The "pandemic effect" is falling away: The Federal Statistical Office has recorded a significant increase in traffic fatalities in Germany for the current year 2022. Based on the figures for the period from January to September 2022, the authority expects an increase of more than 220 fatalities for the year as a whole compared to the previous year. That would be more than 2780 people who died in road traffic.

The expectation represents an increase of about nine percent. However, the Corona years 2020 and 2021 had each seen new lows since statistics began in 1950, with 2719 and 2562 traffic fatalities, respectively. This was mainly due to the fact that, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, significantly fewer kilometers were driven on German roads in these two years than before the pandemic.

According to statisticians' estimates, the number of injured people will also rise by nine percent to around 353,000 in 2022 as a whole. The number of accidents recorded by the police is also expected to be higher than in the previous year, at more than 2.4 million: that would be about four percent, they say.

Nevertheless, the authority assumes that the number of accidents with fatalities and injuries will fall short of the figures for 2019, which has not yet been affected by the pandemic. This is because even though there is more traffic on the roads again, the number of accidents in the first six months of this year was lower than before the pandemic: compared to the first half of 2019, 16 percent fewer people died in traffic accidents and ten percent fewer were injured.

Image by Michael Siebert