READING - Road Safety Annual Report 2020

International Transport Forum logoThe International Transport Forum's Road Safety Annual Report puts Canada in the middle of the OECD Countries for the percentage in change of road deaths from 2010 to 2018 showing a reduction of about 18%. The leader is Norway with about a 48% reduction and the worst is Costa Rica with in increase of about 38%.

Items of note in the report:

  • Canada places 5th in the world for seatbelt use in the rear seats behind Germany, Austria, Norway and Australia.
  • Canada places 5th in the world for seatbelt use in front seats, behind France, Germany, Japan and Sweden.
  • Canada saw a 34% reduction in road deaths comparing April 2019 to April 2020

You can also read the Canadian Summary of the global annual report.

When I compare the road fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicles 2017, then go to Table 7 National speed limits on urban roads, rural roads and motorways 2019 with the exception of Norway which has the same maximum speed as Canada and Japan 10 lower, all others have a higher maximum speed.

I would say the majority of people that post to this site say speed is the major cause of accidents. So what am I missing here? Germany which is 7 spots lower in accidents than Canada has no speed limit. The rest are between a maximum of 120 to 130. Yet have a lower accident rate?

Could this be another example of police stereotyping a segment of society? Could it be tunnel vision?

From what I can see speed is not the determining factor as many countries have a higher speed limit than Canada with a better or worse accident rate. Could it be that traffic enforcement has to change their way of thinking? Canada rates right up their in seat belt usage so it can't be we fail to buckle up. Is there a possibility that changing from the usual speeding, seatbelts, cell phone and impaired driving to other sections of the MVA is what needs to take place to improve our accident rate?