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Road Fatalities per Million Population

By OECD on Apr 16, 2007
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*notes: Denmark - As of 1st January France - Data on 1st January of the following year United States - As of 1st July

Road motor vehicles and road fatalities

The number of road motor vehicles is high and rising among OECD countries, and reducing road accidents is a concern in all countries. The tables in this section show the numbers of road motor vehicles per thousand inhabitants and two indicators of road safety – the number of road fatalities per million inhabitants and the number of road fatalities per million vehicles.

Definition

A road motor vehicle is a vehicle running on wheels and intended for use on roads with an engine providing its sole means of propulsion and which is normally used for carrying persons or goods or for drawing, on the road, vehicles used for the carriage of persons or goods. Thus buses, coaches, freight vehicles and motor cycles are included as well as passenger motor cars. Motor vehicles running on rails are excluded.

Road fatality means any person killed immediately or dying within 30 days as a result of a road accident.

Comparability

Road motor vehicles are attributed to the countries where they are registered while deaths are attributed to the countries in which they occur. As a result, ratios of fatalities to million inhabitants and of fatalities to million vehicles cannot strictly be interpreted as indicating the proportion of a country’s population that is at risk of suffering a fatal road accident or the likelihood of a vehicle registered in a given country being involved in a fatal accident. In practice, however, this is not considered to be a serious problem because discrepancies between the numerators and denominators tend to cancel out.

The numbers of vehicles entering the existing stock is usually accurate but information on the numbers of vehicles withdrawn from use is less certain.

Long-term trends

In 2005, ratios of motor vehicles to population range from 780 per thousand inhabitants in Portugal to 86 in Turkey. Over the periods shown in the table, ratios of vehicles to population increased in all countries except in the United States. Sharp increases of this ratio occurred in Greece, Poland, Iceland and Russian Federation.

In 2005, road fatalities per million inhabitants ranged from over 237 per million inhabitants in Russian Federation to 46 in the Netherlands. Over the periods shown in the table, rates have decreased in all countries except in the Russian Federation with particularly sharp falls in Portugal, Slovenia, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Finland and Spain.

Road fatality rates per million inhabitants are an ambiguous indicator of road safety since the number of accidents depends to a great extent on the number of vehicles in each country. The last chart shows the number of fatalities per million vehicles together with fatalities per million inhabitants. Both ratios refer to 2005. Rates per million vehicles are affected by driving habits, traffic legislation and the effectiveness of its enforcement, road design and other factors over which governments may exercise control. In 2005, fatality rates per million vehicles were less than 100 in the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, but exceeded 400 in Slovak Republic, Korea, Turkey and 1 200 in Russian Federation. Note that low fatality rates per million inhabitants may be associated with very high fatality rates per million vehicles. For example, a country with a small vehicle population may show a low fatality rate per million inhabitants but a high fatality rate per vehicle.