This paper investigates the influence of demographic structure on the level of road safety as measured by mortality rates in 23 European countries and their regions. Standardised mortality ratios (SMRs) for IRTAD age-gender groups computed from fatality counts recorded in 2002 were compared with crude mortality ratios. This analysis shows that the SMRs differ only slightly from crude mortality ratios: the difference between the two varies from -4.3% to 2.8% for countries as a whole, but it is sometimes higher for regions within a single country (e.g. in Greece it ranges from -2.3% to 10.8%), suggesting that demographic structure could be omitted in international comparisons but not always in regional ones. The demographic structure explains up to 12% of regional heterogeneities in terms of road mortality in some countries. Furthermore, the development of the number of expected road fatalities was estimated for three demographic structure scenarios for the years 2020, 2035 and 2050. The aging of the population alone will not result in significant changes in the expected number of fatalities in Europe, but the impact of population aging on expected road mortality in particular countries could be high. (Author/publisher).
Abstract