Accidents and injuries statistics

Data extracted in July 2024.

Planned article update: November 2025.

Highlights

In the EU, 164 000 people died from accidents in 2021, some 3.1% of all deaths.

In 2021, 2 930 people died from assaults in the EU, with males more than twice as likely as females to die this way.

Accidents accounted for a larger share of deaths among younger people in the EU: in 2021, close to a third of all deaths among people aged 15 to 19 years resulted from accidents.

Share of all deaths caused by accidents, 2021

This article presents an overview of European Union (EU) statistics related to accidents, including deaths from transport accidents, other causes of death from accidental injuries, and healthcare for injuries. Deaths from assault are also covered.

Unintentional injuries typically result from transport, workplace, home or leisure time accidents. Intentional injuries result from interpersonal violence (assault) and self-harm: note that statistics on self-harm can be found in an article on mental health and aren't covered here.

This article is 1 of a set of statistical articles concerning health status in the EU which forms part of an online publication on Health in the European Union – facts and figures.

Full article

Deaths from accidents, injuries and assault

In 2021, there were 164 039 deaths in the EU resulting from accidents, equivalent to 3.1% of all deaths among residents. In Slovenia, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium and Luxembourg, the share of deaths from accidents in 2021 was at least 4.0%. The highest share among the EU countries was recorded in Slovenia (5.8%), which was 1.4 percentage points (pp) higher than in France (which recorded the 2nd highest share; 4.4%). Accidents accounted for 1.0% of all deaths in Bulgaria, which was the only EU country where the share was below 2.0%.

Table 1: Causes of death – accidents (including the sequelae of transport and other accidents), residents, 2021
Source: Eurostat (hlth_cd_aro) and (hlth_cd_asdr2)

In 2021, a higher share of deaths among males than among females in the EU resulted from accidents (3.5% compared with 2.7%). This pattern was repeated across all of the EU countries except for Slovenia and the Netherlands, where the share among females was higher than that among males. The most pronounced gender differences were in the Baltic countries where the differences between the sexes – with higher shares among males – were at least 2.6 pp.

Males were more likely than females to die from all types of accidents

The EU's standardised death rate for accidents was 33.8 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants in 2021. The death rate for males (46.8 per 100 000 male inhabitants) was just over double that for females (23.0 per 100 000 female inhabitants) – see Table 1. In all EU countries, the standardised death rate for males in 2021 was higher than that for females, most notably in the Baltic countries, Romania and Finland where the difference was more than 50 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants.

While accidents were a more common cause of death at advanced ages, the difference between standardised death rates for people aged less than 65 years and those aged 65 years and over was relatively narrow compared with other causes of death. In 2021, the EU's standardised death rate from accidents for those aged 65 years and over was 9 times as high as the rate for people aged less than 65 years; for all causes of death the standardised death rate for those aged 65 years and over was 21 times as high as for the younger age group.

A more detailed analysis of causes of death is presented in Table 2 for a selection of accidents, as well as assault. Among males and females, the 3 leading causes of death from accidents were falls, the miscellaneous category of other accidents (including, for example, burns, electrocution, crushing and overexertion) and transport accidents. For the causes of death shown in this table, standardised death rates in 2021 for females were rarely higher than those for males. The only exceptions among the EU countries were falls in the Netherlands, accidental drowning and submersion in Malta, and assault in Austria, Slovenia and Czechia. The rates were the same for males and females for assault in Germany and for other accidents in Luxembourg.

Table 2: Standardised death rates – accidents and assault, 2021
(per 100 000 male/female inhabitants)
Source: Eurostat (hlth_cd_asdr2)

In 2021, for transport accidents, the standardised death rates for males and for females were more than twice as high as the EU average in Romania where among males there were 18.4 deaths from transport accidents per 100 000 male inhabitants and for females there were 4.9 deaths. Latvia reported the second highest standardised death rate for both sexes (15.9 for males and 4.4 for females). The lowest standardised death rates for transport accidents among both sexes was reported by Malta, which reported 2.1 deaths from transport accidents per 100 000 male inhabitants and 0.4 deaths per 100 000 female inhabitants.

