Is Road Safety Moving Forward in Europe between 2011–2015?

In 2010, the European Commission set an ambitious target to continuously reduce the number of road fatalities by half between 2011 and 2020, followed by the same target for 2001–2010. In order to measure the road safety development in Europe, data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist productivity index are employed. Instead of considering only the number of road fatalities, it is fairer to also take some measures of exposure into account, that is, to calculate the fatality risk as an indication. By considering different measures of exposure simultaneously, i.e., the number of inhabitants, the passenger-kilometres travelled, and the number of passenger cars, it is observed that the overall road safety situation in Europe has improved in the period of 2011–2015, but its speed of development has not kept up with the EU’s “decade plan.” Compared to the last five years (2006–2010), speed of road safety development has slowed down.