Filenews 20 June 2023
Cyprus climbed to the ninth best position out of the 27 EU Member States in 2022 in terms of road deaths in proportion to population, from 17th place in 2021, after the decrease in road deaths, from 45 to 37.
Specifically, Cyprus recorded an 18% decrease in road deaths during 2022, which was the third largest decrease in the EU. Between 2021 and 2022, there was an increase in road deaths in 19 of the EU Member States.
It is believed that the increase recorded in the EU is due to the relaxation of the restrictive measures that were implemented in 2020 and 2021 to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
These data are published today by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), in the framework of the Road Safety PIN (Performance Index) program, 17th annual report (representative of Cyprus in the program is Mr. George Morfakis) which mainly presents the general road safety data at the end of 2022 in the 27 Member States of the European Union, as well as in Switzerland, in Israel, Norway, Serbia and the United Kingdom.
According to the report, in 2022, 20,678 people died on EU roads, an increase of 4% compared to 2021. But despite the disappointing increase in road deaths in 2022, if the numbers over the last decade remained at the level of 2012, 39,553 more road deaths would be recorded in those ten years. ETSC estimates the economic benefit to European societies from this reduction at €104 billion.
At the same time, the reduction in serious road injuries in the EU in the decade 2012-2022 was very poor. In the period 2012-2022, a decrease of only 14% was recorded, while the corresponding decrease in deaths was 22%. It should be noted, however, that Cyprus has recorded significant success in reducing serious injuries from 2012 to 2022, with a rate of 54.1%, which was the 3rd highest in the EU, after Greece and Romania.
The report sets out the following recommendations of the European Transport Council to EU Member States:
-Adoption and implementation of the "Safe System" approach to Road Safety.
-Setting safe speed limits, in line with the safe system approach, for different categories of roads, such as 30 km/h for urban roads, 70 km/h for country roads without a dividing island and a maximum speed of 120 km/h or less on motorways.
-Search for synergies between safety objectives, including speed management, and energy saving and climate objectives.
-Allocate adequate state funding to allow and encourage the implementation of targeted measures at regional and local level.
-Use the data collected to design and update relevant policies.
-Selection of measures on the basis of robust evaluation studies, including a cost-benefit assessment where appropriate.
-Inclusion of serious injuries in analyses of the effectiveness of measures.