For falls, standardised death rate among males was more than 3 times as high as the EU average in Slovenia (52.0 deaths per 100 000 male inhabitants), while it was more than 4 times as high for females (44.3 per 100 000 female inhabitants). The lowest rates for males were recorded in Ireland (7.8 deaths from falls per 100 000 male inhabitants, followed by Czechia, Italy, Bulgaria and Spain (all below 9.0 deaths from falls per 100 000 male inhabitants). Similarly, the lowest rate for females was reported in Czechia (3.8 per 100 000 female inhabitants), followed by Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain and Italy (all below 5.0 deaths from falls per 100 000 female inhabitants).

In 2021, the standardised death rate for accidental drowning and submersion among males was highest in Latvia, where there were 10.1 deaths per 100 000 male inhabitants, which was more than 5.5 times as high as the EU average. Among females this rate was more than 5 times as high as the EU average in Latvia and Romania, which both recorded over 2.7 deaths per 100 000 female inhabitants. The lowest rates for males were recorded in Malta and Luxembourg (both 0.4 deaths per 100 000 male inhabitants) and in Cyprus and Luxembourg for females (0.0).

For accidental poisoning and exposure to noxious substances, standardised death rates for males ranged from 1.1 in Italy to 24.0 deaths per 100 000 male inhabitants in Estonia which was more than 6 times as high as the EU average in Estonia. Among females this rate ranged from 0.4 in Italy to 6.8 deaths per 100 000 female inhabitants in Estonia, which was more than 5 times as high as the EU average.

The highest standardised death rates for assault among males were in Latvia

In 2021, 2 930 people died from assaults in the EU, equivalent to 0.06% of the total number of deaths. The standardised death rate for assault was 0.7 per 100 000 inhabitants across the EU, with the rate for males approximately twice as high as for females (0.9 deaths per 100 000 male inhabitants compared with 0.4 deaths per 100 000 female inhabitants). Among males, the highest standardised death rate for assaults in the EU countries was recorded for Latvia, at 5.6 per 100 000 male inhabitants, 6.4 times as high as the EU average. Among females, the rate in Latvia was 1.7 per 100 000 inhabitants, 4.0 times as high as the EU average. Rates that were at least twice as high as the EU average were also observed in Cyprus and Lithuania for both sexes and in Estonia and Romania for males.

Standardised death rates for assault in 2021 were generally higher among males than females, although the 2 rates were the same in Germany, slightly higher for females than for males in Czechia, and notably higher for females in Slovenia and Austria. Among the EU countries where the rate was higher for males than for females, the most pronounced gender differences were observed in Latvia and Estonia, where the difference between the sexes was at least 3.0 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants.

Analysis by age for deaths from accidents

Accidents can by particularly fatal for elderly individuals and lead to a serious decline in the health. In 2021, 71.4% of all deaths from accidents in the EU were among people aged 65 years and over. On the other hand, a relatively high proportion of people who died under the age of 65 years died from accidents. The share of deaths caused by accidents out of the total number of deaths was more than twice as high for people aged less than 65 years (5.7%) than it was for people aged 65 years and over (2.6%).

For the 4 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 and 34 years, accidents were the single most common cause of death in the EU when comparing with the other major categories in the 10th revision of the international statistical classification of diseases and related health problems(ICD-10); this was also the case for young people aged between 1 and 4 years. In 2021, accidents accounted for more than 30.0% of all deaths in the EU among people aged 15 to 19 years and 20 to 24 years (see Figure 1).

Looking across the age groups from youngest to oldest, there was a large jump in the number (and also the share) of deaths from accidents when moving from the age group 10 to 14 years to the age group 15 to 19 years, with 4.3 times as many deaths from accidents in the older of these age groups than in the younger group. This large jump can, in part, be attributed to deaths from transport accidents, which alone accounted for more than a fifth (21.4%) of all deaths among people aged 15 to 19 years.

Figure 1: Share of all deaths caused by accidents, EU, 2021
(%)
Source: Eurostat (hlth_cd_aro)

Analysis by age for deaths from assaults

Compared with accidents, the age profile of people in the EU dying from assaults was even more skewed away from older people: around 4 out of 5 (80.3%) people killed by assaults in 2021 were aged less than 65 years. The 5-year age range with the highest number of deaths from assaults was among people aged 50 to 54 years, which recorded 277 deaths from assaults in the EU in 2021. Nevertheless, as a share of the total number of deaths within each age group, deaths from assaults were most common for the age group 20 to 24 years (2.0% of all deaths for this age group).

