The number of deaths on the roads of mainland France has reached 3,170 people in 2023, a drop of 3% compared to 2022, Road Safety announced on Thursday.
The past year was marked by a drop in the number of deaths in all categories of road users, except for users of motorized personal travel devices (EDPm), such as scooters, with 42 killed (+7 %), according to these provisional statistics.
The interministerial delegate for road safety, Florence Guillaume, insisted on the
“encouraging figures”
from the National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory (ONISR).
Significant drop in the number of pedestrian deaths
In detail, road mortality is down in 2023 for motorists compared to the previous year, with 1,525 killed (-40 deaths), as well as for users of motorized two-wheelers with 707 deaths (-11 killed ).
For the third year in a row, the number of cyclists killed has again exceeded the threshold of 200 deaths: 226 in 2023, however down 8% compared to 2022.
A significant drop in pedestrian deaths was also recorded in 2023, down 10% with 440 victims in total.
All road networks also recorded a drop in mortality in 2023: -7% on motorways, where 273 people died, -2.7% on roads outside urban areas (1,881 killed) and -2.2% for roads in urban areas (1016 deaths).
Despite a decrease in the number of deaths on motorways, this figure is still up 4% compared to 2019, the reference year for road safety rather than 2020 and 2021, where the figures fell below the symbolic bar of 3,000 deaths. due to travel restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Same observation on overseas roads, where 232 people died in 2023, a drop of 18% compared to the previous year.