France had the highest number of road fatalities in the European Union in 2021, new data from Eurostat has found, with 2,931 deaths on French roads that year.
This equates to 159 road fatalities per million inhabitants, the data showed.
Tragically, 2021 was the third year in a row in which France had the highest number of road fatalities, with 2,538 fatalities recorded in 2020, and 3,237 in 2019.
In 2021, Italy placed second in terms of the number of road fatalities, with 2,875 deaths on Italian roads, while Germany (2,562 fatalities), Poland (2,245 fatalities), Romania (1,779 fatalities) and Spain (1,553 fatalities) all recorded high numbers.
European total
In 2021, Eurostat reported 19,917 road fatalities in the EU, translating to 45 road fatalities per million inhabitants.
Eurostat noted that rural regions exhibited some of the highest incidence rates of road fatalities, while urban and capital regions tended to report considerably lower rates.
Urban regions
Among the urban regions with the lowest incidence rates were the capital region of Belgium (Région de Bruxelles-Capitale / Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest) with seven road fatalities per million inhabitants, the Austrian capital region of Wien (8), the Swedish capital region of Stockholm (9), and the northern German region of Bremen (also 9).
Just two European regions reported no fatalities, Valle d’Aosta/Vallée d’Aoste in northern Italy and Ciudad de Ceuta in Spain.
