What are the causes of road accidents?

Road accidents are a well-known cause of bodily injuries in France : nearly 3,500 people die each year due to road accidents, more than 50,000 road accidents are recorded, with a total of more than 70,000 people injured.

Road accidents represent a cost to society that is estimated at nearly 40 billion euros per year, to which must be added 5 billion paid by insurance companies as compensation for bodily injuries suffered by victims.

Behind the tragedy experienced by all road accident victims and their families, there is therefore a societal issue , studied in detail by various statistical organizations, in order to allow governments to implement appropriate public policies.

What are the causes of road accidents? What are the differences in causality depending on whether you drive in the city, in the countryside or on the motorway ? On what type of road network is mortality the highest?

What is a road accident?

When we try to understand the causes of road accidents, we must first understand the data that come into play . This therefore requires being clear about the very definition of the notion of “road accident”.

A road accident is an event, usually a collision, involving:

one or more persons , who may be either driving or passengers of the vehicle(s) involved in the accident, but also road users as pedestrians/cyclists;

and finally an environment, which sometimes plays a major role in the occurrence of the accident (night, poor road conditions, presence of an obstacle, poor visibility, terrible weather, etc.) or in the severity of the impact (tree, ravine, etc.).

We speak of a road accident involving bodily injury when there is at least one victim who required treatment following the accident.

What are the most common causes of road accidents?

Road accidents generally involve three main factors: one or more individuals, one or more vehicles, and an environment. The causes of road accidents can therefore be of three types:

These broad categories of causes are subdivided into many more specific causes, and these causes are obviously not mutually exclusive. Often, three or four causes explain the occurrence of the accident .

Among these three major causal factors, more than 90% of fatal traffic accidents involve a human factor – that is, a traffic violation: excessive speed, alcohol, distraction, fatigue, failure to respect safety distances, etc.

Mechanical and environmental factors are almost never the only ones responsible for traffic accidents.

Finally, alcohol and speed remain the main causes of fatal traffic accidents , involved in 32% and 30% of road accidents respectively in 2019 for example.

What are the causes of road accidents according to the type of environment?

When it comes to driving, there are three main traffic environments, each with their own specific rules: driving in built-up areas, driving outside built-up areas, and driving on motorways . The causes of accidents sometimes vary substantially from one environment to another .

What are the causes of road accidents in built-up areas?

Traffic accidents of all severity thresholds occur mainly outside built-up areas (69%) , but 70% of accidents involving injuries, i.e. those resulting in one or more injuries, occur in built-up areas. The particularity of accidents involving injuries that occur in built-up areas is that they are significantly less fatal than accidents occurring outside built-up areas (less than 30% of fatal accidents), but they affect pedestrians more

A third of people who died in a road accident in built-up areas were pedestrians, followed closely by drivers and passengers of light vehicles, who represent approximately 30% of people who died in a road accident in built-up areas.

The causes of road accidents occurring in urban areas are mainly human: speed, alcohol or inattention .

The rapid increase in recent years in the number of motorized personal transport devices (MPDs), particularly in cities, has led the legislator to amend the highway code to add specific regulations for electric scooters, hoverboards and gyroroues.

What are the causes of road accidents in non-urban areas?

Nearly two thirds of fatal accidents occur outside built-up areas , and among these a large majority occur on two-way roads without a central divider. It should also be noted that the busiest, widest and straightest roads are those that concentrate the most numerous and most serious accidents.

As for the main causes of road accidents outside built-up areas, speed and alcohol levels remain in first and second place.

It can also be considered that the human factor of overconfidence is one of the main causes of accidents (often cumulative with the two aforementioned): in fact, 4 out of 5 fatal accidents occur in the driver’s department of residence, most often on a daily journey .

What are the causes of road accidents on the highway?

9% of traffic accidents occur on the highway, making this environment the least dangerous of the three. There are several reasons for this:

The number one cause of road accidents on motorways is this time fatigue or drowsiness , which causes the driver to fall asleep at the wheel and leave the lane.