On average, there were 45 road fatalities per million inhabitants in the EU in 2021 and 42 in 2020. A comparison of statistics across all EU countries shows that Malta, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands continue to have the lowest number of road deaths, with fewer than 30 deaths per million inhabitants.
Two years ago, 148 people died on Lithuanian roads (53 deaths per million inhabitants) and 175 (63 deaths per million inhabitants) in 2020.
“There are still too many fatalities on Lithuanian roads. The decreasing trend in recent years confirms that due to the joint efforts of many institutions and society we are moving in the right direction, but our ultimate goal is zero deaths. Therefore, we must continue to improve overall road safety and awareness of all traffic participants on the roads,” says Minister of Transport and Communications Marius Skuodis.
Compared to 2021, the number of pedestrian deaths in Lithuania increased slightly last year (from 28 to 31), but the deaths of cyclists decreased significantly from 11 to 5. It is important to note that last year no cyclist died wearing a vest or driving with the lights on.
According to the country’s regions, the largest progress was made in the districts of Tauragė and Utena, where road fatalities decreased by around 78 % and 56 % respectively. Slightly less progress was achieved in the districts of Kaunas, Vilnius and Panevėžys, where road fatalities decreased by around 29 %, 25 % and 22 % respectively. In the remaining 5 districts, the situation improved insignificantly, remained unchanged or became worse.
In order to improve road safety in 2022, the Government approved the Transport Development Programme for 2022–2030 prepared by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, one of the objectives of which is to reduce the number of road fatalities in the country at least by half by 2030 compared to 2020, i.e., to at least 30 deaths per million inhabitants.
A lot of focus on road safety is also placed in the National Road Development and Maintenance Strategy 2035. In order to make the country’s roads and streets much safer, it is planned to expand the network of pedestrian and bicycle paths: by 2035, to construct around 600 km of new paths, increasing the length of bicycle paths in settlements by almost 50 %, and to reconstruct around 350 km of poor condition paths.
It is also planned to continue to implement engineering traffic safety measures on the roads, to reorganise dangerous intersections and pedestrian crossings. The aim is to eliminate any unsafe pedestrian crossings on roads of national importance by 2024, i.e., to reconstruct 1,554 such crossings between 2022 and 2024. By 2035, around 140 single-level intersections are planned to be reorganised.
For the achievements of the last decade in improving road safety, Lithuania was awarded the most important European road safety award last year — the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) PIN Award. Out of the European countries assessed by the organisation, Lithuania was the only European Union country to halve road deaths between 2011 and 2021.
