The Road accidents tell an avoidable tragedy made of distraction, high speed and poor awareness. But the numbers also offer us a glimmer of optimism: in Italy, dead and injured by accident are down For over a decade. Who are the most frequent victims? What are the most fragile ages? And how are we put compared to the rest of Europe? According to Istat data, the accidents recorded in 2023 were 166,525 and the victims more than three thousand. Very high numbers, but so in absolute value they do not give us the perfect feeling of what is the phenomenon of road accidents in Italy. Let’s try to investigate these numbers more deeply.
A glimmer of optimism: the numbers of deaths and injured in decline, but bad news for men
In the graph below we reported the number of injuries (left) and deaths (right) due to road accidents from 2010 to 2023, divided between the two sexes and the role in the accident: driver, passenger and pedestrian. The injured over time are constantly about ten times higher than deaths. The best news is the decreasing trend both as regards the wounded and the deaths: compared to 2010 the deaths dropped by 25% and more than halved compared to 2001.
In addition to the temporal trend, the graph also allows you to grasp the gender differences: areas with diagonal bands represent the female population, while the completely colored ones refer to men. First of all, let’s focus on the purple areas, which indicate the deaths and injured among the pedestrians. The differences awaited between men and women are contained: pedestrians are mostly vulnerable victims of the road, rarely responsible for the accident. However, among the deaths there is a greater male impact, probably linked to a higher risk propensity or more reckless behaviors during walking.
Among the passengerson the other hand, women are clearly more numerous: a dynamic consistent with the fact that, in couples, it is often the man who drives himself, and the woman who plays the role of passenger. On the contrary, among the drivers Involved, the vast majority is made up of men, in particular among deaths, where women represent only a small percentage: a figure that confirms the greater exposure to the risk taken by men driving.
The most at risk of accident are very young and the elderly
Among the young people between 15 and 35 years old, the deaths following road accidents represented a third (32%) of all deaths in 2023. The percentage clearly drops to grow of age and to the arrival of the competition of other causes of death. But what is not lowered is the mortality rateor the relationship between deaths And population in every age group. In the graph below, taken from the report on road accidents 2023, the mortality rate calculated by age groups in 2023 is reported:
Source: Istat, Report on Road accidents 2023. Image credits: Istat.
The distribution by age of the victims has two distinct peaks, corresponding to the ages in which one dies proportionally more on the roads: one peak is between 20 and 24 years old, and another – even more marked – between 75 and 85 years. The high incidence in the youngest is probably linked to inexperience, while among the elderly it can be explained by a natural slowdown of the reflections and by greater fragility.
Comparison with Europe, avoidable deaths and the goal of 2030
In 2010, Italy recorded about 70 victims per million inhabitants, a figure perfectly in line with the average of the European Union. After more than a decade, the numbers have improved throughout Europe, but with uneven trends: in 2023 Italy reduced this indicator to 51.5 victims per million inhabitants and positioning itself worse than the European average (which fell to 45.5).
These numbers are more than simple statistics: they represent broken lives and families marked by avoidable mourning. For this reason, the European Union has set an ambitious but necessary objective: halve the number of victims of the road by 2030, compared to the 2020 levels. It is the “Target 2030”, which falls within the widest EU road safety strategy oriented towards “Vision Zero”, or the reset of the victims in the long run.
For Italy, reaching this goal means descending below 1,500 victims by 2030. A goal within reach, but which requires joint effort: safer infrastructure, cutting -edge technologies, but above all a cultural change. Because every victim of the road is not only a number, but an avoidable death.
