Istat disseminates road accidents final data, updating provisional data published in July 2016.
For the first time since 2001 a growing number of victims is reported compared with previous years (+1.4%).
In 2015 in Italy there were 174,539 road accidents resulting in death or injury, which caused 3,428 fatalities (deaths within 30 days) and 246,920 injured persons.
A growth of persons killed in road accidents was registered in Eu28, too (1.6% more than in 2014): in total, there were 26,311 killed persons against 25,896 in 2014. In the comparison between 2015 and 2010 (year of the benchmark for European road safety strategy), mortality decreased by 16.7% in Europe and in Italy. Every million inhabitants, in 2015 there were 52 deaths in road accidents in Eu28 and 56 in our country, which ranked 14th in the European classifications, behind the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and France.
The serious injured increased in 2015: on the basis of hospital discharge data they were nearly 16,000 vs 15,000 in 2014 (+ 6,4%).
In 2015 the increase of fatalities in Italy was mainly due to the situation detected on motorways (ring roads and motorways junctions) and rural roads (305 and 1,621 dead; +6.3% and +2.0% in respect of the previous year). A slight decline is recorded, instead, on inside urban roads (1,502 dead; -0.2%), after a growth of 5.4% between 2013 and 2014. An exception to this trend, is detected for the main municipalities, all in total, where the number of victims on urban roads was up by 8.6%.
The increase of dead persons in road accidents recorded in 2015 concerned, mostly, motorcyclists (773, +9.8%) and pedestrians (602, +4.1%). A decrease of victims is observed among motorists (1,468, -1.5%) as well as moped riders (105, -6.3%) and cyclists (251, -8.1%).
The most frequent driving misbehaviours are linked to the distraction, failure to comply with road safety and precedence rules and high speed (in total 38.9% of cases). The main violations to the Road Code sanctioned by Police, in fact, are: speeding, failure to use safety devices and the use of mobile phones while driving.
2015 has been a year signed by a recovery of mobility: the new registrations of passenger cars increased by 15.0% over the previous year; the motorway journeys also grew by 3.6% compared to 2014, with over 79 billion kilometres travelled.
Infografhic: Road accidents in Italy in 2015
click to enlarge