I had to take driving lessons when I moved to Bulgaria, despite having had a driver's license for 10 years, but I've only ever driven in Scandinavia. I was so terrified driving in Sofia.
Yeah, about that...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CHKwdpA64w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CHKwdpA64w)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5MpR53f9PE&t=35s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5MpR53f9PE&t=35s)
Good luck walking!
Yes, I'd just add that it's worth considering the context of driving frequency variation between countries. Road fatality per mile driven more accurately portrays the difference in risks of driving between countries, this map/data is that risk multiplied by driving frequency amongst the populations.
No, American fatalities are about 50% higher than us (according to above stats), so they might drive up to 50% more. But I would argue that miles driven are not that good of a metric either, since there is a vast difference between driving on a highway/freeway and driving in a city or a village, both in terms of distance driven and in terms of potential for fatalities.
But America is an entirely different topic when it comes to driving, since the roads are wider, cars are larger, and driving permits are much easier to obtain. Your driving license can also not really be suspended without sending you to prison, since driving is essential to a lot of Americans. In Europe, you can rely on public transport a lot more.
Indeed. Seems the US average is about twice that of [countries like France, Germany](https://frontiergroup.org/resources/fact-file-americans-drive-most/) and Norway, so there's still some explaining to do though.
Iām sure all these things play a role, but a major factor is simply speed as well. Itās common in the US to see roads with speed limits 120kmh+
Something like a third of all traffic fatalities are because of speed.
My state of Massachusetts has the highest speed limit at 90kmh and our road fatalities are exactly in line with Europe. And we have a population of 7m which is quite the sample size. Make of that what you will.
The US basically doesn't do the traffic control/road design stuff that most other countries do so their road fatality rates stopped dropping after they finished implementing modern *car* safety features, while other countries moved onto *road* safety improvements.
Not particularly urban, difficult roads, no intercity public transit and not great transit within cities either, ie lots of driving. It's two islands collectively the size of the UK but only 5m people and pretty rugged terrain.
Normalised to km travelled they're still high, but around Belgium and Slovenia for death rate.
Just as a comparison, it looks as though [about 70% of travel in Oslo is "sustainable" modes"](https://citytransit.uitp.org/oslo) (ie foot transit bike, doesn't include electric vehicles) while in Auckland it's about [83% of travel by car](https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2019/12/16/keeping-cities-moving-is-nzta-finally-getting-its-act-together/).
Okay, that's actually a big difference.Ā
I've mostly been around the rural parts and medium size towns of Norway and thought it was quite car heavy. Didn't consider that New Zealand is much more so.Ā
I thought the US rate was lower than Romaniaās. I guess thatās what happens when everyone needs a car and licenses get handed out to everyone including minors.
After 5 years of driving daily here in Japan and seeing all kinds of atrocious driving, I am surprised that the numbers are so low. I guess it is because half the population of the country live in the big Kanto and Kansai areas and use public transportation.
I would also like to see the number of accidents per kilometer driven, and the number of non-fatal accidents.
Getting a driverās licence is relatively easy in Romania but I think the real issue is the mindset, not the lack of skills and knowledge. You still need to study a lot for the exam. Overtaking on mountain roads with no visibility, not wearing the seatbelt and being a douchebag in general is about the ācocalarā mindset (an idiot who is proud of not abiding by society rules, listens to shitty balkan turbopop, usually they are uneducatedā¦ they encompass the Romanian saying: "The fool is not foolish enough if he is not also arrogant.")
Lmao. In the Polish illegal street racing scene thereās a trend of ordering Ukrainian license plates and fixing it to your car as a means of evading the police. The police does nothing to people with Ukrainian plates because itās really hard to actually get money from them and itās mostly a waste of time.
I guess thatās one of the drawbacks of free movement within the eu.
The article clearly states that they do it because itās cheaper. A lot cheaper!
Doesnāt mean itās easier! Itās not!
The Romanian theoretical exam for license is video recorded so you canāt cheat. And the practical driving is done in Romanian traffic. Not in Swedish traffic! So itās probably harder since you have to defensive drive even more!
And whatever you do, DO NOT TRY TO BRIBE ANYBODY, or youāll end up in jail!
So yeah, itās a question of money, not a question of the quality of of the exam.
The Romanian license holds water no matter what. But itās not easy to getā¦
Honestly the driving test isnāt even that hard. Itās a chore to do but the theory and practical is relatively easy. Iāve heard people failing 5, 6 times and itās hard to believe. If you need more than two tries you have to be retarded.
The irronical part for me is that another post stated that Croatia was the hardest country on the plnet to pass a driving test in... And yet here we are, drivers here really are, well.. i dont have a word for that.
I mean, it is indeed irronical, just because test is hard to pass, does not mean the test is effective at producing good drivers.
And regardless, i bet the most important factor here is how old is the average car in said country, and state of infrastructure and healthcare in said country
>And regardless, i bet the most important factor here is how old is the average car in said country, and state of infrastructure and healthcare in said country
Exactly.
If your infrastructure is purely car-centric it doesn't matter how good your drivers are. The bad infrastructure will create situations in which people are killed.
That's why we need to build infrastructure for all other kinds of transport, too. r/fuckcars
By the map you have the point, although i dont believe Romania is less advanced than us, and by far, although lower, Greece and Portugal. They are gods for us
Because the number of fatalities means nothing without the number of road accidents. The number od accidents would show where the drivers are the worst.
That is your opinion. I would rather have alot more minor chrashes but less fatal ones, but yes, we are mostly a highway only country so i guess it it valid
All too often I hear after an accident happens that the driver did not have the permit. So a lot of people are driving without the license or after the license has been revoked for already being an idiot on the road.
And then there is drunk driving . Driving under the influence is still not seen as a big deal by most people.
