Basic Facts - Young people

Young people

The Basic Fact Sheet Young People provides accident data for 14 EU countries (EU-15 without Germany) over the period 1996-2005. The fact sheet includes several basic characteristics of fatal road accidents involving young people. For example: age and person class, mode of transport, gender, area and road type, day of the week and time of the day or the seasonality.

In general, young people worldwide are far more likely to be victims of road accidents than people in any other age group. More than 70.500 persons aged 16-24 years old were killed in traffic accidents, in 14 European Union countries (EU-15, without Germany) within the decade 1996 - 2005. This number represents approximately a quarter of all traffic accident fatalities in those countries (22,1%). (see Figure 1).

Fact: Young people are at almost twice the risk of being killed in a road accident than the average member of the population across the EU-18 countries as a whole.

Fact: Males account for more than 89% of the overall fatalities of young people.

Figure 1: Proportion of young people in population and in traffic fatalities in the EU-18, 2005