safety through a series of measures. Eastern European nations have typically scored poorly for road safety but a range of measures have helped lower the casualty rate. Injuries and crashes have also been reduced.

Related Content

  • Europe’s drive for safer roads sets new targets
    January 9, 2019
    Europe’s drive for improved road safety will see new targets being set. Previous ambitious plans to reduce road casualty rates have not been achieved, so new strategies are being devised. The European Transport Safety Commission (ETSC) is setting out its latest plans. In 2010, the European Union renewed its commitment to improve road safety by setting a target of reducing road deaths by 50% by 2020, compared to 2010 levels. This target followed an earlier target set in 2001 to halve road deaths by 2010. A n
  • New Zealand is bucking the trend in road safety with increasing crashes
    June 4, 2015
    New Zealand is bucking the trend worldwide on improving road safety with an increase in crashes on its roads. The country saw 5.7 road deaths/100,000 people in 2014 according to the International Road Traffic and Accident Database, an increase of 16.1% from the previous year. This is the largest increase in the 28 countries surveyed, and largely reverses a 17% reduction from the previous year. The death toll on New Zealand’s roads so far in 2015 is 134, compared to 123 and 100 in the comparable periods of 2
  • Improved road safety in Irish capital
    April 9, 2014
    The latest data available through Pan European safety body TISPOL reveals that road fatality levels have reduced in the Dublin Region in recent years. However, the information shows that pedestrians are still at risk. Since 2008, almost 40% fatal road traffic collisions involve pedestrian fatalities. A Casualty Reduction campaign has been run in the Dublin Region to tackle the problem. A key police strategy has been to improve pedestrian awareness of the dangers. Chief Superintendent Aidan Reid, head of Dub
  • Angola’s high crash rate costing lives but is reducing
    November 1, 2016
    Angola’s high rate of road crashes is costing lives. Official data reveals that 2,189 people were killed in road crashes over the first nine months of 2016. Meanwhile 8,518 were injured in 8,452 road crashes in this period. However there is some overall improvement in road safety in Angola as the fatality rate for this time period is 827 lower than first nine months of 2015. In addition, the number of crashes dropped by 3,453 while the number of injuries fell by 3,443, showing that the country’s road safety