According to preliminary results, the German Statistical Office (Destatis) reported that 2,780 people lost their lives in road accidents in Germany in the year 2024. This represents a two percent or 59 fewer fatalities compared to the previous year (2,839).
The year 2024 recorded the third-lowest number of road fatalities since the time series began in 1953. The only years with fewer fatalities were 2020 and 2021, which were attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of injured people decreased by one percent to approximately 363,000, while the number of severely injured individuals decreased by five percent to 50,300, the lowest level since 1991, when the distinction between seriously and lightly injured was first recorded.
The total number of accidents decreased by one percent to around 2.5 million, with 2.2 million of those cases involving property damage only, a figure similar to the previous year.
Broken down by mode of transportation, the strongest decline in fatalities was among pedestrians (-5.7 percent) and car occupants (-2.0 percent). The number of fatalities among moped riders decreased by 25.0 percent, followed by cyclists with a decrease of 2.3 percent. In contrast, the number of fatalities among motorcyclists and e-scooter users increased by 1.8 and 9.5 percent, respectively.
In terms of population density, the states with the highest number of road fatalities per million inhabitants were Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt, with 59 and 52 fatalities, respectively. The city-states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, as well as the states of Saarland and Nordrhein-Westfalen, had lower numbers of road fatalities per million inhabitants.
In contrast to the year’s trend, December 2024 saw an increase of around 600 injured people compared to the previous year, a two percent increase. However, the total number of accidents decreased by 13,500, a six percent decline compared to December 2023.