Statistics Explained

Archive:Transport accident statistics

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Data from January 2014 (road, rail); May 2014 (air); June 2014 (inland waterways). Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.

Safety and security are of primary concern for any transport system. According to Eurostat statistics on the causes of death, the number of people in the European Union (EU) who died as a result of transport accidents (covering all transport modes) fell by 42 % between 2000 and 2010, accounting for 0.7 % of total deaths in 2010.

Figure 1: People killed in road accidents, 2008
(persons killed per million inhabitants) - Source: Eurostat (tsdtr420), European Commission CARE database (Community Database on Road Accidents)
Table 1: Rail accidents - number of fatalities, by type of victim and accident, EU-27, 2009
(number of persons) - Source: Eurostat (rail_ac_catvict)
Figure 2: Air transport accidents - number of fatalities, annual average 2007-2009 (1)
(persons killed) - Source: Eurostat (avia_ac_fatal)

Main statistical findings

The number of accidents in the EU-28 in 2012 for three transport modes were: 18 aviation accidents, 2 068 railway accidents and 133 inland water transportation accidents (data for 8 EU Member States: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). The total number of fatalities amounts to 3 from airplane accidents (fatalities from accidents on national territory regardless of the nationality of the aircraft operator); 1 133 from railway accidents, and 15 303 from road accidents (data for 15 out of the 28 EU Member States).

Railway accident statistics

In 2012, in the EU-28, 2 068 rail accidents occurred, a decrease of 9.9 % compared to 2010. Three countries reported more than 200 accidents in 2012 (Germany, Poland and Romania) and five, less than 20 (Ireland, Greece, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Finland). The majority of accidents (58.3 %) are accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion. Figure 1 shows the number of accidents by type for 2011 (data series for 2012 for the EU-28 is incomplete). Outside of the EU, data are also available for Norway which reported 19 accidents for 2012.

In the EU-28 in 2012, 36 accidents occurred involving the transport of dangerous goods. In 28 % of them there was a release of dangerous material. Italy reports the highest number of accidents (10, 1 of which included the release of dangerous material), followed by Germany (8, 4 of which included the release of dangerous material).

In 2012, 1 133 people were killed in railway accidents, accounting for 52.7 % of the total victims in the EU-28. Of the total number of victims, 12 % were passengers. A discouraging finding is that on average there was an increase in the number of suicides involving railways (2 997 suicides in 2012). The largest increases were reported for Romania (almost four times the number for 2006), Poland and Slovenia (almost three times the number for 2006).

Road accident statistics

Data on road accidents are available for 27 out of the 28 EU Member States (data are not available for Lithuania) for the period 1999–2012. Data for all EU-27 countries are only available for 2009. The number of persons killed in road accidents in 2009 equalled 34 441, a significant decrease compared to 1999 (45 846 persons killed; data for 17 out of 27 EU Member States). In 2011, Germany, France and Poland reported a high number of persons killed (over 3 000). In terms of persons killed per million inhabitants, Bulgaria and Greece had the highest values (Figure 2). The percentage of persons killed between the ages of 18 and 24 ranged from 7 % (Hungary, 2012 data) to 21 % (France, 2012 data). On average 37 % of the persons killed were aged between 25 and 49 (2012 data; average value for 15 countries).

In 2012 on average 7 % of the total road accident fatalities were killed on motorways (data for 14 countries), 39 % on urban roads (data for 15 countries) and 54 % on rural roads (data for 15 countries). The majority of people killed in road accidents were drivers (Table 2).

Inland waterway transportation accident statistics

Data on inland waterway transportation accidents are available for 8 countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania and Slovakia; complete data series for 2010–13). In 2013, 75 % of inland waterway transportation accidents took place in Romania (Figure 3; no data for Slovakia for 2013), followed by Austria (11.5 %). Romania reported the highest number of accidents for each year in the period 2006–13, with the exception of 2010 (32 accidents in Romania, 38 in Hungary). In the Czech Republic the number of accidents had decreased by 78 % in the period 1995–2013 (from 32 in 1995 to 7 in 2013).

In terms of transportation of dangerous goods, only 3 accidents were reported in 2013 (Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary).

Aviation accident statistics

In the EU-28 the number of injury accidents (accidents on national territory regardless of the nationality of the aircraft operator) decreased from 54 in 2008 to 18 in 2012. The year with the highest number of accidents was 2009 (103 in total), of which 59 (57 %) took place in the Netherlands and 10 (10 %) in Croatia.

