Last year, 479 people died on Portuguese roads, six more than in 2022, and the number of serious injuries also grew to 2635, 198 more (8.1%) than in the previous year. The increase also included minor injuries, which increased at a slightly lower rate, from 40,124 to 42,758, that is, 6.6% more than in the previous year.
The data comes from the preliminary version of the 2023 Annual Internal Security Report (RASI), a document to which PÚBLICO had access, which also shows a 5.6% increase in the number of road accidents, which totaled close to 141,700 occurrences.
“In 2023, regarding the nature of the accident, it was crashes (+6.5%) that caused the highest number of fatalities (47.8% of the total) and collisions (+2.1%) the highest number of seriously injured (45.8%)”, states the report. Traffic accidents fell by 17%, but were still responsible for 12% of fatalities, which means that 57 people died after being run over.
These data only include the number of deaths that occurred at the scene of the accident or during the journey to the health unit. In most European countries, the metric used to measure road accidents is deaths within 30 days, which include deaths up to one month after the accident. In 2022, for example, 473 fatalities were recorded after the accident, a number that rose to 618 in deaths within 30 days.
The growth in road accidents in its various metrics leaves Portugal further from meeting the objectives of the European Vision Zero policy, which sets as an interim target for 2030 a reduction in the number of deaths to 313 and 1044 for serious injuries. The ultimate goal is to reach 2050 without fatalities on the roads.
“Analyzing road accidents according to the latest EU results produced by the Commission [divulgados em Outubro passado]in 2022 Portugal recorded 60 fatalities per million inhabitants, while the EU 27 average was 46, so the national figure was above this by 30%”, reads the RASI.
