Number of road fatalities in France 2006-2023
Nearly 3,200 road fatalities were recorded on French roads in 2023, down from around 3,300 deaths in 2022. Road fatalities had fluctuated in France, with the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns helping to bring down the fatality rate in 2020.
Alcohol- and speed-related offenses in France
Yet, according to a survey conducted by the French National Inter-Ministerial Road Safety Observatory in 2014, 56 percent of the respondents believed that not enough was done to prevent and control drink driving. Further, 69 percent of those surveyed also believed that police enforcement against drug consumption on the road was lacking. Nevertheless, the same institution reported that, in 2015, ten percent of all the road offenses recorded more than 100 times were related to alcohol. Offenses related to speed control accounted for almost 30 percent of all the road offenses.
The European perception of road fatalities
On the other side of the Rhine, in Germany, where the consumption of alcohol seems to be more widespread – with around 137 liters of alcoholic beverage per capita in 2014 - the authorities seem to have managed to reduce the number of road traffic fatalities more efficiently. It went from 5,091 deaths reported in 2006 to 2,944 deaths in 2022. From a European perspective, 62 percent of Europeans believed that driving under alcohol or drugs influence was the main general cause of fatal accidents on the road in their respective countries.