Healthcare for injuries, poisoning and other consequences of external causes

Austria, Germany and Bulgaria had the highest number of in-patient discharges for patients treated for accidents and injuries (relative to population size)

There were around 5.4 million in-patients with injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes (ICD codes S00 to T98; hereafter referred to as accidents and injuries) discharged from hospitals in the EU in 2021 (2020 data for Malta; no recent data for Denmark, Greece and Luxembourg). In-patient discharges of those treated for accidents and injuries accounted for at least 10.0% of the total number of in-patient discharges in Austria and Finland, while they accounted for 6.0% in Bulgaria and 4.8% in Romania.

Relative to population size, Austria, Germany and Bulgaria recorded the highest number of in-patient discharges for those treated for accidents and injuries (see Figure 2 for data availability), with 2 389, 2 140 and 1 752 per 100 000 inhabitants, respectively. The lowest ratios, among the EU countries, were recorded in Portugal and Romania (683 and 634 per 100 000 inhabitants, respectively).

Figure 2: Hospital discharge rates for in-patients with injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes, 2021
(per 100 000 inhabitants)
Source: Eurostat (hlth_co_disch2)

Particularly long average length of stay for in-patients with a fracture of the femur

Across the EU, in-patients with accidents and injuries spent a total of 38.9 million days in hospital in 2021 (2020 data for Malta; no recent data for Denmark, Greece and Luxembourg). An analysis of the average length of hospital stays for in-patients treated for injuries, poisonings and certain other consequences of external causes shows that, in 2021, this value generally ranged from 4.2 days in Bulgaria up to 8.6 days in Belgium, the only counties above this range were Czechia, Italy and Portugal which reported 9.1, 9.7 and 10.3 days, respectively. Comparing the average length of stay in 2016 with that in 2021 (see Table 3 for data availability), most EU countries reported increases or decreases of less than 1.0 days. Czechia, Hungary, Cyprus and Finland (2016–20) recorded larger decreases (between 1.2 and 1.5 days lower in 2021 than 2016), while Malta (2016–20) recorded a larger increase (1.1 days higher in 2021 than 2016). There was no change observed in France or the Netherlands.

Table 3: In-patient average length of stay for injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes, 2016 and 2021
(days)
Source: Eurostat (hlth_co_inpst)

Table 3 also provides a more detailed analysis of the average length of hospital stays for in-patients diagnosed with 5 different types of accidents and injuries. In-patients with a fracture of the femur (code S72) tended to spend the highest average number of days in hospital; the highest average was recorded in Czechia (24.2 days) and the lowest in Sweden (6.4). Whereas those poisoned by drugs, medicaments and biological substances or treated for toxic effects (codes T36 to T65) generally spent the lowest average number of days in hospital, which ranged from 2.2 in Sweden to 7.7 in Portugal.

Source data for tables and graphs

Accidents and injuries: tables and figures

Data sources

Key concepts

The number of deaths from a particular cause of death can be expressed relative to the size of the population. A standardised (rather than crude) death rate can be compiled which is independent of the age and sex structure of a population: this is done as most causes of death vary significantly by age and according to sex and the standardisation facilitates comparisons of rates over time and between countries.

An in-patient is a patient who is formally admitted (or 'hospitalised') to an institution for treatment and/or care and stays for a minimum of 1 night or more than 24 hours in the hospital or other institution providing in-patient care. An in-patient or day care patient is discharged from hospital when formally released after a procedure or course of treatment (episode of care). A discharge may occur because of the finalisation of treatment, signing out against medical advice, transfer to another healthcare institution, or because of death.

Healthcare resources and activities

Statistics on healthcare activities (such as information on hospital discharges) are documented in this background article on Healthcare non-expenditure statistics - methodology which provides information on the scope of the data, its legal basis, the methodology employed, as well as related concepts and definitions.

For hospital discharges and the length of stay in hospitals, the International Shortlist for Hospital Morbidity Tabulation (ISHMT) is used to classify data from 2000 onwards, which is based on the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10); Chapter XIX covers injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes

S06 intracranial injury (ISHMT code 1901)
S00-S05, S07-S09 other injuries to the head (ISHMT code 1902)
S52 fracture of forearm (ISHMT code 1903)
S72 fracture of femur (ISHMT code 1904)
S82 fracture of lower leg, including ankle (ISHMT code 1905)
S10-S51, S53-S71, S73-S81, S83-T14, T79 other injuries (ISHMT code 1906)
T20-T32 burns and corrosions (ISHMT code 1907)
T36-T65 poisonings by drugs, medicaments and biological substances and toxic effects of substances chiefly nonmedicinal as to source (ISHMT code 1908)
T90-T98 sequelae of injuries, of poisoning and of other consequences of external causes (ISHMT code 1910)
remainder of S00-T98 other and unspecified effects of external causes (ISHMT code 1911)

For country specific notes on these data collections, please refer to the annexes at the end of the national metadata reports accessible from links at the beginning of the European metadata report.

