EU road deaths fall to record low in 2012

12.00 | 28 March 2013 | | 9 comments

Road fatalities across the EU decreased by 9% in 2012 compared with the previous year, according to provisional figures published by the European Commission.

2012 saw the fewest number of people killed in road traffic collisions since the EU started collecting road casualty data.

Vice-president Siim Kallas, commissioner for transport, said: “2012 was a landmark year for European road safety, with the lowest ever number of road deaths recorded.

“A 9% decrease means that 3,000 lives were saved last year. It is hugely encouraging to see these kinds of results. Still 75 people die on Europe’s roads every day, so there is no room for complacency. We have ambitious goals to cut EU road deaths in half by 2020 and we need to keep up this momentum to get there.

“Road deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. We need a strategy to bring down the number of serious road injuries everywhere in the EU.”

Country by country statistics show that the number of road deaths still varies greatly across the EU. The countries with the lowest number of road fatalities remain the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark, reporting around 30 deaths per million people.

Statistics for 2011 saw an increase in the number of killed vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, motorcyclists and elderly people. However, based on the provisional data, the number of vulnerable road user fatalities decreased substantially in 2012.

The European Road Safety Action Programme 2011-2020 sets out challenging plans to reduce the number of road deaths on Europe’s roads by half in the next 10 years. It contains ambitious proposals focussed on making improvements to vehicles, infrastructure, and road users’ behaviour.

The European Commission has also published a document on serious road traffic injuries outlining the next steps towards a comprehensive EU strategy on serious road injuries. It includes: a common definition of serious road traffic injury (applicable from 2013); a way forward for Member States to improve data collection on serious road accidents; the principle of adopting an EU-level target for the reduction of serious road traffic injuries.

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    I agree with Peter, though overall the ratios of K, SI and Slight injuries are more like 1 to 10 to 50, but with deaths roughly 0.5 to 10 to 50 in large congested areas, primarily London.

    The SI range of severity, as defined, is indeed far too wide, it is nonsensical that a broken little finger contributes to the same extent to SI numbers as a death after 31 days.


    Idris Francis Fight Back With Facts Petersfield
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    Fatalities in my patch make up 0.05% of the casualty problem and serious injuries another 11%. Figures going down or up can be as simple as from 1 to zero and vice versa. We have been looking at sub dividing serious, which currently means dead after 30 days down to a broken finger. Until we get a realistic list measurable through professionally trained medical staff we will be stuck with the under pressure police officer ticking a box. In this day and age we should be able to redefine serious and slight so that our stats and targets make sense.


    Peter London
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    Casualty trends are undeniably and strongly linked to the economy and hence the state of mind of drivers – see Al Gullon’s definitive analyses at http://www.alsaces.ca/

    Comparisons across the Western world show booms and busts at different times coincide with local increases and reductions changes in casualty trends. Several graphs on my site clearly show these effects for each recession I have lived through since Suez onwards.


    Idris Francis Fight Back With Facts Petersfield
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    Sorry Dave, I don’t tink there’s any link at all between a ‘recession’ and how people behave on the road. It is bizarre to suggest that some people will make an effort to ‘look further ahead and pay more attention to other road users’ when (we are told) the economy is suffering. If these people can do it then, why can’t they do it all the time?


    Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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    The recession hit in 2007 and we immediately saw larger falls in road deaths for the first five years than had occurred for more than a decade previous to 2007 (See figure 1 http://speedcamerareport.co.uk/05_gb_road_safety.htm). As we move further from the initial large effect of the recession, and as its effect subsides, other factors will inevitably become more prominent. 2012 is half a decade from the start of the recession.

    The evidence clearly shows a strong correlation, with good reason for this to have the same causal roots, between recessions and larger than normal improvements in road safety.

    Did the period 2007 to 2011 have the greatest reductions in road deaths we’ve ever seen, or was it the 2nd best to the recession in the early 1990s? Either way, it must be fair to conclude that recessions lead to the best road safety improvements we’ve ever had.


    Dave, Slough
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    KSI figures conceal more than they reveal. You can have the most horrendous crash yet walk away completely unharmed, or have a gentle bump and it’s all over. Much better to tell us the number of cost collisions, where an Insurance company has had to pay out, as that would tell us a lot about the trends in the underlying safety of the system. You would have to exclude all the bumps in car parks, but it would give us a good idea of how things are going.


    Duncan MacKillop, Stratford on Avon
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    Dave
    With regard to your last sentence, despite the recession, here in the UK we’re not seeing ‘the best road safety improvements we’ve ever had’. DfT stats to the end of Q3 (Sept 2012) show a 2% increase in killed and seriously injured casualties compared with the previous 12-month period. Here’s the link:
    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/83000/road-accidents-and-safety-quarterly-estimates-q3-2012.pdf

    I’m not drawing any conclusions as to why this should be, merely pointing out that your statement is not quite correct as far as the UK is concerned.


    Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety GB newsfeed
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    Hugh is correct but we also know that every time there is a recession, or even just a financial down turn, road safety improves far more than at other times. Therefore we should expect “road deaths (to) fall to record low” during the worst recession in our lifetime. One theory: http://www.roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/2733.html

    Another theory is that drivers need to conserve fuel and therefore try to accelerate and brake less. This requires looking further ahead and paying more attention to other road users, improving safety as a side effect. We ought to be doing this all of the time but it is human nature to only pay sufficient attention as a threat requires (and we could not live our lives if we didn’t).

    It might be seen as somewhat ironic that recessions, which cause cutbacks in funding for road safety, actually lead to the best road safety improvements we’ve ever had!


    Dave, Slough
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    Yes – good news on the one hand but a reduction in fatalities is not the be all and end all. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all driving safer – it’s more a reflection on safer cars with respect to the occupants and the peds they hit; the responses of the emergency services; subsequent health care etc. The consequences and severity of road traffic collisions can depend on so much, but the underlying causes of the collisions in the first place are still there.


    Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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