Pedestrian Deaths in Western European Countries


Summary


This analysis of pedestrian deaths in western European countries covers the 5-year period of 2008-12.
  • There was a wide variation in pedestrian death rates, with the lowest being in the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.
  • The UK had a child pedestrian death rate double the rates of Norway and the Netherlands.
  • In the UK, 48% of children killed on the roads were child pedestrians - this is the highest proportion in western European countries.
  • Including all ages, 23% of UK road deaths were pedestrians - again the highest proportion in western European countries.
  • It is not clear why UK pedestrians take such a high share of UK road casualties, but some possible factors are poor speed limit enforcement, high urban speed limits, lack of legal protection for pedestrians, and the high UK drink-driving limit.


The four charts (children 0-14 yrs on the left, total for all ages on the right) show an analysis of data published by the DfT. The raw data and the sources are given further down this page.

Rates per million population


Pedestrian deaths as a percentage of all road deaths




For the 5-year period of 2008-12, 48% of children killed on UK roads were child pedestrians. This is the highest proportion in any western European country.

Over the same period, including all ages, 23% of UK road deaths were pedestrians. This is again the highest proportion in any western European country. The UK proportion roughly equals the world average of 22% [1].

The absolute rates per million population for both child and total pedestrian deaths are also higher in the UK than in many western European countries.

It is not clear why UK pedestrians take such a high share of UK road casualties, but possible contributory factors include:
  • Poor speed limit enforcement The UK issues fewer speeding tickets per head than almost all of the other 13 countries in this comparison [2]. The Netherlands and Austria issue about 20 times as many speeding tickets as the UK per head.
  • High urban speed limits Some countries have extensive 30km/h (20mph) speed limits in residential areas. The UK is now starting to introduce these, but there are uncertainties over the commitment of the police to enforce them [3] [4].
  • Lack of legal protection (assumed liability) In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, liability for personal injury damages suffered by a pedestrian after being hit by a vehicle rests with the driver involved, unless it can be shown that the pedestrian acted in a way that was clearly illegal and/or seriously negligent [5]. This is said to make drivers very careful not to risk collisions with pedestrians or cyclists.
  • The high UK drink-driving limit. The drink-driving limit is higher in the UK (and the Republic of Ireland) at 80mg/ml than it is in the rest of Europe, where it is 50mg/ml or less. [6].



Methods, raw data and sources


Methods
Data was taken from the five most recent DfT annual reports of reported road casualties. Five-year averages were taken in order to reduce the influence of year-to-year random variation.

Western European and Scandinavian countries were included in the comparison. The Republic of Ireland was excluded since no pedestrian data at all was available for two out of the five years. Luxembourg and smaller countries were excluded because of small population size and consequently large year-to-year random variation. This gave 14 countries for comparison.

The analysis was restricted to western European countries. Eastern European countries generally have higher road casualty rates both for pedestrians and overall.

Raw data: child pedestrians:
Child (aged 0-14) pedestrian deaths per million populationTotal child (aged 0-14) road deaths per million populationRatio of pedestrians to total (%)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2008-12 average 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2008-12 average 2008-12 averages
Norway 2.2 n/a n/a 1.1 0.0 1.1 9.9 8.8 3.3 7.6 4.3 6.8 16.2
Netherlands 1.0 2.4 1.0 1.0 1.4 1.4 7.8 7.9 5.5 6.2 8.3 7.1 19.0
Italy 2.3 1.9 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.6 10.3 8.4 8.1 7.2 6.0 8.0 20.3
Sweden 0.6 5.2 0.6 3.2 1.3 2.2 3.9 5.8 6.5 6.5 4.5 5.4 40.1
Germany 2.2 2.1 2.5 2.6 1.8 2.2 9.0 8.1 9.4 7.8 6.7 8.2 27.3
France 2.8 2.0 2.0 2.5 3.0 2.5 9.6 10.2 10.8 10.7 9.5 10.2 24.2
Finland 3.4 1.1 2.3 2.3 3.4 2.5 8.9 6.7 7.9 9.0 7.9 8.1 30.9
United Kingdom 5.0 3.1 1.7 2.7 1.9 2.9 10.2 6.4 3.9 4.7 5.0 6.0 47.7
Spain 3.9 3.3 3.5 2.6 1.6 3.0 12.5 9.0 11.5 6.1 7.5 9.3 32.0
Austria 3.1 3.2 2.4 4.0 2.4 3.0 9.4 11.9 8.0 10.4 6.5 9.2 32.7
Denmark 5.9 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.6 18.8 9.9 9.0 9.0 7.0 10.7 33.3
Portugal 4.9 5.5 2.5 6.8 2.5 4.4 14.1 12.9 n/a 11.8 8.2 11.8 37.8
Belgium 3.9 2.8 6.0 6.5 4.3 4.7 16.7 8.8 12.6 18.6 8.6 13.1 36.0
Switzerland 2.5 6.8 3.4 6.8 5.0 4.9 8.5 17.8 6.8 8.5 26.0 13.5 36.2
n/a: Data not available

