Federal Republic of Germany

The total number of police registered road accidents has stagnated for the last 10 years – between 2.2 and 2.5 million road accidents. There were slight increases in single years such as 2007, 2010 or 2015, but as well slight decreases in 2002 or 2011. On the long run, there is an increase since 2000 by 7 % in 2015. The forecast for 2016 also indicates an increase in accident figures by roundabout 3 % (2015: 2.52 million road accidents). The number of road accidents with personal injury has decreased by 20 % since 2000, resulting in 305,659 road accidents with personal injury in 2015. This number has increased in the last two years by about 5 % and for 2016 again a slight increase of almost 0.3 % to approximately 306,500 injury accidents is expected. Casualty figures have also decreased since 2000, with lower reductions for slight injuries and higher reductions for severe injuries and fatalities. The total number of casualties has decreased by more than 22 % from 511,577 in 2000 to 396,891 in 2015. The increased number of injury accidents in the last two years led also to an increased number of casualties of approximately 5 % compared to 2013. In 2016 an increase to about 398,000 casualties is expected. Since 2000, the number of severe injuries has been reduced by nearly 34 % to 67,706 seriously injured road users in 2015 and the number of slight injuries has been reduced by nearly 19 % to 325,726 slightly injured road users. Fatalities have decreased by 54 % from 7,503 fatalities in 2000 to 3,459 fatalities in 2015. After the increase of the number of fatalities in the last two years in 2016 a decrease to approximately 3,240 fatalities has been predicted. In contrast to the positive development on the long term, the year 2015 showed an increase of the number of fatalities the second year in a row. And also for the number of injury crashes and casualties the year 2015 was the second year with an increase of accident figures. The forecast for 2016 shows a stagnating or even increasing number of accidents but a decrease in fatality figures by about 6 %. While many factors concerning e.g. safety behavior or vehicle and infrastructure safety play an important role for the long term development of fatality and crash figures, short-term increases result mainly from changes in mobility and traffic behavior due to different and extreme weather conditions. The years 2014 and 2015 were characterized by an early and mild spring, resulting in high accident and fatality figures concerning mainly motorized and non-motorized two-wheelers. The decrease in 2016 is accordingly mainly due to reductions of the fatality numbers for two-wheelers.