Road traffic deaths worldwide fell by 21% between 2011 and 2025, even as the global vehicle fleet swelled by more than one billion units, according to estimates released by the World Health Organization at the start of a UN high-level meeting on road safety in New York. A separate study published in Lancet Public Health, drawing on data from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, found that global rates of road injuries and deaths each dropped by more than 30% between 1990 and 2023. The WHO figures show that annual fatalities declined from 1.26 million in 2010 to 1.16 million last year.

The improvement is attributed to the spread of systemic safety measures. Seat-belt mandates, airbags, safer road design and stronger traffic enforcement have become more common, particularly in high-income countries. Liane Ong, senior author of the Lancet paper, noted that outcomes are shaped “not only by crashes, but by the systems designed to prevent them and protect people when they occur.” Yet the same period saw a tripling of the global motorcycle fleet, driven by ride-hailing and delivery services, and motorcyclists now account for nearly a third of all road fatalities. In the United States, the proliferation of larger passenger vehicles and distracted driving contributed to a rise in pedestrian and vehicle-occupant deaths over the longer term, though preliminary US data for 2024 and 2025 points to a recent decline.

Viewed from Geneva, the headline global trend masks deep regional divergence. The WHO European region recorded a 36% fall in road deaths, and the Western Pacific a 15% reduction. Southeast Asia managed only a 2% decline, the Americas saw no significant change, and Africa registered a 17% increase. Low-income countries now bear 90% of the world’s road deaths, despite having lower injury rates per capita, because safety infrastructure has not kept pace with rapid motorisation. Road traffic injuries remain the leading cause of death for children and young people aged 5 to 29 years, a ranking unchanged for more than a decade.

UN member states used the New York meeting to adopt a new General Assembly declaration that commits governments to national road safety strategies with measurable targets, dedicated budgets and timelines. The declaration centres on the “Safe System” approach, which assumes human error is inevitable and seeks to design roads, vehicles and speed limits that prevent fatal or serious injuries when crashes occur. The next factual milestone is the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal target of halving road deaths and serious injuries compared with 2021 levels, a goal that the WHO says remains far off without accelerated action in the regions currently being left behind.