Raw data: pedestrians (all ages):
Pedestrian deaths per million populationTotal road deaths per million populationRatio of pedestrians to total (%)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2008-12 average 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2008-12 average 2008-12 averages
Netherlands 3.4 3.8 3.8 3.9 3.8 3.7 41 44 39 40 39 40.6 9.2
Sweden 4.9 4.8 3.3 5.6 5.3 4.8 43 37 28 34 30 34.4 13.9
Norway 7.0 5.2 4.9 3.5 4.4 5.0 54 44 43 34 29 40.8 12.3
Germany 7.9 7.2 5.8 7.5 6.4 7.0 54 51 45 49 44 48.6 14.3
Finland 10.0 5.6 6.5 7.6 5.4 7.0 65 52 51 54 47 53.8 13.0
United Kingdom 9.6 8.5 6.7 7.4 6.7 7.8 43 38 31 31 28 34.2 22.7
France 8.6 7.7 7.5 8.0 7.5 7.9 67 66 62 61 56 62.4 12.6
Denmark 10.6 9.4 7.9 5.9 5.6 7.9 74 55 46 40 30 49.0 16.08
Switzerland 7.8 7.8 9.6 8.8 9.4 8.7 47 45 42 41 36 42.2 20.6
Spain 11.1 10.3 10.2 8.2 8.1 9.6 68 59 54 45 41 53.4 17.9
Belgium 9.3 9.4 9.8 10.1 9.4 9.6 88 88 77 78 69 80.0 12.0
Italy 10.9 11.1 10.2 9.7 9.3 10.2 79 71 68 64 60 68.4 15.0
Austria 12.3 12.1 11.7 10.4 9.6 11.2 82 76 66 62 63 69.8 16.07
Portugal 14.6 n/a n/a 18.8 15.1 16.2 83 79 88 84 70 80.8 20.0
n/a: Data not available

Sources
2008 data: DfT: Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2009 Annual Report (Table 51: p181)
2009 data: DfT: Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2010 Annual Report (Table RAS52001: p219)
2010 data: DfT: Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2011 Annual Report (Table RAS52001: p232)
2011 data: DfT: Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2012 Annual Report (Table RAS52001: p223)
2012 data: DfT: Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2013 Annual Report (Table RAS52001: p238)




References


[1] Pedestrian safety: A road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners World Health Organisation (2013). http://www.who.int/roadsafety/en/

[2] European Transport Safety Council (2012) A challenging start towards the EU 2020 road safety target: 6th road safety PIN report http://www.pacts.org.uk/docs/pdf-bank/ETSC_PIN%20report_2012.pdf

[3] "Police admit 'fobbing off' councillors over 20mph limits": http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/9933769.Police_admit__fobbing_off__councillors_over_20mph_limits/

[4] ACPO clarify their position on 20mph speed limits (2013) http://allpartycycling.org/2013/03/06/acpo-clairfy-their-position-on-20mph-speed-limits/

[5] Liability: Compensation for injured cyclists http://www.ctc.org.uk/category/tags/liability.

[6] World Health Organisation (2013) Global status report on road safety http://www.who.int/entity/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2013/en/index.html



Previous analysis


See previous analysis (of the data to 2010) here.