The European Commission published its statistics on road deaths in the European Union that show that 2012 saw the lowest number of people killed in road traffic in EU countries since the first data were collected. The countries with the lowest number of road fatalities remain the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Statistics published by the European Commission highlighted that the number of road deaths still varies greatly across the EU. Overall, road fatalities across the EU have decreased by 9% in 2012. In 2011 compared with the figures of 2010, road deaths fell to 2%. Therefore, member states are back on track towards the objective of halving road deaths between 2010 and 2020. In order to reach this goal, an average reduction of around 7% is needed. In March 2012, the Commission published that the progress in cutting road fatalities was significantly slowed in 2011 in the EU.

On the other hand, the Commission also reported that in 2011, it was produced a high increase in the number of killed vulnerable users such as pedestrians, motorcyclists and elderly people – in spite of an overall reduction of road fatalities. Based on the provisional data for 2012, the number of vulnerable user fatalities has decreased substantially in 2012.

In addition, the figures also show that it is estimated that for every death on Europe's roads there are 10 serious injuries and 40 more slightly injured. However, the Commission stressed that in 2012, it was taken a key step forwards with the agreement on an EU wide system for the definition of serious road injuries.