High tech safety a factor as European road deaths fall to 43% of 2001 level

Road traffic collisions in Europe killed 12,000 people in 2012, according to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), a non-governmental organisation. That represents a fall of 16,000 fatalities since 2001, when 28,000 people were killed.

The ETSC is crediting a number of factors in the improvement, chief amongst them stricter law enforcement and the addition of ever more high-tech safety features in our cars.

Spain and Latvia are the two most-improved nations in the EU, cutting their road deaths by two-thirds, but there are still a few road safety black spots across the continent. Poland is currently in last place, with 11 deaths per billion kilometres travelled, which compares to around two people killed per billion kilometres in the UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

In spite of the improvements, the ETSC says that it is still unacceptable that 12,000 people a year are dying on European roads, and it is pushing for further improvements both in technology and in enforcement, chiefly in the areas of seat-belt use and drink driving. The ETSC is calling for mandatory seat-belt reminder warnings for all seats in a car, as well as alcohol interlocks for those convicted of drink-driving offences. An interlock will prevent a car from being
started unless the driver
passes a breathalyser test first. In 2012, 5,600 people were killed as a result of driving when drunk.

The seat-belt reminders could save around 900 lives a year. In spite of it being mandatory for all passengers to wear seat-belts across the EU since 1991, it’s estimated that as many as 12 per cent of front-seat passengers and 26 per cent of rear-seat passengers still don’t wear them.

Sadly, the highest risk group amongst European drivers remains males aged between 20 and 25. Two-thirds of people killed on European roads are male.