The Healthcare non-expenditure statistics manual provides an overview of the classifications, both for mandatory variables and variables provided on a voluntary basis.

Causes of death

Statistics on causes of death provide information on mortality patterns, supplying information on developments over time in the underlying causes of death. This source is documented in more detail in this background article on Causes of death statistics - methodology which provides information on the scope of the data, its legal basis, the methodology employed, as well as related concepts and definitions.

Causes of death are classified according to the 86 causes in the European shortlist, which is based on the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10). Chapter XX of the ICD covers external causes of morbidity and mortality

V01 to X59 accidents
- V01 to V99 transport accidents
- W00 to X59 other external causes of accidental injury
  - W00 to W19 falls
  - W65 to W74 accidental drowning and submersion
  - X40 to X49 accidental poisoning by and exposure to noxious substances
  - other accidents
    - W20 to W49 exposure to inanimate mechanical forces
    - W50 to W64 exposure to animate mechanical forces
    - W75 to W84 other accidental threats to breathing
    - W85 to W99 exposure to electric current, radiation and extreme ambient air temperature and pressure
    - X00 to X09 exposure to smoke, fire and flames
    - X10 to X19 contact with heat and hot substances
    - X20 to X29 contact with venomous animals and plants
    - X30 to X39 exposure to forces of nature
    - X50 to X57 overexertion, travel and privation
    - X58 to X59 accidental exposure to other and unspecified factors
X85 to Y09 assault
Y85 to Y89 sequelae of external causes of morbidity and mortality
- Y85 sequelae of transport accidents
- Y86 sequelae of other accidents
- Y87 sequelae of intentional self-harm, assault and events of undetermined intent
  - Y87.1 sequelae of assault

Important note: for the statistics presented in this article, deaths from the sequelae of transport accidents are included under transport accidents, deaths from the sequelae of other accidents are included under other accidents. Equally, deaths from the sequelae of assault are included under assault. Sequelae denotes a chronic condition resulting from a certain disease or injury, and that may lead to death.

The causes of death statistics manual provides an overview of the definitions, classifications and variables, both for mandatory variables and variables provided on a voluntary basis.

Symbols

Tables in this article use the following notation

Value in italics	estimate or provisional data
Value is :	not available

Context

With 164 000 deaths in 2021 (3.1% of all deaths), accidents were among the most common causes of death in the EU, underlining the importance of policy actions that are designed to prevent accidents/injuries.

Research evidence suggests many accidents are preventable. In June 2006, the European Commission adopted a Communication on Actions for a safer Europe (COM(2006) 0328 final) emphasising prevention measures. In May 2007, a Council Recommendation on the prevention of injury and the promotion of safety was adopted, targeting 7 key priority areas, namely: the safety of children and adolescents; elderly citizens; vulnerable road users; the prevention of sports injuries; injuries caused by products and services; self-harm; and interpersonal violence.

As part of the EU's health programme for 2008–13, there was a joint action on monitoring injuries in Europe (JAMIE). The overall objective of JAMIE was, by the end of 2013, to have a common hospital-based injury surveillance system in operation in the majority of EU countries. JAMIE aimed to refine the methodology for collecting hospital-based injury data with a view to facilitate data collection and incorporate countries into the European injury database (IDB) monitoring system and exchange mechanism. The joint action offered assistance such as standardised training for national data administrators, twinning programmes, on-site consultations and country specific coaching for EU countries which needed to start or restart a system, as well as continuous supervision and joint monitoring actions concerning the level of implementation in each EU country.

The EU strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021–27 (COM(2021) 323 final) promotes a 'vision zero' approach to work-related deaths in the EU, seeking to reduce accidents by

thorough investigation of accidents and deaths at the workplace
identifying and addressing the causes of these accidents and deaths
increasing awareness of the risks related to work-related accidents and diseases
strengthening enforcement of existing rules and guidelines.