News | Sunday, 28 June 2009

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Malta registers EU’s lowest traffic deaths

Malta retained its record of low traffic deaths in Europe in 2008, according to the European Transport Safety Council.
At 15 deaths in 2008, Malta was the EU state with the lowest proportion of road deaths – 37 per million population.
Luxembourg, France and Portugal kept top positions in reducing traffic deaths by 49%, 48% and 47% respectively up to 2008. The three Baltic countries, Latvia (-43%), Estonia (-34%) and Lithuania (-29%) are taking the lead among the Central and Eastern European countries.
Some 39,000 people were killed in road traffic crashes in the European Union in 2008. This is 15,400 less than in 2001, when 54,400 people were killed on EU27 roads, but still far from the 25,000 deaths limit which the EU set for itself in its 2010 Road Safety Target.
In the EU there are 79 people killed per million inhabitants compared to 113 in 2001. Disparity in road death rates across Europe has decreased since 2001, and in 2008 there was no longer any EU country with more than 150 road deaths per million inhabitants.
Despite individual countries’ progress, the EU as a whole is likely to fail to reach its target for 2010. Reductions between 2001 and 2008 did not exceed 29% and the annual progress since 2001 has been only 4.4% on average. The ETSC says this could delay the EU in reaching the 2010 target until 2017.
The reduction in road deaths in 2008 can be partly attributed to reduced traffic volume following the recent economic recession and relatively high petrol prices earlier in the year.
Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK remain the safest European countries roadwise, behind Malta, where there are special reasons for its low road mortality.

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