The issue of road safety continues to hold sway in Italy. In addition to the usual weekly reports in which data relating to pedestrians and cyclists who lose their lives on the roads of our country are released, Asaps has published an analysis of the fatal accidents that have occurred from 1991 to 2022, a time span of over 30 years. The first figure that catches the eye is clearly the total number of victims: 163.052, with the peak of 7,498 in the year 1991.
Data improving
The introduction of the points-based driving license at the beginning of July 2023 first and a further reform of the highway code in the summer of 2010 are the two factors that more than any other year affected the reduction of road deaths in Italy: just think that we have gone from almost 7,500 in 1991 to a range of between 3,400 and 3,300 in recent years (the lowest figure, 2,395, in 2020, the year in which, however, the pandemic with associated traffic blocks had taken the upper hand). The wait is now for the next reform of the highway codefor which work will begin in the Chamber on October 25th: Minister Salvini, in recent weeks, had spoken of making it effective by Christmas.
Nightmare Lombardy, massacre in Rome
But let’s go back to the Asaps report and the territorial distribution of road victims in the 32 years examined. There Lombardy dominates this negative ranking with 23,650 accident deaths, Emilia-Romagna completes the podium with 18,157 and Veneto with 17,051, closely followed by Lazio with 15,796 road victims, Piedmont with 13,670 and Tuscany with 11,053. However, Lombardy is not the most “dangerous” Italian city from this point of view: the highest number of deaths from road accidents was in fact recorded in Rome6,452, almost triple that of Milan, 2,331, and five times that of Turin, 1,388.
Also an “economic” disaster
Thanks to Istat data and based on the social costs calculated for each death in Italy, one and a half million euros, a overall social cost of 244 billion euros, that Asaps defines “probably very underestimated”for the human losses from 1991 to 2022, a figure according to the association “frightening that must absolutely reduce for the next decades”. The president of Asaps, Giordano Biserni, declared: “When we think about the social costs linked to deaths alone and the frightening figure of 244 billion euros, I believe that every political decision-maker must understand how fundamental it is invest in more modern and current standards, on infrastructures and signs but above all on the presence of agents and patrols on the street that can influence the most serious behaviors. Parliament must act quickly and well, inserting rules that allow us to reduce road deaths and avoid massacres of pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists”.
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