Madrid
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The changes that can take place in a society in 11 years are impressive. To put it into perspective, in 2008 the iPhone was still in its first generation. This year is the starting point of the latest study on road accidents made by foundations Madrid mutual and Gaspar Casal.
In fact, starting in 2008 has allowed them to check the effects of the entry into force of the card by points (2006) and cchange in the severity of the infractions (2007). Consequently, hospitalized people fell by more than a third between 2008 and 2012, when they went from almost 16,000 to almost 10,000 cases.
However, this reduction occurred mainly in male cases, which they went from about 12,000 to about 7,000.
Women also saw a decrease in their hospitalization, going from 4,000 to 3,000 in those four years – when the effect of the legislative changes became more notable.
The proportion of cases remained the same for both sexes: a valley between 2012 and 2016 and another decrease, milder than the first, between 2017 and 2019, the final year contemplated by analysts. However, the proportion of women drivers passed, in those 11 years, from 38% to 42% of the park, an increase of 10.5%.
However, throughout the period covered by the study a constant has remained: three out of four deaths (76%) in accidents are men. This proportion has been practically the same in each year and each region considered. “It is true that there are more male drivers than female drivers,” he conceded. Lorenzo Cooklindirector of the Fundación Mutua Madrileña, but the proportion does not correspond to the data.
In the statement, the organizations state that “a possible explanation is an attitude of greater caution and less proclivity to risky behavior on the part of women.” In a recent study by the DGT and Midas, 60.3% of women claimed not to have received a sanction, compared to 30% of men.
Most of the deaths occurred on interurban roads (three out of four), but the proportion of victims in the city has not stopped growing since 2008. The difference between that year and 2019 was 35.5% more.
In fact, in the period considered, vulnerable users —pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists— have increased in fatal accidents, to the point where, in 2019, they accounted for more than half of the victims. That same year, one in four deaths was a motorcyclist.
Economic cost
One of the novelties of the study is that it introduces a calculation on the economic losses caused by accidents in Spain. “Based on the difficulty of valuing an intangible such as human life,” explained José María Abellán, one of the authors from the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Murcia.
Between 2008 and 2019 there were 1,113,963 accidents with victims, regardless of severity. The case fatality rate was 2.2% (although this was reduced from 3.3% to 1.7% in the extremes considered).
In total, it is estimated that 875,000 years of potential life have been lost as a result of traffic accidents, half of the total concentrated between Andalusia, Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Galicia.
In aggregate terms, the sum of the accidents reaches an estimated total of €66.5 billion in the 11 years studied. In 2008, this figure was 7.8 billion, while in 2019, it was 5.4 billion.
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