Since 2010, the number of fatal accidents on the roads in Estonia has decreased by an average of 6.6% annually - faster than in any other EU country.. Today, Estonian roads perform better in terms of safety than EU countries on average - 39 road deaths per million inhabitants versus 51 in the EU.

Estonia managed to achieve these results mainly due to the development of safe road infrastructure (for example, these are physical dividers between opposite lanes, traffic islands for cars and pedestrians). New driver fines, bicycle infrastructure development and city planning for pedestrians rather than cars also contributed..

For these merits, Estonia received the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) prize this year..

At the same time, the safest roads in the EU were in Sweden and the Czech Republic, according to the annual Safety Performance Index Report.. These two countries only have 22 road fatalities per million inhabitants. The second place was shared by Ireland and Great Britain (29 cases each); the third place was in Malta (32 cases), writes Europulse.

The most unfavorable situation is in Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, where there are 96, 90 and 77 deaths on the roads per million inhabitants, respectively.

Compared to 2018, the number of road traffic fatalities in the EU has decreased by 3%, and the authors of the report believe that this is not enough. In 2010, the EU countries committed themselves to halving road fatalities by 2020, but so far the progress compared to 2010 is only 24%.