Zero Road Deaths? A Map Of The World Shows Where

Cities around the world have proven that the goal of zero traffic fatalities is achievable.

An interactive world map, updated and rereleased earlier this month by DEKRA, a company based in Germany that conducts automotive testing, inspection and crash research, shows 1273 cities in 26 countries that have attained the goal of zero traffic fatalities in at least one year. Some cities did so for multiple years.

The global traffic crash death toll decreased slightly in recent years, but there are still more than two deaths every minute, over 3,200 per day, and road crashes remain the leading killer of children and young people aged 5–29 years, according to the “Global status report on road safety 2023,” released in December by the World Health Organization (WHO), the lead road safety agency for the United Nations. The report found that road crashes remain an urgent global health crisis.

In the United States, for example, the rates of deaths are seven times higher than in Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

To combat the problem, many jurisdictions around the world have embraced the Vision Zero or Safe System approach to road safety and design that takes human error into account, first put into effect in Sweden in the 1990s.

The goal of the initiative is to eliminate all road deaths and serious injuries by creating multiple layers of protection, so if one fails, the others will create a safety net to lessen the impact of a crash. Improvements are designed to result in: safer people, safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and better post-crash care.

“Aiming for ‘Vision Zero’ is the only appropriate strategy – because every person killed in road traffic is one too many,” Jann Fehlauer, executive vice president of the DEKRA Group, said in a statement “More than 1,200 cities prove that ‘Vision Zero’ is achievable. Efforts to achieve the goal in many more cities as well as outside an urban context must continue at all levels.”

Even among major cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, almost 300 have already achieved the “Vision Zero” target in at least one year. Among the largest cities on the list is Espoo, Finland, with more than 300,000 residents..

The safety group presented the first version of the online interactive “Vision Zero” world map ten years ago in 2014 at the International Transport Forum’s annual summit in Leipzig, Germany. Dekra experts analyzed the available data from the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) on a large scale – with a focus on inner-city traffic, initially for its 2014 Road Safety Report. At the time, hundreds of cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants had already achieved the target of zero traffic fatalities in at least one year since 2009.

Since then, both the analysis of the data and the online portal have been continuously expanded, researchers said. Initially, 17 European countries were mapped; today there are 26 countries represented. The focus remains on Europe, but the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan are also included.

To view the interactive map, click here.