Number of road traffic accidents Spain 2011-2019

Despite the decrease on the amount of cars on Spanish roads the number of fatal or serious road traffic accidents in the Mediterranean country have plateaued. Spain saw its traffic accidents grow considerably over the past few years up until 2016, with figures showing results of approximately 83 thousand serious or fatal accidents in 2011 and peaking at over 102.3 thousand incidents in 2015.

Passenger cars and the importance of the right-of-way

Passenger cars represented by far the most common type of vehicle involved in road traffic accidents in Spain in 2019. That year, the approximately 111 thousand cars that had some type of traffic incident on the Spanish roads contrasted greatly with other means of transport, such as motorcycles with almost 30.5 thousand vehicles or vans with 11.5 thousand vehicles involved. The recent data shows that most of the accidents with passenger cars involved were mainly a result of not keeping safety distance, which ranked as the main cause of this type of accident with 3.8 thousand cases.

Road safety: irregular across the European continent

In the European context, Romania topped the list of road fatalities with 96 deaths per million population in 2019, with little progress towards reducing this number made over the past years. Luxembourg, on the other hand, experienced a great improvement in the road fatality figures, dropping to 36 cases in 2019 from 56 fatal incidents in 2016. The country that registered the lowest amount of road deaths that year was Iceland, with only 17 fatal incidents.