Safety of PTW's

Safety, or rather the lack of safety of PTW’s is first of all expressed in numbers of accidents and casualties. Since the number of accidents/casualties will depend on the amount of use or exposure of PTW’s, these numbers should be corrected with some measure of exposure. One such measure is the number of PTW’s, which is of limited use because the amount of actual riding is likely to vary between groups of PTW’s and groups of PTW riders. A better measure would be the number of kilometres on the road. It is unfortunate that many countries have no reliable and detailed data on kilometres. See Age, comparing transport modes for a Dutch example with kilometre data.

Information for this section was only include for those European countries where it was available over at least a recent ten year period. The tables in this paragraph give figures for mopeds and motorcycles separately and combined with age.

Overall, PTW rider fatalities contribute 15% of all traffic fatalities

The number of moped fatalities follows the same trend as motorcycle use. Many countries have a large proportion of moped fatalities 25 years and older, other countries show a majority under 25. Most countries have a large proportion of motorcycle fatalities aged 25 years and older. This is different from the situation in 1980 when the proportion under 25 years was much higher.

Fatality rate per inhabitant reflects both the number of vehicles per inhabitant and the fatality rate per vehicle. All southern European countries have high moped fatality rates per inhabitant, but rate per vehicle is highest in Denmark and Austria. Similarly, the motorcycle fatality rate per inhabitant is extremely high in Greece, but mainly due to the high rate of motorcycles per inhabitant.