The Development of the Road Traffic Safety Situation in the European Union and Hungary

Abstract

In recent years, road safety trends in the European Union and Hungary have shown variation. The number of accidents and injuries increased until 2018, after which it levelled off in 2019. Restrictive measures during the
pandemic led to a significant reduction in road traffic, which also affected the number of accidents. From 2021 to 2024, we could not measure a permanent, long-term improvement in terms of accident and injury numbers, thus the goals set for the decade (halving the number of road traffic fatalities and serious injuries) began to drift away from the actual experienced values. This article analyses the development the number of road traffic accidents, the ratio of fatal and injury accidents, as well as accident statistics by various age groups and genders.