New IRF World Road Statistics data reveal persistent disparities across regions and income groups, compounded by underreporting and weaker institutional capacity to collect reliable data. Strengthening national data systems is as essential as safer design and enforcement if the world is to move toward zero fatalities.
Method note: The WRS compiles data from official national statistics submitted through annual surveys, covering more than 200 countries and territories. The figures used in this analysis may therefore reflect lower values than those reported by World Health Organization (WHO) estimates due to differences in reporting coverage, verification methods and data quality. This gap highlights the continuing need to strengthen national data systems and improve comparability across international sources to obtain a fuller picture of global road safety.
Safe and healthy roads are fundamental to protecting lives and ensuring community wellbeing. Yet despite global commitments under the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to halve road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030, progress has been limited. Each year, an estimated 1.19 million people lose their lives in road crashes , while millions more suffer injuries or permanent disabilities.
The road safety burden is uneven and often undercounted
The burden of road fatalities and injuries is not shared equally across the world. Stark regional and income-level disparities persist, reflecting differences in infrastructure quality, enforcement capacity, vehicle standards and emergency response systems. Lower- and middle-income regions account for the majority of global road deaths, even though they have fewer registered vehicles than high-income countries. Meanwhile, variations in data reporting mean that the scale of the problem in many areas remains under-recognised. Strengthening the accuracy and consistency of national statistics is therefore essential to understanding where risks are greatest and to targeting interventions more effectively.
Improving road safety is therefore a multidimensional challenge shaped by economic, institutional and social factors. Understanding where risks are most acute and how they evolve over time requires robust, comparable and transparent data.
Regional disparities in traffic deaths and injuries
A global look of officially reported data by official national statistics reveals stark contrasts among regions (Figure 1). Asia accounts for more than half of all recorded road fatalities (52.7%) and a substantial share of injuries (33.8%). North America reports the highest number of injuries (35.9%), while Europe demonstrates relatively low fatalities (7.5%) but moderately higher injuries (19.3%). Africa and South America show similar levels of fatalities but relatively few reported injuries, Oceania, by contrast, reports the lowest numbers for both fatalities and injuries, consistent with its smaller population.
When road safety data are viewed through the lens of income, clear structural disparities emerge. High– and upper middle-income regions together report the largest share of global road fatalities and injuries (Figure 2). Among these, high–income countries report a substantial majority of injuries but a relatively small share of fatalities, suggesting that better road infrastructure, safer vehicles and stronger emergency care systems may help reduce fatal outcomes. In contrast, upper middle-income countries show the highest fatality rates relative to injuries, indicating that while motorisation levels are rising, safety systems and enforcement mechanisms have not yet caught up. Lower–income regions report the fewest fatalities and injuries, a figure that likely understates the real situation due to persistent underreporting and weaker institutional capacity to collect reliable data.
Progress is taking place but not yet at pace
While regional distributions offer a snapshot of current conditions, recent trends reveal how progress toward safer roads has been uneven. Overall, global road fatalities have declined in recent years, signalling a gradual improvement in many parts of the world (Figure 3), though still not caught up with the ambition required under the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. North America stands out as an exception with a temporary increase in fatalities in 2021 before returning to a gradual downward path by 2023. Trends in road traffic injuries are more varied: Asia shows a pronounced decline (a percentage drop of 30% from 2018 to 2023), Europe and North America record moderate declines (percentage drop of 9.4% and 10.4% in the same period, respectively), while Africa continues to experience an upward trajectory (19.5% growth). These mixed results point to differences in institutional capacity, investment levels and enforcement effectiveness. Sustained, region-specific strategies remain essential for reducing the human cost of road crashes.
Comparing raw numbers across regions can obscure important differences in population sizes. Expressing road traffic deaths as fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants offers a more meaningful measure. Figure 4 presents average fatality rates by region, drawing on 2023 WRS data alongside 2021 estimates from the WHO.
According to WRS 2025 data, road traffic death rates in Africa, Asia and Oceania are broadly similar, while Europe algins close to the global average. North America reports the highest rate at 11.43 deaths per 100,000 population. In contrast, WHO estimates for 2021 indicate consistently higher road traffic death rates across all regions, with marked disparities in Africa, Asia and South America. WHO data identifies Africa as having the highest rate globally (18.8 deaths per 100,000 population), followed by Asia (15.2) and South America (14.5), while Europe, Oceania, and North America report lower rates (5.2, 7.4 and 13.2, respectively).
The higher WHO estimates highlight a persistent issue of underreporting in official national statistics, a challenge most pronounced in lower-income regions where institutional, technological and resource constraints limit accurate data collection. This underlines the urgent need to strengthen national data systems to support evidence-based policy and track progress toward global road safety targets.
Understanding global road safety requires looking beyond fatality and injury rates; it also means examining exposure variables such as vehicle-kilometres travelled or vehicle ownership rates.
Growing exposure to more cars on the road
Understanding global road safety requires looking beyond fatality and injury rates; it also means examining exposure variables such as vehicle-kilometres travelled or vehicle ownership rates.
Across continents, a broadly positive relationship emerges between motorisation and road deaths (Figure 5): as the number of vehicles per capita increases, so too does the likelihood of fatal crashes, though annual variations remain.
Europe, however, stands out as an exception from this pattern. Despite a steady rise in motorisation rates, fatality rates have decreased, reflecting the successful impact of comprehensive road safety policies and practices implemented over time. Europe’s experience demonstrates how targeted interventions – from infrastructure improvements and enforcement of traffic laws to enhanced vehicle safety standards and public awareness campaigns – can mitigate the risks typically associated with increased motorisation.
Europe’s example underscores how proactive policy, enforcement and safety system development can decouple motorisation growth from rising fatalities. It also highlights the importance of robust data collection, reporting and standardisation frameworks (e.g. EU’s CARE data framework) to ensure that figures more closely reflect reality – enabling evidence-based policies, targeted interventions, and meaningful progress tracking in global road safety.
The data show that progress is happening but uneven. While some regions have begun to decouple motorisation from rising deaths, the global pace of improvement still falls short of the ambition set by the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. Achieving the vision of zero fatalities will require more than behavioural change alone. It depends on roads that are designed, built and managed for safety; vehicles that protect all occupants and road users; and data systems that reveal, not conceal, the real scale of risk.
To accelerate progress, countries will need to strengthen collaboration across transport, health, law enforcement and infrastructure agencies and to align investment with evidence-based interventions. Reliable, harmonised data are fundamental to this effort, enabling policymakers to identify where action is most needed and to measure what works.
The new IRF World Road Statistics (WRS) 2025 edition features updated data for over 200 countries and territories and more than 200 indicators covering key topics such as road networks, traffic volumes, multimodal transport comparisons, vehicles in use, road accidents, expenditures and revenues and many others.
The IRF Data Warehouse offers free, intuitive, interactive tools that allow users to perform in-depth analyses, compare multiple metrics and generate customised time-series charts.
For more detailed information on key statistical indicators in the road and transport sector – whether for a specific country or a global overview, please visit the IRF World Road Statistics website or email us at stats@irfofficial.org.
This article is part of the WRS Road Data Snapshot Series developed by IRF, with support of TotalEnergies Foundation and Michelin Corporate Foundation.
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