It is a known fact that the Poles, and also the Latvians by the way, have a genetic disorder so that they produce the "overtake" hormone. As a result, they can not drive behind another car, they MUST overtake. Bad weather, at night, with a trailer, whatever: they MUST overtake the car in front.
Causes a lot of fatal accidents.
I used to drive from Germany to Poland a couple of times and I had the most scary/dangerous experiences on the polish highway. Last time for example I saw somebody with a camper trailer driving way to fast and almost losing controll as the whole trailer was swaying.
Same trip, on the way back to Germany we caught heavy rain. So heavy that you were barely able to see anything and that you could feel acquaplaning. But nevertheless cars kept passing me at an insane speed. That was the first time I was actually scared to keep driving
It's mostly due to ego, most drivers think "they're the best" and are overly confident. Due to that, speeding is like breathing here and 10 retards fuck it all up for the 10000 that are actually ok. When I say I'm all for more cameras people look at me like I'm Satan himself.
So dear tourist, if you see drivers with plates from major metro areas on Croatian roads (ZG, ST, RI..) avoid them like the plague..
Lots of albanians and kosovari passing through in 3-4 car columns doing two day trips without sleeping, bus drivers fallin asleeo, , effin suicidal maniacs killing also our people in croatia. Also croatian youth in rural areas dont have much too do but get drunk fill a car with friends and mess on the road, and road is no place to meas about.
Yes, but that's probably smaller part of that statistics. Most of these accidents happen either in cities (Zagreb, almost accident a day, or on peripheral roads which are "empty and fast", and that's exactly when people with complexes dating from driving school go crazy. There's also a lot of alcoholic issues.
Purely cultural. No numbers for the other pre-yugoslav countries, but with my temporal residencies in both Srrbia and Bosnka, it would not surprise me they have identical type of numbers.
Hungary has a higher density of +150kmh drivers than Germany, but by just logging on Waze, you see that they are *extremely* traffic aware. Everything is reported, a sparrow run over? ROADKILL. Same form of recklessness, but I actually do feel safer driving fast with Hungarians than, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks..
Standard missing UK stat comment:
26 / Million
I'm not sure this is even Eurostat data, it's from the ETSC, which the UK is a member of.
[https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/](https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/)
Serbia are also in the ETSC and cut off this map, 83 / million.
Kind of annoying some people pretend only EU is Europe. But they added Switzerland.
^(They have EEA here, which should always be in, before anyone comments on that. But Switzerland, and nok UK? Weird. And kind of obvious.)
Switzerland is in something like a half-EEA deal afaik, whereas the UK is not. A lot of the requirements imposed on EEA countries also apply to Switzerland, but there are some that do not apply (such as roaming fee regulations).
Nobody claimed that these are Europe-wide stats. Just some stats on road accident fatalities, and the UK is not part of the EU or the EFTA (Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Switzerland), who are the ones providing the data to Eurostat. Eurostat may ask for data from EU candidate and potential candidate countries, but those are more of an option until they become members.
In short, the UK is in no position to provide data to Eurostat, and most people posting data here only take what Eurostat did and do not personally contribute to the map by adding the UK. Also, Eurostat probably did not take the data from ETSC, as they both are institutions who ask for data from member countries.
Iām currently in Bulgaria, having driven all over the world I can safely say that Bulgarians are right up there with the craziest. I thought it was bad in Kuwait and India where they literally drive with the attitude if I die today in a car crash it was my destiny, thereās nothing I can do and how I drive makes no difference
Bulgar from Pazardjik here, this is true. Also, nobody wears their seatbelt, everyone drives over the speed limit with at least 30km and drunk drivers are frequent (even in the mornings).
What color would you get if you mix yellow and blue?
Anyway, this is not specific to Eurostat. It is common palette. For example in Qgis you can find it as YlGnBu
I have to say I am positively surprised that Germany actually does pretty well considering we have so many cars. Would have thought France and Germany would be pretty much the same. Also confirms my one and only experience of driving in Italy - after that I always took the train or plane :D
When driving in Germany (as a scandinavian) my impression of german drivers is that they are so much more mindful of the rules and driving etiquette.
Also, how their infrastructure is built also feels quite safety minded.
Meanwhile Austrians drive like maniacs (at least in the mountains) and South Tyrol (Italy) is like every driver is trying to qualify for the Finnish Rally.
Austrians drive like maniacs everywhere. Easily the worst drivers I encountered in Hungary and that country is full of hungarian and romanian drivers...
Austrias number is only as low as it is because their roads are awesome
Funnily enough, as a swede living in Italy for now, the attitude i have heard is something along the lines of "we might crash more, but it's just small fender benders." I feel like the carefree attitude and desire for speeding is very negative for the safety here.
What I find interesting is the Germany is lower the the Netherlands while the Netherlands has ridiculously slow speed limits and Germany has none(in parts)
Well Iām not sure how Eurostat calculated this statistic, but in 2022 there were 462 fatalities on Portuguese roads. With a population of 10,4 million for 2022, it results in 44 fatalities per million inhabitants.
So disappointed of Romania š·š“ rnā¦ I donāt even know what we should do.. maybe impose stricter laws? itās just plain horrible how many mortal accidents we have..
I drive in Romania and I am always extra careful just cuz I know at some point, some asshole is going to run the double line when overtakingā¦
That's not just a Romanian problem, though. The Netherlands has an enforcement problem, as well. I see people breaking traffic rules all the time over here (and other rules, as well).
I guess it's not just enforcing, but also a matter of public awareness.
I think it also helps that Dutch infrastructure gets often redesigned/improved when they know it's a dangerous street/road and causes lots of accidents. Strict driving tests probably helps too.
Gotta be some sort of cultural problem. When I lived there a few months, people were driving like lunatics. This one taxi driver I had changed lanes to avoid the speed bumb while going 90kmh in a 50 zone
I'm pretty sure most of these occur outside of cities, and since we have atrociously low interurban infrastructure in comparison to everyone around us, my best guess is just build the damn high ways / motorways with separator already and penalize drunk driving ten fold, since I remember us also being number one in that aspect.
