ABSTRACT
Sweden, along with the UK and the Netherlands, is among the European countries with the lowest road trafc fatality rate. In 2004 the number of people killed on the roads dropped to 480, the lowest since 1946. This is, of course, a huge difference compared to the number killed on Britain’s roads, which in 2004 stood at 3,201. However, it must be remembered that the population of Sweden is far lower than Great Britain (approximately 9 million compared to 60.5 million the UK). Thus, relative to the population, fatality rates in the two countries are fairly similar. In Sweden in 2004 there were 5.3 fatalities per 100,000 population; 0.9 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles and 6.3 fatalities per billion vehicle kilometres. In Great Britain in 2004 the fatality rate was 5.5 per 100,000 population; there were 1.0 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles and 6.5 fatalities per billion vehicle kilometres (DfT 2006a, Table 51). The only European country with a lower death rate on the roads per capita is the Netherlands, with 4.9 road deaths per 100,000 population in 2004 (ibid.). These three countries of Sweden, the UK and the Netherlands make up the SUN countries, the subject of a comparative study of road trafc safety published in 2002, subsidized by the European Commission, with the aim of improving current safety practice in each of them and providing guidance to other European countries seeking to reduce road deaths (Koornstra et al. 2002). The SUNower project included analysis of road trafc enforcement policies among other factors, and will be referred to in this chapter.
