The frequency of road accidents has been falling for some time, albeit with yearly fluctuations that are sometimes due to poor weather. It is therefore recommended making comparisons between five-year periods, and in the time series at issue here this is the periods 1992-1996 and 2012-2016. In the first period, an average of 4,339 road accidents involving children were reported per year in Austria, with 4,495 children being injured and 54.8 fatalities. Twenty years later, this figure had fallen to 2,591 accidents/year, resulting in 2,823 injured children and 8.8 fatalities. The average number of accidents dropped by some 40% over the observation period, with the number of injured children dropping by 37% and fatalities by an impressive 84%.
Development
As the size of the population at risk under the age of 15 contracted during the same period, the accident rates as a percentage of the population as a whole did not decline as sharply. Where in 1992/96, 3,196 per million children were injured and 39 killed on the roads each year, by 2012/16 these figures had fallen to just 2,296 and 7.2 respectively. In the last two decades, these rates have thus been cut by 28.2% and 72.6%. In the individual Länder this downward trend was not always as steady as in the rest of the country over five-year periods – indeed, in some cases levels increased. Tyrol saw a distinct rise in the number of injured children in the two five-year periods around the turn of the millennium. There was a similar picture in Upper Austria, Salzburg and Vorarlberg, although this tendency was not as marked and was also less prolonged. At the present time, (2012/16) regional differences at Länder level regarding the rate of injuries are especially noticeable in the case of Vorarlberg (2.94‰), Lower Austria (2.90‰) and Tyrol (2.77‰) on the one hand, and Burgenland (1.43‰) and the capital Vienna (1.91‰) on the other.
Vienna and Styria simultaneously reported the lowest level of fatalities, and Salzburg and Burgenland the highest. The most dangerous mode of transport proves to be the car, accounting for some 40% of injured children, ahead of „Walking“ at around a quarter and the bicycle at around one fifth. As regards children killed on the roads over the last ten years, 45% were car passengers, 33% were on foot and 10% were travelling by bike.