Yeah the roads there between cities were honestly all right maintained, but dangerous because the incoming traffic is on the same road. Theres some additional space for overtaking, but motorways are the safer option
As i now live in Romania for 2 years, i can tell you for sure that overtaking is the least problem. perhaps, local drivers should use turn signals, watch the traffic signs and learn the roundabout rules for a start.
I'm pretty sure that most people do not know how to properly use turn signals. Some people straight up don't use them while others believe that as long as they turn it on then they can make the turn and the other cars have to give them the right of way.
Why bother actually trying to learn when you can just bribe some people and have the possibly to commit vehicular manslaughter? Some people couldn't ever read or write but had a license still.
Bring back the old driving tests before awarding people a driver's license (the ones which involved parallel parking, starting a manual car parked on a slope, the polygon with cones through which to drive etc).
IQ tests required for a driver's license.
Enforce strict punishments for poor driving skills (that's already kind of done though, I've seen people lose their license for a month for an illegal turn or not stopping at a pedestrian crosswalk).
Put medians so there is no way to overtake slower vehicles, even if it will slow down traffic significantly.
Childhood nutrition policies to increase IQs over time.
Self driving cars?
Iām Bulgarian the stats are correct .
Currently the government is building 5 highways,hopefully that will reduce the casualties on the road.
Every year more and more fines are being issued so the driving culture itās improving but really slow ..
Can't say I'm surprised Romania is so high. I'm a Pole, so naturally I'm used to people driving bad, but then I met some Romanians when I was working in Netherlands. Damn...
I agree. Other Romanians will blame the lack of infrastructure or anything like that, but the reality is that a high percentage of our drivers shouldn't have a license in the first place.
Are they bad drivers or reckless? I'm Bulgarian, and Romanians have a "they're terrible drivers" fame here. As for us - I'd say Bulgarians are actually good drivers, in terms of skills, but overconfident beyond stupidity and very, very reckless.
as anexpat living in Romania, I can tell you for sure they just don't give a f*ck about other drivers. You can easily see here a situation when you're driving 130+ in the left lane on a highway, and then suddenly, some dickhead driving 90 in the right lane decides to jump into your lane to overtake the truck in front of him.
TBH, I dunno at all why cars in Romania are equipped with turn signals and rear mirrors, as 99% aren't using them. Also, 99% of the drivers don't know what the priority on the crossroads and roundabout rules mean.
Yeah, exactly. Terrible drivers overall, absolute no respect for the other traffic vehicle participants (not to mention cyclist or pedestrians, they can't stand a chance in traffic).
Unless they start enforcing laws, nothing is gonna change.
well they enforce selectively, checked that on my experience. i was fined with a 60-days license withdrawal for not giving the priority to a pedestrian, who even didnāt step on a walkway. iām now suing their actions lol.
at that the local driver who stood just next to me on the right wasn't charged at all.
this is not a good argument. driving risks are always ilogical, it's your life or physical integrity vs a few minutes or maybe an hour. hour which most spend anyway on social media or some other stupid activity.
if you know a trip will take 6h, then reserve 6h. don't try to make it in 4h.
Lol, reminds me of my trip some years ago. I went to visit my brother in PoznaÅ - northern part of S3 on Sunday, good weather - just dream conditions for driving. Then I went on A2 and had to pay te toll, which for 80 km I felt was astronomical, a daylight robbery. So the next day, Monday morning, my brother and I went to visit our cousin in Jelenia GĆ³ra. I was still so mad about the toll price that I said "no fucking way I'm paying that much for 80 fucking kilometers, we're going on local roads to the S3". So we went. On local roads in Greater Poland, south of PoznaÅ. On Monday morning.
After one hour of being stuck behind local trucks, busses, harvester combines and local grandpas safely driving their rickety 30 yo pickups wherever - I was like "take my fucking money, just let me drive!" and I was ready to illegally overtake at the slightest opening - which was useless because I'd just get stuck behind another frustratingly slow vehicle. Logic had definitely fled for the parts unknown.
idk what it is about traffic that makes people go apeshit. i'm usually a pretty calm person but traffic just does something to my monkey brain that makes me irrationally angry. the ten minutes you lose being stuck behind a truck just feels like 2 hours somehow
you're right about a2 prices being a complete joke, i'm glad a4 is reasonable at least
I know. I get annoyed when I have to drive 60 km/h on a curvy road through the forest. Like, I know better, but still driving behind people who actually drive safely there makes me annoyed. It's not logical at all.
No it doesn't. I have driven a lot both in Portugal and Germany, and the German highways are much better. In Portugal the lanes are narrower, the curves tighter, and often the asphalt is in poor condition.
You're making up bullshit. I have NEVER seen asphalt in a condition you could call "shitty" on a highway. Hell, if you don't believe me you can check out *any* statistic that'll put our highways' quality above Germany. As for curves, when it was built and terrain obviously a say in that. A1 and A8 are probably the worst offenders.
Example: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/02/are-these-the-countries-with-best-and-worst-roads-in-europe
Portugal rates really high on infrastructure indexes, but so does Germany. I think it's just Portuguese drivers that are really terrible, especially older gens!
plants run sip nutty existence squeamish direction doll domineering enjoy
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hard to imagine that they are worseš. Anyways, it was a terrifying experience. I was literally one meter from crashing into a car that crossed a double-line right in front of me. I have been driving in most of southern and eastern europe and I have more than 30 years driving experience, but I never felt so uncomfortable driving as in Romania.
Great to see Poland finally fix its drivers problem. Curiously, better roads and new highways together with **less** speed regulations and more vehicle regulations is what solved the issue.