In the past three years (2010–12) the number of fatalities in injury accidents (accidents occurring on national territory regardless of the nationality of the aircraft operator) has been very low (only 3 fatalities in the EU-28 in 2012). Figure 4 presents the number of fatalities from air transport accidents in each country, for the years 2007–09 and 2010–12. The highest number of fatalities for the period 2007–09 were observed in Spain (165 fatalities), and can be largely attributed to a flight that crashed just after take-off from Madrid’s Barajas International Airport, resulting in 154 fatalities (August 2008). The most recent fatal accident outside of the national territory was the crash of a flight from Brazil to France which resulted in 228 fatalities (June 2009).

Data sources and availability

Eurostat collects data on transport safety for EU Member States, EFTA and candidate countries. The data cover four transport modes: rail, road, inland waterways and air.

The legal basis for the collection of statistics on rail accidents is Regulation 91/2003 on rail transport statistics, amended by Regulation 1192/2003. The data are collected by the European Railway Agency (ERA), an agency formed to develop common technical specifications and common approaches to safety among EU Member States. ERA also monitors and reports on rail safety in the EU. The corresponding data are accessed by the Eurostat database and include information on rail accidents by type of accident, the release or not of dangerous goods, and by type of victim (killed or injured; personnel or other).

CARE is the European centralised database on road accidents which result in death or injury across the EU, developed on the basis of the Council Decision 93/704/EC. The major difference between CARE and most other existing international databases is the high level of disaggregation, i.e. CARE comprises detailed data on individual accidents as collected by the Member States. Data are available at both national and NUTS2 levels.

Data on inland waterway transportation safety (i.e. the number of accidents, total and those involving transport of dangerous goods) are available for 8 countries. Regarding aviation, safety-related data include the number of injury accidents and the number of fatalities in injury accidents. Both datasets have an incomplete data-series.

Context

There are three agencies in the EU dealing with safety in different transport modes: the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the European Railway Agency (ERA) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).

In 2002, the EU adopted a first set of new generation aviation safety rules based on the Regulation (EC) No 1592/2002, which were further extended in 2008 by the Regulation (EC) No 216/2008. In 2011, the European Commission launched a Communication on setting up an aviation safety management system for Europe (COM(2011) 670 final) aiming at improving EU-wide safety performance by identifying the main risks to aviation safety and taking action to address those risks in a coordinated fashion.

The main goals of the EU rail policies are to maintain high standards in railway transportation and align safety requirements EU-wide. A Railway Safety Directive (Directive 2004/49/EC) was launched in 2004, with the aim to ensure the development and improvement of safety on the Community’s railways and improved access to the market for rail transport services. This directive was amended three times, the latest being in 2009 (Directive 2009/149/EC) to set the common safety indicators that shall be reported annually by the safety authorities, starting from 2010.

The third maritime safety package was adopted by the European Parliament on 11 March 2009 and includes two regulations (Regulations No 391/2009 on common rules and standards for ship inspection and survey organisations, and No 392/2009 on the liability of carriers of passengers by sea in the event of accidents) and six directives. The main objective of the safety package is to restore the competitiveness of the maritime sector while benefiting only those operators who respect the safety standards, in particular by increasing the pressure on owners of sub-standard ships.

In July 2010, the European Commission adopted an ambitious Road Safety Programme (COM(2010) 389 final) which aims to cut road deaths in Europe in half in the next decade. The programme includes seven strategic objectives:

  • Improved safety measures for vehicles
  • Building safer road infrastructure
  • Boost smart technology
  • Strengthening education and training for road users
  • Better enforcement
  • Establishing a road injuries target
  • A new focus on motorcyclists

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Main tables

Railway transport (t_rail)
Road transport (t_road)
Inland waterways transport (t_iww)
Air transport (t_avia)

Database

Multimodal data (tran)
Transport safety (tran_sf)
Rail transport safety (tran_sf_rail)
Road transport safety (tran_sf_road)
Railway transport (rail)
Railway transport - accidents (rail_ac)
Inland waterways transport (iww)
Inland waterways - accidents (iww_ac)
Air transport (avia)
Air transport -accidents (avia_ac)

Dedicated section

Methodology / Metadata

Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)

Other information

External links

See also

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