Road safety knowledge center Vias assures its safety barometer for the first nine months of 2022. This showed a significant increase in the number of injury crashes in Brussels: 3,556 injured for the time being. An e-step is involved in more than one in five. Next to Brussels Minister of Mobility Elke Van den Brandt (Green) speaks of a “black year for road safety”.

After a decrease in the number of road accidents with injuries in corona years 2020 and 2021, you will again note a significant decrease in the number of accidental accidents on Brussels roads. The traffic institute counts 3,059 injury crashes in its traffic barometer in the first nine months of this year. An increase of 20 percent compared to last year.

3,556 people were injured, a sad record, because that is the highest number in the last ten years. Up to October this year, seven road deaths were also confusing. That is the second lowest figure in the last five years, but an increase from the same period last year (to five deaths on the scene, for less than the 11 deaths in 2020 and the 13 deaths in 2019).

Figures for the last months of 2022 are not yet available, but fatal road casualties could already be expected, including a car accident on the Ring in Everea collision between a tram and a cyclist at Ter Kamerenbos and a collision of a pedestrian by a tram on Avenue Lambermont.

The most recent numbers from Vias are a step backwards in the endeavor anyway to zero road fatalities by 2030as stated in the Road Safety action plan of the Brussels government.

“It is a black year for road safety in Brussels,” said Mobility Minister Elke Van den Brandt (Green). “We now need to analyze these numbers further to uncover and seize the pain points, because road safety remains a priority for me.”

More deceased road users, more crashes with injuries

Mainly dead road users presumably victims of traffic accidents. Most injured road users are cyclists (809), followed by motorists (779) and pedestrians (629).

“Traffic has changed. More and more people are moving as a road user in Brussels, which has led to the increase in the number of accidents involving an accident,” see also a statement by Vias Stef Willems.

“In addition, e-scooters are involved in one-fifth of the injury accidents, something that was not an issue four years ago,” says Willems. The figures of the number of road casualties with e-steppers are therefore disturbing. An electric scooter is involved in one in five accidents. “And then a whole proportion of the accidents are not yet registered,” says the statement.

In the first three quarters of 2022, Vias counted 532 injuries for this category of road users. That is a doubling of ten comparisons from 2021, with then 272 injury crashes with more or less one electrical step in the first nine months of that year.

Road safety is constantly shifting

“Road safety challenges are constantly changing in an urban environment because the way people move around is also constantly shifting,” Willems makes the analysis.

However, according to him, the conclusion should not be that it has become more dangerous to move on foot, by bicycle or via the stairs. Figures from Brussels Mobility show that the number of cyclists, pedestrians and scooters exceeds the number of injury crashes in those modes of transport.

For example, in the first 9 months of 2022, 35.8 percent more cyclists passed one of the counting posts in the west than in the same previous period. This while the number of injury crashes involving a cyclist rose by ‘only’ 13.6 percent.

“Moreover,” says Willems, “the more people leave their cars, the safer the situation in the city will be in the long run.”