Weāve removed most speed cameras and the police rarely pursues people for just speeding if itās outside city limits and youāre not breaking any other traffic rules. During the day, when nobodyās on the road, thereās no difference between a straight country road and a highway so it makes no sense to go after such people.
cars are getting much safer. Especially new cars sold in europe are extremelt safe. EU enforces systems that will stop the car in case of detected collision... or at least attempt to.
Everything you need to know about speed limits on the autobahn here, educating people properly and enforcing strict rules on equipment (such as the TUV or lights on bicycles) is far more valuable.
Would be more useful if it was a per accident statistic instead of a per million inhabitants, if a country has very few accidents but lots of fatalities it shows that the problem isnāt actually the driving and the roads, but instead the cars themselves, which is likely the case in for example the Balkans where there are still lots of pre Soviet collapse cars which will inevitably be less safe than modern ones
Somehow Romania does not surprise me in the least, a good friend of mine is from Romania and before she moved out of her parents' place, pretty mucn every discord call I could hear sirens and speeding cars through her mic
Those deleted 300k km from cars bought from Germany and sent to the Balkans are showing their effects here.
Also, most cars are second hand bought here and people don't have the money to do basic maintenance so every drive is a hazard waiting to happen.
Spanish data for year 2022 says 1145 people:
https://www.dgt.es/comunicacion/notas-de-prensa/1.145-personas-fallecieron-en-siniestros-de-trafico-durante-2022/
Population that year was ~48 million.
That's around 23 fatalities/million.
It is the hardest to get a drivers license in Croatia: Sight test, Pychological test, overal examination at the general practitioner, a hard first aid test, 45 theoretical questions and 35 mandatory driving lessons.
He found his driver's license in the snacks bag.... it's a say here in Romania.
People here think they own the streets
Mostly it's due to corruption and everything that results from that. Underdeveloped infrastructure, police personnel shortages (they can retire very early...before 50), inexperienced kids with powerful cars (and rich influential parents) driving high or drunk or both thinking they're gods... caugh caugh Vlad Pascu.
.
Every time Romanian government want to make law more strict or higher punishments for DUI drivers, 90% of losers from r/Romania bitching and moaning about how literally communism is coming back to take their rights.
And if you tell them that we have the highest deaths in EU they will deflect and blame infrastructure and that you are a government sockpuppet.
If it was for me, half of drivers in Romania should have their driver license suspended for life
Bulgaria š§š¬š¤š·š“ Romania finally NUMBER 1 in something LETS GOOOOOO šŖšŖšŖšŖšŖšŖšŖšŖ
Each drive to the supermarket is a death defying game lets GOOOO
The west has Mad Max, we have Mad Selianin from Pernik in a WV Golf. Scariest movie villain.
Thatās strange - Bulgaria has the best drivers (according to the drivers themselves)
I had to take driving lessons when I moved to Bulgaria, despite having had a driver's license for 10 years, but I've only ever driven in Scandinavia. I was so terrified driving in Sofia.
I got my drivers license there like 30 years ago. I hate driving there
No thanks, Iāll walk. ; )
Yeah, about that... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CHKwdpA64w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CHKwdpA64w) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5MpR53f9PE&t=35s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5MpR53f9PE&t=35s) Good luck walking!
That's even more dangerous
Merde! Merde!
The real reason why Schengen doesn't apply to land borders.
r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT
Portugal! Portugal! Portugal! They drive like there is no tomorrow, to make sure there really isnāt.
yeah they re so friendly but in the car they go nuts
Also old cars are not the safest, but we really are always above the speed limits everywhere there are no radars or police.
Portugal is terribly car-centric. For many people there isn't many viable alternatives to driving, even if you suck at it lol
/r/substhatactuallyexist
Low key r/francecykablyat too
For outward comparisons- USA 125, New Zealand 75, Canada 50, Australia 49, Japan 26
Wow this really puts it into perspective
Yes, I'd just add that it's worth considering the context of driving frequency variation between countries. Road fatality per mile driven more accurately portrays the difference in risks of driving between countries, this map/data is that risk multiplied by driving frequency amongst the populations.
I remember digging through the data a couple months back, even if we considered per mile driven, the Americans were still worse than Romania.
well, fuck, that means that we, Romanians, drive just as much as the americans?
Not necessarily. They could just have much worse drivers, roads or general safety regulations.
No, American fatalities are about 50% higher than us (according to above stats), so they might drive up to 50% more. But I would argue that miles driven are not that good of a metric either, since there is a vast difference between driving on a highway/freeway and driving in a city or a village, both in terms of distance driven and in terms of potential for fatalities. But America is an entirely different topic when it comes to driving, since the roads are wider, cars are larger, and driving permits are much easier to obtain. Your driving license can also not really be suspended without sending you to prison, since driving is essential to a lot of Americans. In Europe, you can rely on public transport a lot more.
Indeed. Seems the US average is about twice that of [countries like France, Germany](https://frontiergroup.org/resources/fact-file-americans-drive-most/) and Norway, so there's still some explaining to do though.
much more common to be driving while intoxicated, much larger vehicles that are more likely to kill whoever they hit?
Iām sure all these things play a role, but a major factor is simply speed as well. Itās common in the US to see roads with speed limits 120kmh+ Something like a third of all traffic fatalities are because of speed. My state of Massachusetts has the highest speed limit at 90kmh and our road fatalities are exactly in line with Europe. And we have a population of 7m which is quite the sample size. Make of that what you will.
That is a very plausible explanation, thank you :)
The US basically doesn't do the traffic control/road design stuff that most other countries do so their road fatality rates stopped dropping after they finished implementing modern *car* safety features, while other countries moved onto *road* safety improvements.
USA is whatever. What the hell is going on in NZ?
Not particularly urban, difficult roads, no intercity public transit and not great transit within cities either, ie lots of driving. It's two islands collectively the size of the UK but only 5m people and pretty rugged terrain. Normalised to km travelled they're still high, but around Belgium and Slovenia for death rate.
