More accidents, more injuries and fatalities: The Federal Statistical Office of Germany has presented its accident statistics for 2023. The significant increase in pedestrian fatalities is striking.
Infographic: Fatalities per month in road traffic accidents
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH
A total of 2,830 people died in road traffic accidents in Germany in 2023, according to preliminary results from the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis). This is 1.5 % or 42 fatalities more than in 2022 (2,788 fatalities) and 7.1 % fewer than in 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the authority. The number of people injured in 2023 also rose slightly compared to the previous year, by 1.0 % to just over 364,900 people. Compared to the pre-corona year 2019, this was 5 % or 19,500 fewer injuries.
Saxony-Anhalt has the Most Fatalities
Last year, the police registered a good 2.5 million accidents, 4.5 % more than in the previous year, according to Destatis. In 2.2 million accidents there was property damage (+5.0 %). The number of accidents in which people were injured or killed rose by 0.4 % to around 290,800. In comparison: In the pre-corona year 2019, the police registered around 2.7 million accidents, including 300,000 with personal injury.
According to the statistics authority, the highest number of road traffic fatalities in relation to the number of inhabitants was in Saxony-Anhalt with 59 fatalities and in Lower Saxony with 52 fatalities per 1 million inhabitants. Due to their settlement structure, the city states (Bremen: 18, Hamburg: 15, Berlin: 9) and North Rhine-Westphalia (24) were far below the national figure of 34 fatalities per 1 million inhabitants.
More Pedestrians Killed
According to Destatis, more detailed results are available for the period from January to November 2023. They show a sharp increase in pedestrian fatalities of 12.3 % (+40 fatalities) compared to the same period last year, according to the authority. Significant declines compared to the same period of the previous year were recorded for occupants of goods vehicles killed, at -13.3 % (-16 fatalities), and cyclists, at -7.6 % (-35 fatalities).
This is a partly automated translation of this German article.