Pedestrian Deaths in Western European Countries


Summary


  • In the UK, in the 5-year period of 2006-10, 46% of children killed on the roads were child pedestrians.
  • Including all ages, in the same period, 22% of UK road deaths were pedestrians.
  • These proportions are the highest for 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 two charts (children 0-14 yrs on the left, total on the right) show an analysis of data published by the DfT. The raw data and the sources are given further down this page.


For the 5 year period of 2006-10, 46% 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, 22% of UK road deaths were pedestrians. This is again the highest proportion in any western European country. The UK proportion 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 most 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. These are the reports referring to the years 2007-11, which contain European data from the five years 2006-10. 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 data was available for only two out of the five years. Luxenbourg and smaller countries were exluded because of small population size and so 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 (%)
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2006-10 ave. 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2006-10 ave.
Italy n/a n/a 0.3 1.9 1.3 1.83 n/a 11 10.3 8.4 8.1 9.5 19.4
Netherlands 2 3 1.0 2.4 1.0 1.88 13 12 7.8 7.9 5.5 9.2 20.3
France 2 4 2.8 2.0 2.0 2.56 12 14 9.6 10.2 10.8 11.3 22.6
Norway 3 1 2.2 n/a n/a 2.07 10 11 9.9 8.8 3.3 8.6 24.0
Germany 3 3 2.2 2.1 2.5 2.56 12 10 9.0 8.1 9.4 9.7 26.4
Belgium 3 4 3.9 2.8 6.0 3.94 18 17 16.7 8.8 12.6 14.6 26.9
Austria 5 2 3.1 3.2 2.4 3.14 18 10 9.4 11.9 8.0 11.5 27.4
Finland 0 6 3.4 1.1 2.3 2.56 6 16 8.9 6.7 7.9 9.1 28.1
Spain 4 5 3.9 3.3 3.5 3.94 18 17 12.5 9.0 11.5 13.6 29.0
Portugal 5 n/a 4.9 5.5 2.5 4.48 13 16 14.1 12.9 n/a 14.0 32.0
Denmark 8 7 5.9 3.0 3.0 5.38 13 20 18.8 9.9 9.0 14.1 38.0
Switzerland 5 5 2.5 6.8 3.4 4.54 13 12 8.5 17.8 6.8 11.6 39.1
Sweden 4 3 0.6 5.2 0.6 2.68 10 6 3.9 5.8 6.5 6.4 41.6
United Kingdom 6 4 5.0 3.1 1.7 3.96 14 9 10.2 6.4 3.9 8.7 45.5
n/a: Data not available

Raw data: pedestrians (all ages):
Pedestrian deaths per million populationTotal road deaths per million populationRatio (%)
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2006-10 ave. 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2006-10 ave.
Netherlands 4 5 3.4 3.8 3.8 4.00 45 48 41 44 39 43.4 9.2
Belgium 12 10 9.3 9.4 9.8 10.10 102 101 88 88 77 91.2 11.1
Sweden 6 6 4.9 4.8 3.3 5.00 49 52 43 37 28 41.8 12.0
France 9 9 8.6 7.7 7.5 8.36 77 73 67 66 62 69.0 12.1
Norway 8 5 7.0 5.2 4.9 6.02 52 50 54 44 43 48.6 12.4
Finland 9 9 10.0 5.6 6.5 8.02 64 72 65 52 51 60.8 13.2
Italy n/a 11 10.9 11.1 10.2 10.80 97 87 79 71 68 80.4 13.4
Germany 9 8 7.9 7.2 5.8 7.58 62 60 54 51 45 54.4 13.9
Austria 13 13 12.3 12.1 11.7 12.42 89 83 82 76 66 79.2 15.7
Spain 14 13 11.1 10.3 10.2 11.72 94 86 68 59 54 72.2 16.2
Denmark 11 12 10.6 9.4 7.9 10.18 56 75 74 55 46 61.2 16.6
Portugal 15 15 14.6 n/a n/a 14.87 92 92 83 79 88 86.8 17.1
Switzerland 10 11 7.8 7.8 9.6 9.24 50 51 47 45 42 47.0 19.7
United Kingdom 12 11 9.6 8.5 6.7 9.56 54 50 43 38 31 43.2 22.1
n/a: Data not available

Sources
2006 data: DfT: Road Casualties Great Britain: 2007 Annual Report (Table 51: p170)
2007 data: DfT: Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2008 Annual Report (Table 51: p174)
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)


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