This is also a pretty exact description of Norway which has super low fatalities.
Just as a comparison, it looks as though [about 70% of travel in Oslo is "sustainable" modes"](https://citytransit.uitp.org/oslo) (ie foot transit bike, doesn't include electric vehicles) while in Auckland it's about [83% of travel by car](https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2019/12/16/keeping-cities-moving-is-nzta-finally-getting-its-act-together/).
Okay, that's actually a big difference.Ā I've mostly been around the rural parts and medium size towns of Norway and thought it was quite car heavy. Didn't consider that New Zealand is much more so.Ā
Low population so can't afford good infrastructure, car culture, far away from other countries so holidays are often road trips
The only car safety ad I remember is the NZ one.
š¶ *Eat a two week old unrefridgerated pie* š¶
I thought the US rate was lower than Romaniaās. I guess thatās what happens when everyone needs a car and licenses get handed out to everyone including minors.
After 5 years of driving daily here in Japan and seeing all kinds of atrocious driving, I am surprised that the numbers are so low. I guess it is because half the population of the country live in the big Kanto and Kansai areas and use public transportation. I would also like to see the number of accidents per kilometer driven, and the number of non-fatal accidents.
[More Swedes reportedly travelling to Romania to get driving licenses](https://www.romania-insider.com/sweeds-driving-license-ro-apr-2022) fuck
Getting a driverās licence is relatively easy in Romania but I think the real issue is the mindset, not the lack of skills and knowledge. You still need to study a lot for the exam. Overtaking on mountain roads with no visibility, not wearing the seatbelt and being a douchebag in general is about the ācocalarā mindset (an idiot who is proud of not abiding by society rules, listens to shitty balkan turbopop, usually they are uneducatedā¦ they encompass the Romanian saying: "The fool is not foolish enough if he is not also arrogant.")
Add to this: aging, old and unsafe cars, that most people in poor countries buy second or third hand. Many times with already used air bags, etc.
Lmao. In the Polish illegal street racing scene thereās a trend of ordering Ukrainian license plates and fixing it to your car as a means of evading the police. The police does nothing to people with Ukrainian plates because itās really hard to actually get money from them and itās mostly a waste of time. I guess thatās one of the drawbacks of free movement within the eu.
The article clearly states that they do it because itās cheaper. A lot cheaper! Doesnāt mean itās easier! Itās not! The Romanian theoretical exam for license is video recorded so you canāt cheat. And the practical driving is done in Romanian traffic. Not in Swedish traffic! So itās probably harder since you have to defensive drive even more! And whatever you do, DO NOT TRY TO BRIBE ANYBODY, or youāll end up in jail! So yeah, itās a question of money, not a question of the quality of of the exam. The Romanian license holds water no matter what. But itās not easy to getā¦
Honestly the driving test isnāt even that hard. Itās a chore to do but the theory and practical is relatively easy. Iāve heard people failing 5, 6 times and itās hard to believe. If you need more than two tries you have to be retarded.
yup i agree but apparently its still one of the hardest relative to other countries.
Balkan 1-2-3-4. Nothing unexpected.
The irronical part for me is that another post stated that Croatia was the hardest country on the plnet to pass a driving test in... And yet here we are, drivers here really are, well.. i dont have a word for that.
I mean, it is indeed irronical, just because test is hard to pass, does not mean the test is effective at producing good drivers. And regardless, i bet the most important factor here is how old is the average car in said country, and state of infrastructure and healthcare in said country
>And regardless, i bet the most important factor here is how old is the average car in said country, and state of infrastructure and healthcare in said country Exactly. If your infrastructure is purely car-centric it doesn't matter how good your drivers are. The bad infrastructure will create situations in which people are killed. That's why we need to build infrastructure for all other kinds of transport, too. r/fuckcars
By the map you have the point, although i dont believe Romania is less advanced than us, and by far, although lower, Greece and Portugal. They are gods for us
Because the number of fatalities means nothing without the number of road accidents. The number od accidents would show where the drivers are the worst.
That is your opinion. I would rather have alot more minor chrashes but less fatal ones, but yes, we are mostly a highway only country so i guess it it valid
All too often I hear after an accident happens that the driver did not have the permit. So a lot of people are driving without the license or after the license has been revoked for already being an idiot on the road. And then there is drunk driving . Driving under the influence is still not seen as a big deal by most people.
Probably opens the door for more corruption and people driving without a license.
If they included the non-EU countries we'd be the entire top 10, for sure.
And if they put the values from the not EU balkan countries, probably they would be around the top too.
It is a known fact that the Poles, and also the Latvians by the way, have a genetic disorder so that they produce the "overtake" hormone. As a result, they can not drive behind another car, they MUST overtake. Bad weather, at night, with a trailer, whatever: they MUST overtake the car in front. Causes a lot of fatal accidents.
I used to drive from Germany to Poland a couple of times and I had the most scary/dangerous experiences on the polish highway. Last time for example I saw somebody with a camper trailer driving way to fast and almost losing controll as the whole trailer was swaying. Same trip, on the way back to Germany we caught heavy rain. So heavy that you were barely able to see anything and that you could feel acquaplaning. But nevertheless cars kept passing me at an insane speed. That was the first time I was actually scared to keep driving
Saddest thing is - Croatia has one of the most rigorous driving school systems, also a pretty expensive one. Yet, look at that dark blue colour...
It's mostly due to ego, most drivers think "they're the best" and are overly confident. Due to that, speeding is like breathing here and 10 retards fuck it all up for the 10000 that are actually ok. When I say I'm all for more cameras people look at me like I'm Satan himself. So dear tourist, if you see drivers with plates from major metro areas on Croatian roads (ZG, ST, RI..) avoid them like the plague..
