88 youngsters died on our roads in 2017
The figures for young people are more encouraging. According to figures from the road safety institute VIAS, the number of youngsters dying on our roads is half what it was a decade ago.
VIAS says that this is the most encouraging news in the whole of its survey. Last year there was a further fall of 5% in the number of young road fatalities.
VIAS’ Stef Willems says that road safety awareness campaigns have not missed the mark. He address that “Youngsters are passing their driving test later and how they go out has changed too. They aren’t going to big out of town discotheques and choose to go out in town and city centres that they can reach by public transport”.
Flanders has the best figures
Not only were there fewer young people dying on the Belgium’s roads, the number of road traffic fatalities as a whole fell by 3% to 483, down from 500 in 2016. These are figures for people that die at the scene on the accident.
The fall in Belgium as a whole is completely thanks to a 10% fall in the number of road traffic fatalities in Flanders (222 in 2017, down from 246 in 2016). In Wallonia (245 in 2016, 246 in 2017) the figures remained stable. However, in Brussels the number of road deaths went up from 9 in 2016 to 15 in 2017.
The aim is to cut the number of road deaths to 420/annum by 2020.