Accident statistics: number of road deaths at 30-year low


Status: 08/20/2021 2:37 p.m.

Never since reunification have there been so few road accidents with fatalities and injuries in Germany as in the first half of 2021. The reason: Because of the corona pandemic, fewer cars were on the road.

The corona pandemic continues to cause historic lows in the number of traffic accidents with deaths and injuries in Germany. In the first six months of 2021, 1,128 people were killed in road traffic, as the Federal Statistical Office announced, citing preliminary results. The decrease compared to the same period in the previous year – which was only partially affected by the pandemic – is therefore 12.6 percent. The number of injuries fell by 10 percent to just under 134,800.

The Federal Office said that since reunification in 1990, fewer people were killed or injured in traffic accidents from January to June. The reason is that there are still significantly fewer road users on the road due to Corona.

“Practically no travel by car”

The head of accident research at insurers (UDV), Siegfried Brockmann, was nevertheless surprised that the numbers fell so significantly compared to the first half of 2020. “The best way to explain this is that there was practically no travel activity by car in the first half of 2021,” he said. That was not so pronounced in the same period of the previous year.

Low even in accidents

According to the Federal Statistical Office, the police recorded 2.4 percent fewer accidents in the first six months of this year than in the same period last year. The number fell to around 1.05 million – also an all-time low. In just under 935,700 accidents, property damage remained, here the minus 1.5 percent. Around 109,400 accidents resulted in injuries or fatalities. Here the statistics show a minus of 9.3 percent.

An average of 14 people were killed in road traffic for every million inhabitants in Germany. With 27 traffic fatalities per million inhabitants, the risk of a fatal accident was greatest in Saxony-Anhalt. The lowest values ​​were found in the city-states of Hamburg and Berlin, with four and six deaths respectively.

Researcher: The trend will soon go up again

Brockmann expects that sooner or later the numbers will return to roughly the level before the pandemic. “In terms of tendency, I estimate and fear that we will return to the level of 2019,” he said. If the trend towards increased bicycle traffic persists, the number of road deaths could even exceed “because the cyclist is simply more vulnerable”.



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