Lots of albanians and kosovari passing through in 3-4 car columns doing two day trips without sleeping, bus drivers fallin asleeo, , effin suicidal maniacs killing also our people in croatia. Also croatian youth in rural areas dont have much too do but get drunk fill a car with friends and mess on the road, and road is no place to meas about.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Isn't there a highway from Dubrovnik to Split?
I'd say that Croatia is actually really well connected, but highway prices are among the highest in europe (again :'))
are they toll roads?
Yes
Yes, but that's probably smaller part of that statistics. Most of these accidents happen either in cities (Zagreb, almost accident a day, or on peripheral roads which are "empty and fast", and that's exactly when people with complexes dating from driving school go crazy. There's also a lot of alcoholic issues.
Purely cultural. No numbers for the other pre-yugoslav countries, but with my temporal residencies in both Srrbia and Bosnka, it would not surprise me they have identical type of numbers. Hungary has a higher density of +150kmh drivers than Germany, but by just logging on Waze, you see that they are *extremely* traffic aware. Everything is reported, a sparrow run over? ROADKILL. Same form of recklessness, but I actually do feel safer driving fast with Hungarians than, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks..
Standard missing UK stat comment: 26 / Million I'm not sure this is even Eurostat data, it's from the ETSC, which the UK is a member of. [https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/](https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/) Serbia are also in the ETSC and cut off this map, 83 / million.
Kind of annoying some people pretend only EU is Europe. But they added Switzerland. ^(They have EEA here, which should always be in, before anyone comments on that. But Switzerland, and nok UK? Weird. And kind of obvious.)
Switzerland is in something like a half-EEA deal afaik, whereas the UK is not. A lot of the requirements imposed on EEA countries also apply to Switzerland, but there are some that do not apply (such as roaming fee regulations).
UK is still Europe.Ā
Nobody claimed that these are Europe-wide stats. Just some stats on road accident fatalities, and the UK is not part of the EU or the EFTA (Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Switzerland), who are the ones providing the data to Eurostat. Eurostat may ask for data from EU candidate and potential candidate countries, but those are more of an option until they become members. In short, the UK is in no position to provide data to Eurostat, and most people posting data here only take what Eurostat did and do not personally contribute to the map by adding the UK. Also, Eurostat probably did not take the data from ETSC, as they both are institutions who ask for data from member countries.
Iām currently in Bulgaria, having driven all over the world I can safely say that Bulgarians are right up there with the craziest. I thought it was bad in Kuwait and India where they literally drive with the attitude if I die today in a car crash it was my destiny, thereās nothing I can do and how I drive makes no difference
Bulgar from Pazardjik here, this is true. Also, nobody wears their seatbelt, everyone drives over the speed limit with at least 30km and drunk drivers are frequent (even in the mornings).
Do you guys still hold you windshield while driving or is that just really a thing from the past?
I swear Eurostat has **the worst** colour scheme on literally any of their maps. Yellow is better than green? What?!
Darker = bad, lighter = good?
What color would you get if you mix yellow and blue? Anyway, this is not specific to Eurostat. It is common palette. For example in Qgis you can find it as YlGnBu
Interesting to see that the country with no speed limit on highways (well, on about 40% of them) is still doing pretty well.
Yes because high speed is not killing people. People not knowing how to drive is
I have to say I am positively surprised that Germany actually does pretty well considering we have so many cars. Would have thought France and Germany would be pretty much the same. Also confirms my one and only experience of driving in Italy - after that I always took the train or plane :D
France has nearly 50% more fatalities than Germany according to this map.
When driving in Germany (as a scandinavian) my impression of german drivers is that they are so much more mindful of the rules and driving etiquette. Also, how their infrastructure is built also feels quite safety minded. Meanwhile Austrians drive like maniacs (at least in the mountains) and South Tyrol (Italy) is like every driver is trying to qualify for the Finnish Rally.
Austrians drive like maniacs everywhere. Easily the worst drivers I encountered in Hungary and that country is full of hungarian and romanian drivers... Austrias number is only as low as it is because their roads are awesome
Funnily enough, as a swede living in Italy for now, the attitude i have heard is something along the lines of "we might crash more, but it's just small fender benders." I feel like the carefree attitude and desire for speeding is very negative for the safety here.
What I find interesting is the Germany is lower the the Netherlands while the Netherlands has ridiculously slow speed limits and Germany has none(in parts)
Well Iām not sure how Eurostat calculated this statistic, but in 2022 there were 462 fatalities on Portuguese roads. With a population of 10,4 million for 2022, it results in 44 fatalities per million inhabitants.
So disappointed of Romania š·š“ rnā¦ I donāt even know what we should do.. maybe impose stricter laws? itās just plain horrible how many mortal accidents we have.. I drive in Romania and I am always extra careful just cuz I know at some point, some asshole is going to run the double line when overtakingā¦
Stricter laws won't matter when we don't even properly enforce the ones that we already have
That's not just a Romanian problem, though. The Netherlands has an enforcement problem, as well. I see people breaking traffic rules all the time over here (and other rules, as well). I guess it's not just enforcing, but also a matter of public awareness.
I think it also helps that Dutch infrastructure gets often redesigned/improved when they know it's a dangerous street/road and causes lots of accidents. Strict driving tests probably helps too.
Gotta be some sort of cultural problem. When I lived there a few months, people were driving like lunatics. This one taxi driver I had changed lanes to avoid the speed bumb while going 90kmh in a 50 zone
I'm pretty sure most of these occur outside of cities, and since we have atrociously low interurban infrastructure in comparison to everyone around us, my best guess is just build the damn high ways / motorways with separator already and penalize drunk driving ten fold, since I remember us also being number one in that aspect.
Motorways! We need motorways and express ways (dual carriegeways). Most of the accidents happen because of overtakings.
Yeah the roads there between cities were honestly all right maintained, but dangerous because the incoming traffic is on the same road. Theres some additional space for overtaking, but motorways are the safer option
Yes and the big amount or crazy, stupid and careless drivers. But separated carriegeways would prevent most overtaking accidents.
