Serious Traffic Injuries In Europe Worse Than Reported, Study Finds

Forbes

01-04-2025

Serious road injuries in Europe are 'massively' under reported. The lack of accurate data for the number of injuries that result from collisions and where and when they occur, are contributing factors for why most countries are failing to significantly improve road safety.
Those are the main findings of a new report published on Monday by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), a Brussels-based independent non-profit organization.
'Every day, all over Europe, hundreds of people are seriously injured on our roads,' Jenny Carson, project manager at the safety council said in a statement. 'Policymakers underestimate both the scale of the problem and the impact that these injuries can have.'
About 1,291,000 people are reported injured annually in the European Union, and some 141,000 of them are serious, based on estimates obtained from official sources, the safety group said. But those numbers may underestimate the true extent of the problem, it added, due to inconsistencies in data collection and sometimes massive under reporting by the police.
According to the report, 'Reducing Serious Injuries on European Roads' most official statistics on traffic injuries in Europe are from police reports, but police often have no specific knowledge and can misjudge the severity of the injuries. In addition, while collisions involving motor vehicles are much more likely to be reported by police, officers are rarely at the scene of the vast majority of incidents involving pedestrians and cyclists when no motor vehicle was involved, and as a result, many go unreported.
The report noted that while hospitals collect their own data on patients injured on the roads, they do not routinely collect information on where and when injuries occur, necessary information to identify high risk sites that need upgrades to prevent future incidents.
Also, governments often struggle to combine information collected by hospitals with police statistics, which is essential to form a comprehensive picture of the scale of the problem.
For example, the report cited that collision data collected in the Czech Republic indicated that the police database contained only 43% of the injuries recorded by the public health insurance system. And a study conducted in the Netherlands found that there were police reports for about 65% of people seriously injured in collisions when motor vehicles were involved, but only about 12% when there were no motor vehicles involved.
Many countries in the European Union have incorporated serious injury reduction targets into their national road safety strategies, but this report highlights that progress in reducing injuries ' is lagging behind the reduction in road deaths.'
To address the challenges and achieve a reduction in deaths and serious injuries, the report advocates for better governance and management so that leaders take responsibility, ensure transparency, guarantee funding, improve data collection, and develop partnerships.
The study supports a "Safe System' or Vision Zero approach to road safety and design that takes human error into account, first put into effect in Sweden in the 1990s.
The goal of the initiative is to eliminate all road deaths and serious injuries by creating multiple layers of protection, so if one fails, the others will create a safety net to lessen the impact of a crash. Improvements are designed to result in: safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and better post-crash care.
'National governments,' Carson added, 'need to work harder to improve the flawed system of relying extensively on police-reported data which gives a misleading picture of the full burden of road injuries on individuals, societies and our economies.'
To access the full report, click here.