Ireland among worst in Europe for pedestrian fatalities
Garda close off a road following the death of a pedestrian who was struck by a car; nearly a third of those killed on the road in Ireland are pedestrians.
Ireland is among the worst in the EU when it comes to pedestrians road deaths, according to the latest available data.
Although the country is far below the EU average for road deaths as a whole, nearly a third of those killed here are pedestrians.
In 2021, the number of pedestrians killed in road accidents can still be considered relatively high at just under 3,600 across the EU, Eurostat said, accounting for 18% of all fatalities.
A third of road deaths in Romania are pedestrians, followed by 31% in Latvia and almost 30% in Ireland, far above the EU average.
At the opposite end, only 8.3% of the victims in Malta and 8.4% in the Netherlands were pedestrians, Eurostat said.
Rural roads across the bloc are by far the most dangerous, according to the data.
Rural roads accounted for just under 10,500 or 52.5 % of the total, followed by urban roads with 7,700 fatalities or almost 39%. Motorways are the safest roads, with just under 1,750 deaths or almost 9%.
According to the EU’s data analysis wing Eurostat, almost 20,000 people were killed in road accidents in the EU in 2021, an increase of 5.7% compared with 2020.
Almost half of the fatalities in road accidents in the EU in 2021 were drivers or passengers in cars, Eurostat said.
In 2021, the EU averaged 45 road traffic fatalities per million people, while in Ireland, the rate was far lower at 27.
The highest rates were recorded in Romania with 93 per million people, followed by Bulgaria at 81 and Latvia at 78.
In contrast, the lowest rates of road fatalities in 2021 were observed in Malta at 17 per million people, with Sweden at 20 and Denmark at 22.
The increase in 2021 was seen after an unprecedented drop in 2020, which resulted from covid-19 restrictions affecting passenger transport, Eurostat said.
The increase in the number of road deaths was the first in a decade, but the 2021 figure still remains far below the 22,000 deaths and upwards of the previous decade each year.
People aged 25 to 49 years old accounted for one third of the road fatalities in the EU in 2021, while men accounted for around three quarters of road accident fatalities between 2011 and 2021.
Those aged between 25 and 49 accounted for a third of reported deaths, followed by those aged 65 years or over with 27%. Younger people from 18 to 24 years made up 12%.
After car drivers, passengers, and pedestrians, it was motorcyclists and their passengers at 16.5%, and cyclists and e-bike riders together accounting for 9.5%, accounting for EU road deaths in 2021.
The statistics come as Ireland’s foremost citizen road safety group revealed that the number of deaths on the country’s roads has spiked significantly in the first six months of this year compared to the same period in 2022.
PARC Road Safety Group’s analysis shows that as of last Friday, 84 people have died in road crashes on Irish roads to date in 2023, compared to 75 in 2022 for the same period, January to June.