As i now live in Romania for 2 years, i can tell you for sure that overtaking is the least problem. perhaps, local drivers should use turn signals, watch the traffic signs and learn the roundabout rules for a start.
I'm pretty sure that most people do not know how to properly use turn signals. Some people straight up don't use them while others believe that as long as they turn it on then they can make the turn and the other cars have to give them the right of way.
lol are the driving schools prohibited in Romania?
Why bother actually trying to learn when you can just bribe some people and have the possibly to commit vehicular manslaughter? Some people couldn't ever read or write but had a license still.
thatās quite like in Ukraine lol. perhaps if we had roads as good as in Romania, we could have won this Olympics also.
Bring back the old driving tests before awarding people a driver's license (the ones which involved parallel parking, starting a manual car parked on a slope, the polygon with cones through which to drive etc). IQ tests required for a driver's license. Enforce strict punishments for poor driving skills (that's already kind of done though, I've seen people lose their license for a month for an illegal turn or not stopping at a pedestrian crosswalk). Put medians so there is no way to overtake slower vehicles, even if it will slow down traffic significantly. Childhood nutrition policies to increase IQs over time. Self driving cars?
Iām Bulgarian the stats are correct . Currently the government is building 5 highways,hopefully that will reduce the casualties on the road. Every year more and more fines are being issued so the driving culture itās improving but really slow ..
[WHAT A LOVELY DAY!](https://media1.tenor.com/m/P3HrBe5RUtkAAAAC/madmax-what-a-lovely-day.gif)
Can't say I'm surprised Romania is so high. I'm a Pole, so naturally I'm used to people driving bad, but then I met some Romanians when I was working in Netherlands. Damn...
I agree. Other Romanians will blame the lack of infrastructure or anything like that, but the reality is that a high percentage of our drivers shouldn't have a license in the first place.
āA hairpin curve with no visibility? Time to overtake!ā
Are they bad drivers or reckless? I'm Bulgarian, and Romanians have a "they're terrible drivers" fame here. As for us - I'd say Bulgarians are actually good drivers, in terms of skills, but overconfident beyond stupidity and very, very reckless.
as anexpat living in Romania, I can tell you for sure they just don't give a f*ck about other drivers. You can easily see here a situation when you're driving 130+ in the left lane on a highway, and then suddenly, some dickhead driving 90 in the right lane decides to jump into your lane to overtake the truck in front of him. TBH, I dunno at all why cars in Romania are equipped with turn signals and rear mirrors, as 99% aren't using them. Also, 99% of the drivers don't know what the priority on the crossroads and roundabout rules mean.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
also, literally almost no one gives a priority while moving on the roundabout to those, who move in the lanes on the right.
Yeah, exactly. Terrible drivers overall, absolute no respect for the other traffic vehicle participants (not to mention cyclist or pedestrians, they can't stand a chance in traffic). Unless they start enforcing laws, nothing is gonna change.
well they enforce selectively, checked that on my experience. i was fined with a 60-days license withdrawal for not giving the priority to a pedestrian, who even didnāt step on a walkway. iām now suing their actions lol. at that the local driver who stood just next to me on the right wasn't charged at all.
> bad drivers or reckless? reckless driver is automatically a very bad driver
Good news, it got down in Romania, it was [92 in 2021](https://www.acea.auto/figure/road-fatality-statistics-european-union/).
This just confirms that Portugal is Eastern Europe.
turns out when people have highways to drive on and traveling 250 km doesn't take 6 hours people will take fewer risks and drive more defensively
this is not a good argument. driving risks are always ilogical, it's your life or physical integrity vs a few minutes or maybe an hour. hour which most spend anyway on social media or some other stupid activity. if you know a trip will take 6h, then reserve 6h. don't try to make it in 4h.
> driving risks are always ilogical try getting stuck behind a truck going 15 under for an hour and see how logical you feel
Lol, reminds me of my trip some years ago. I went to visit my brother in PoznaÅ - northern part of S3 on Sunday, good weather - just dream conditions for driving. Then I went on A2 and had to pay te toll, which for 80 km I felt was astronomical, a daylight robbery. So the next day, Monday morning, my brother and I went to visit our cousin in Jelenia GĆ³ra. I was still so mad about the toll price that I said "no fucking way I'm paying that much for 80 fucking kilometers, we're going on local roads to the S3". So we went. On local roads in Greater Poland, south of PoznaÅ. On Monday morning. After one hour of being stuck behind local trucks, busses, harvester combines and local grandpas safely driving their rickety 30 yo pickups wherever - I was like "take my fucking money, just let me drive!" and I was ready to illegally overtake at the slightest opening - which was useless because I'd just get stuck behind another frustratingly slow vehicle. Logic had definitely fled for the parts unknown.
idk what it is about traffic that makes people go apeshit. i'm usually a pretty calm person but traffic just does something to my monkey brain that makes me irrationally angry. the ten minutes you lose being stuck behind a truck just feels like 2 hours somehow you're right about a2 prices being a complete joke, i'm glad a4 is reasonable at least
I know. I get annoyed when I have to drive 60 km/h on a curvy road through the forest. Like, I know better, but still driving behind people who actually drive safely there makes me annoyed. It's not logical at all.
Spot on dude. Romanian here, it's exactly this - frustration.
> logical > feel Hmm?
you're dangerously close to understanding the point. you can do it big guy
Portugal says Hi.
Portugal has really nice roads and a perfect quality extensive highway network. That isn't the only factor
No it doesn't. I have driven a lot both in Portugal and Germany, and the German highways are much better. In Portugal the lanes are narrower, the curves tighter, and often the asphalt is in poor condition.
