The human costs of insecurity on the roads

Each year in the 15 European Union countries, 50,000 people die in traffic accidents, 150,000 are handicapped and one million six hundred thousand are injured.

In proclaiming the promotion of road safety for the period 1997-2001, the European Commission estimates that, if the current situation will not change, one European in 80 will die in a car accident and his life will be reduced an average of 40 years, one in three Europeans in the course of his life will end in hospital because of a traffic accident.

The European Transport Safety Council, in 1995, had assessed the amount of the economic cost of road accidents in 162 billion ECU sum that corresponds to double the funds available annually in the EU for all its task.