In the past six decades, the number of accidents with personal injury on Austria’s roads has fallen significantly, according to a 60-year-long analysis by Statistics Austria, which was presented on Friday. While in the record year 1972 almost 3,000 people had fatal accidents, in 2020 there were only 344 and thus for the first time fewer than one person a day. The number of casualties also fell sharply: 205 per day in 1972, 104 per day in 2020.
A total of around 3.5 million people have had road accidents in Austria since 1961, and more than 85,000 people have died. In 1961, 33 percent of the deceased were still pedestrians, 30 percent were driving a single-track motorcycle and only 23 percent were driving a car. The picture is different in 2020: 15 percent of road deaths were pedestrians, 23 percent people on single-track motorcycles and 42 percent car occupants. The number of children killed up to the age of 14 has fallen sharply. There were 240 in 1968, last year the low was reached by two children who died in traffic – a reduction of 99 percent.
The decline in traffic accidents with personal injury is offset by a steady increase in motor vehicles. There were 7.1 million in Austria in 2020, compared with 2.5 million in 1972. The number of passenger cars rose particularly sharply from around 500,000 in 1961 to more than five million in 2020. For the fact that accidents with personal injury nevertheless decreased, Statistics Austria makes “measures such as speed restrictions, seatbelts and helmet requirements, child safety and lowering the alcohol limit, but also improvements in traffic and vehicle technology, emergency medicine and driver training and the removal of accident sites” responsible, as well as increased monitoring.
According to the ÖAMTC, 314 people had died in traffic accidents this year by Thursday (November 18). Of these, five percent were in a truck, ten percent on foot, 14 percent on a bicycle, 27 percent on a motorized two-wheeler and 40 percent in a car. The number of fatal traffic accidents has thus decreased by 34 percent since 2011. However, the automobile club sees a need for action among cyclists: the number of cyclists killed has increased by ten percent since 2011, and more than half of them rode an e-bike this year.
Safety systems that include airbags and ABS are not available to cyclists, it said in a broadcast by the ÖAMTC. “Due to the pandemic, the trend to cover more distances by bike has increased. It is therefore important to continue to build a safe cycling infrastructure, to create more awareness about wearing a helmet and to practice using an e-bike,” said ÖAMTC -Traffic expert Felix Etl. Cyclists and pedestrians – the weakest groups in road traffic – should be protected.