How Many People Die on Europe's Roads Each Year?

Quick answer: 19,934 people were killed on the roads of the European Union in 2024, according to Eurostat's analysis of the EU CARE database — down 2.2% on 2023, and down 17.4% since 2014. The EU average was 44 deaths per million people, but the gap between countries is wide: Romania recorded 78 deaths per million, nearly four times Sweden's 20 per million.

The EU total in 2024

The 19,934 deaths in 2024 work out at about 55 people killed on EU roads every day. The total fell 2.2% compared with 2023, continuing a downward trend that has cut deaths by 17.4% since 2014 — although the fall was interrupted in some years, notably 2021 and 2022, when deaths rose again after the sharp drop of the pandemic year 2020.

France recorded the highest number in 2024, with 3,181 deaths, and France, Germany and Italy together accounted for 45.1% of the EU total. Only those three countries registered more than 2,000 deaths, while five registered fewer than 100: Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia.

The EU's road safety policy framework, adopted in 2021, sets a target of halving road deaths by 2030 compared with 2019, as part of the Vision Zero objective of zero deaths and serious injuries on European roads by 2050. For the wider global picture, see Which Countries Cut Road Deaths in Half Since 2010?

The safest and the most dangerous countries

Counts alone do not show risk, because countries differ hugely in size. The rate per million people is the fair comparison, and on that measure the EU average in 2024 was 44 deaths per million.

The lowest rates were in Sweden (20 per million), Malta (21), Denmark (24) and Luxembourg (27).
The highest rate was in Romania (78 per million).
Ten EU countries recorded 50 or more deaths per million: Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Latvia, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Estonia, listed from the highest to the lowest.

That means a person in Romania was nearly four times as likely to die on the road as a person in Sweden in 2024. Outside the EU, the EFTA countries did better still: Norway recorded 16 deaths per million, Switzerland 28 and Iceland 34.

Compared with 2023, six EU countries saw deaths rise — France most, with 27 more deaths — while 21 recorded a decrease, Germany most with 69 fewer. Ireland is among the countries where the trend is running the wrong way — see Are Irish Roads Getting Deadlier Again in 2026?

Who dies on European roads

Men account for around three quarters of road deaths in the EU, a share that has barely changed over the past decade. In 2024, 15,332 men and 4,552 women were killed on EU roads. In Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Malta, men accounted for more than 80% of deaths.

Age matters too. In 2024:

People aged 25 to 49 accounted for the largest share of deaths, at 31.1% of the total.
People aged 65 and over accounted for 30.7% — together, these two groups made up just over 60% of all road deaths in the EU.
People aged 50 to 64 accounted for 21.4%, and those aged 18 to 24 for 12.1%.
Children under 15 accounted for 1.9% of deaths.

Older people were the largest group of deaths in 10 EU countries — 45.1% of road deaths in Sweden and 41.3% in the Netherlands.

How people die

Drivers and passengers of passenger cars represented the largest category of road deaths in the EU in 2024, with 43.6% of all deaths. Motorcyclists and their passengers were next, at 18.5%, followed by pedestrians at 17.8% — 3,558 pedestrians killed. Cyclists and e-bike riders together accounted for 9.9% of deaths, a figure Eurostat notes is likely under-reported, because some accidents involving cyclists are never reported to the police.

The balance varies sharply by country: cyclists accounted for 27.0% of deaths in the Netherlands, motorcyclists more than 30% in Luxembourg, Greece and Malta, and pedestrians more than 40% in Malta but only 9.7% in the Netherlands.

Drivers accounted for the highest number of deaths in every year from 2014 to 2024. There were 13,478 driver deaths in 2024, down from 14,775 in 2014. Pedestrian deaths fell from 5,142 in 2014 to 3,558 in 2024, and passenger deaths from 3,893 to 2,892 over the same period.

Where the deaths happen

Rural roads are the most dangerous part of the European network. In 2024:

Rural roads accounted for 10,619 deaths (53.3%).
Urban roads accounted for 7,618 deaths (38.2%).
Motorways accounted for 1,691 deaths (8.5%) — the lowest share, despite carrying the fastest traffic.

Twenty countries recorded 50% or more of their deaths on rural roads, with the highest shares in Malta (100%), Iceland (92.3%) and Finland (72.9%). The urban share ranged from 0% in Malta to 64.1% in Romania.

See today's accident reports for what is happening on Europe's roads right now, and the article archive for more data-led road-safety stories.

How these numbers were counted

All figures in this article come from Eurostat's "Road safety statistics in the EU", published in April 2026 with data extracted from the CARE database — the Community database on road accidents resulting in death or injury, built from police and hospital sources in each EU country. Deaths are counted as people fatally injured who died within 30 days of the accident. Confirmed suicides and natural deaths are not included, and all reporting countries have applied the 30-day rule since 2010.

For Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia, where breakdown data by age, type of road, sex and mode of transport were missing for 2024, Eurostat estimated the distributions by applying the 2023 percentage shares to the reported 2024 totals. EU aggregates for those breakdowns therefore combine reported and estimated data. The latest year of data can be revised as national figures are finalised.

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