car accident fatalities in Germany have fallen by 88% since 1970

25 comments
  1. That slight bump upwards in the early 90s….. East Germans feeling a bit too free on the Autobahn?

  2. Of course that regulations on alcohol, speed limit and so on, will decrease the number of accidents. But there are other factors at play : the safety of cars improved : airbags, car protections, more recently auto-break… My point is the analysis of statistics like this should take into account also some other factors. I see some from governments statements like : “We saved 17 lives this year” bla bla bla.

    Can someone explain why there is an increase in the number of deaths after 1960 when the 50 km/h limit was imposed ?

  3. this graph shows a correlation at exactly one point. 100 km/h outside built up areas. the rest doesnt change the trajectory of persons killed at all

  4. It would also be interesting to compare these numbers to the number of all accidents to see how much the better and quicker medical care is responsible for deaths going down. Crashes that used to be fatal because it took an hour to bring the patient to the hospital can now be survived because it only takes a few minutes by helicopter. (And of course also better medicine and procedures in the hospitals themselves.)

  5. Classic case of correlation vs causation.

    Just because the law was enacted around a time doesn’t mean that the reduction in deaths was because of it.

    Overall, looks like there is a general downward trend – due to better cars and laws but can’t tell exactly which ones…

  6. Should add that the radar trap was introduced in 1956 and widespread in 1960. While it took quite a while to show results it allowed to actually enforce speed limits.

    Because without a reliable way to track speeds, speed limits were kind of meaningless.

  7. Conclusion: Alcohol limits did not have an effect. Speed 130 on the Autobahn did not have an effect. Helmets, Seatbelts… Limited effect. Speed 50 in urbanisations: short time effect.

    I would like to see technical innovations put inside the graph.

    Also to get a better idea of what is going on, I would rather draw the number of deaths per 100.000km driven for example.

    Anyways, statistics is a bitch.

  8. A few years before I got my driving license the max allowed ammount of alcohol in blood in Spain was dropped from 1 to 0.5 g/l. There was a lot of outrage.

    I have been tested twice: 0.36 and 0.42. Both times I could clearly feel I was mildly intoxicated and my senses and reflexes were somewhat hampered.

    At 0.99 anyone is clearly drunk, I don’t get how that was ever allowed

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