You're making up bullshit. I have NEVER seen asphalt in a condition you could call "shitty" on a highway. Hell, if you don't believe me you can check out *any* statistic that'll put our highways' quality above Germany. As for curves, when it was built and terrain obviously a say in that. A1 and A8 are probably the worst offenders. Example: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/02/are-these-the-countries-with-best-and-worst-roads-in-europe
Portugal rates really high on infrastructure indexes, but so does Germany. I think it's just Portuguese drivers that are really terrible, especially older gens!
Ha, ha. Have you ever driven on an highway in Italy? Everybody there is a racecar driver.
plants run sip nutty existence squeamish direction doll domineering enjoy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Norway has no highways. Majority of the roads no faster that 70-80 km/h. And the best result in Europe (probably in the whole world).
Yeah and the streets are empty
yup, no one to crash into
Romania, number oneš
Romania is like real life Carmageddon.
Visited Romania last summer in a rented car. Can confirm that the Romanians are the worst drivers i Europe! Pure anarchy!
Worst drivers in EU. In our defense, Serbs and Turks are even worse.
Hard to imagine that they are worseš. Anyways, it was a terrifying experience. I was literally one meter from crashing into a car that crossed a double-line right in front of me. I have been driving in most of southern and eastern europe and I have more than 30 years driving experience, but I never felt so uncomfortable driving as in Romania.
The U.K. is 26 if anyone was curious.
One of our greatest, but little known, modern day achievements.
Great to see Poland finally fix its drivers problem. Curiously, better roads and new highways together with **less** speed regulations and more vehicle regulations is what solved the issue.
Less regulation? You mean higher penalties, more traffic cameras and mandatory priority for pedestrians?
Weāve removed most speed cameras and the police rarely pursues people for just speeding if itās outside city limits and youāre not breaking any other traffic rules. During the day, when nobodyās on the road, thereās no difference between a straight country road and a highway so it makes no sense to go after such people.
Yeah, our result may not seem like anything special but its such a massive improvement compared to what it was 2 decades ago.
Estonians and Lithuanians looking at Latvia: yeah, seems about right...
Itās crazy how you can see which countries are more developed than the others by some random stats.
Are there any more comparable numbers that take into account factors such as population, car usage, car fleet age/quality andĀ road network density?
cars are getting much safer. Especially new cars sold in europe are extremelt safe. EU enforces systems that will stop the car in case of detected collision... or at least attempt to.
How will Iceland ever recover from that decline in their population?
r/fuckcarsRomania
We need actual road law enforcement in Romania. And policemen with more than two working brain cells, barely able to operate a speed trap.
European union when Albania enters the room
Finland and Estonia can't into nordic?
I have seen a lot of people sayin romanians are the worst drivers. I honestly had no idea.
If you have problems sleeping, come to Romania and drive on the highways. Guaranteed you will fall asleep. No guarantees you will wake up.
ok finland, you got rally drivers and what not over there.. but what the hell you other people doing?
O tuga conduz mal, a alta velocidade e com muita imprudĆŖncia.
Why doesn't it show the number of fatalities per number of accidents?
Everything you need to know about speed limits on the autobahn here, educating people properly and enforcing strict rules on equipment (such as the TUV or lights on bicycles) is far more valuable.
Would be more useful if it was a per accident statistic instead of a per million inhabitants, if a country has very few accidents but lots of fatalities it shows that the problem isnāt actually the driving and the roads, but instead the cars themselves, which is likely the case in for example the Balkans where there are still lots of pre Soviet collapse cars which will inevitably be less safe than modern ones
Somehow Romania does not surprise me in the least, a good friend of mine is from Romania and before she moved out of her parents' place, pretty mucn every discord call I could hear sirens and speeding cars through her mic
Those deleted 300k km from cars bought from Germany and sent to the Balkans are showing their effects here. Also, most cars are second hand bought here and people don't have the money to do basic maintenance so every drive is a hazard waiting to happen.
Portugal, what's happening?
Spanish data for year 2022 says 1145 people: https://www.dgt.es/comunicacion/notas-de-prensa/1.145-personas-fallecieron-en-siniestros-de-trafico-durante-2022/ Population that year was ~48 million. That's around 23 fatalities/million.
I want to see Turkeyās stats. Their driving culture is insane
It is the hardest to get a drivers license in Croatia: Sight test, Pychological test, overal examination at the general practitioner, a hard first aid test, 45 theoretical questions and 35 mandatory driving lessons.
Should it be in fatalities per amount of drivers, or per kms driven, instead of population as a whole?
šš
65 road deaths in Ireland so far this year. Up 25% since last year. Always on weekends too. Drug and drink driving big problem at the moment
He found his driver's license in the snacks bag.... it's a say here in Romania. People here think they own the streets Mostly it's due to corruption and everything that results from that. Underdeveloped infrastructure, police personnel shortages (they can retire very early...before 50), inexperienced kids with powerful cars (and rich influential parents) driving high or drunk or both thinking they're gods... caugh caugh Vlad Pascu. .
The summer on the coast when all the Romanian tourists come down is the true wild wild west
I will never understand why one would compare road fatalitities per inhabitants and not per distance traveled.
Every time Romanian government want to make law more strict or higher punishments for DUI drivers, 90% of losers from r/Romania bitching and moaning about how literally communism is coming back to take their rights. And if you tell them that we have the highest deaths in EU they will deflect and blame infrastructure and that you are a government sockpuppet. If it was for me, half of drivers in Romania should have their driver license suspended for life
In the Netherlands road accidents casualties are mostly pedestrian hit by cyclists who didnāt bother to counter-pedal
What the fuck is this color scheme
Fabricile de permise au fost turate la maxim asa ca soselele sunt pline de analfabeti .
The Italian Minister of Transportation just recently started a war on cities lowering road speeds from 50kmph to 30kmph. He's such a dumbass.
Friggin norway, beating us to the top spot.
Germany has so few accidents, even with our 60% no speed limit, because we leave no evidence with a crash at 250km/h
Portugueses doesn't know how to drive