The EU Commission published new statistics which show once more: The EU has the safest roads worldwide. Nevertheless, there is still a lot to do: Between 2001 and 2010, the number of fatalities has decreased significantly every year. However, since 2010, the annual changes became less and less significant.
Furthermore, with 51.5 road fatalities per one million inhabitants, Europe has the lowest fatality rate for any region in the world. In comparison: the ratio amounts to 106 in the United States. The number of serious injuries is way higher, as the new statistics show. In 2015, the Commission was able to gather comparable data from the Member States for the first time.
The EU wants to halve the number of fatalities until 2020. In order to realise this, the EU is working on several areas related to road safety, like technical innovations, a harmonised legal framework and a platform that connects and implements initiatives and projects in the civil society (European Road Safety Charter).
More information about the statistics and the actions of the EU is provided in this memo by the EU Commission.