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.

Highway & Network Management

Related Content

  • Motorcycle-Guardrail Crashes: How can the risk of severe injury and fatality be reduced?
    July 23, 2012
    The problem: motorcyclist fatalities can occur from a variety of accidents. But in the United States in 2005, motorcyclists comprised 42% of fatalities due to guardrail collisions, whereas only 3% of vehicles on the roads were motorcycles (Gabler, 2007). More motorcyclists were killed in guardrail collisions than passengers of any other vehicle type in 2005 (Gabler, 2007). Guardrails cannot simply be removed to protect motorcyclists. However, improvements need to be made in several areas in order to keep mo
    Read More
  • Vietnam’s safer roads in 2020
    October 7, 2020
    Vietnam sees a road safety improvement in 2020.
    Read More
  • TISPOL 2017: Europe’s road safety record suffers as austerity bites hard
    December 21, 2017
    Police budgets are being slashed, staff numbers are falling and Europe’s long-term trend towards ever-fewer road deaths has ground to a halt. Does Europe’s road network face a far more dangerous future? Geoff Hadwick reports from TISPOL 2017 in Manchester, UK. Europe’s road safety record is under threat. Lower and lower funding levels have become a very serious, and very worrying, problem for the EU’s traffic police bosses. They know that they must find new ways to focus road users on changing their beha
    Read More
  • Fatalities increased on US roads during 2012
    July 5, 2013
    Cause for concern comes from the US where the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA) has revealed an increase in road fatalities during 2012. The NHTSA’s statistical projection of traffic fatalities suggests that 34,080 people died in vehicle traffic crashes in 2012, an increase of about 5.3% over the 32,367 killed in 2011.
    Read More

Highlighted Content