France Кeeping

Fatalities Trend Positive

PHOTO: GENDARMERIE.FR17 FEB - 3,170 people died on French roads last year, according to the French Road Safety Authority (Sécurité Routière).

The fall in the number of deaths concerns all categories of road users and signifies a 3% reduction on an annual basis.

Exception

Last year the number of deaths has decreased in all but the category of motorised personal mobility devices (PMLDs) users, such as scooters, where 42 people were killed (+7%), according to provisional statistics. The Interministerial Delegate for Road Safety, Florence Guillaume, emphasised the "encouraging figures" from the Interministerial National Observatory for Road Safety (ONISR).

Florence GuillaumeDetails

In detail, road deaths are down in 2023 for car drivers compared with the previous year, with 1,525 deaths (-40 deaths), as well as for users of motorised two-wheelers, with 707 deaths (-11 deaths). For the third year in a row, the number of cyclists killed has again exceeded the 200-death threshold: 226 in 2023, down 8% on 2022. There was also a significant fall in pedestrian fatalities in 2023, down 10% to 440. All road networks also recorded a fall in fatalities in 2023: -7% on motorways, where 273 people died, -2.7% on roads outside built-up areas (1881 fatalities) and -2.2% for roads in built-up areas (1016 fatalities).

Reality

Despite a fall in the number of deaths on the motorways, this figure is still 4% up on 2019, the benchmark year for Road Safety rather than 2020 and 2021, when the figures fell below the symbolic 3,000 deaths mark due to travel restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. The same is true of the roads in the French overseas territories, where 232 people died in 2023, a fall of 18% on the previous year.