The European Union has reported the lowest ever number of road deaths and Ireland is in line with the target to cut deaths in half by 2020. Last year road fatalities across the EU decreased by 9%.

In Ireland the figures were even better showing a decrease of road deaths by 12%.

It is estimated that for every death on European roads there are 10 serious injuries and 40 more slightly injured.

According to new figures published by the European Commission 2012 saw the lowest number of people killed in road traffic in EU countries since the first data were collected.

Siim Kallas is the Comission Vice-President and Commissioner for Transport. "A 9% decrease means that 3,000 lives were saved last year. It is hugely encouraging to see these kinds of results" he said.

"Still 75 people die on Europe's roads every day, so there is no room for complacency. We have ambitious goals to cut EU road deaths in half by 2020 and we need to keep up this momentum to get there".

"Road deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. For every death on Europe's roads there are 10 serious injuries such as damage to the brain or spinal cord. We need a strategy to bring down the number of serious road injuries everywhere in the EU" he added.

Country by country statistics show that the number of road deaths still varies greatly across the Union. The countries with the lowest number of road fatalities remain the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark reporting around 30 deaths per million inhabitants.

The Commission says the most worrying feature of the statistics for 2011 was 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. But based on the provisional data for 2012, the number of vulnerable user fatalities has decreased substantially in 2012.

EU Road safety programme

The European Road Safety Action Programme 2011-2020 has set out challenging plans to reduce the number of road deaths on Europe's roads by half in the next 10 years. It contains proposals focusing on making improvements to vehicles, infrastructure and road users' behaviour. Key initiatives include:

• A new EU Driving Licence, since January 2013, with tighter rules for the access of young people to powerful motorbikes
• National enforcement plans- submitted by Member States providing a rich source of best practices
• Cross border enforcement rules to crackdown on traffic offences committed abroad (drink driving, speeding etc) in force since November 2012
• Work towards the development of an injuries strategy

However the Commission is also concerned that current figures on serious injuries are general and estimates. It says there are problems with "misreporting and underreporting of serious injuries" and the figures are not comparable across the EU.

The European Commission has published a document on serious road traffic injuries outlining the next steps towards a comprehensive strategy on serious road injuries, notably: a common definition of serious road traffic injury and for member states to improve data collection on serious road accidents.