How Traffic Fatality Rates Differ in Europe

Even though the European Union has seen reductions in road deaths over the last few years, 19,000 people were still killed in road traffic accidents across all Member States in 2020. That equates to 42 road deaths per million inhabitants, a 17 percent decrease on 2019 - largely due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic according to the European Commission.

Countries in Eastern Europe continue to have the highest death rate and in 2020, Romania had 85 deaths per million of its inhabitants, the highest rate of any EU Member State by far. Latvia and Bulgaria followed with 73 and 67, respectively. The lowest rates found in Europe were chiefly in non-EU countries, with Iceland, the UK and Norway at the other end of the scale with 22, 22 and 17 deaths per million, respectively.