Joao Lopes's Public Library

23/9/2006

Figures released this week have revealed that there were 216 million passenger vehicles registered in the European Union in 2004, with Portugal featuring prominently in both the increase in people driving cars and the proportion of cars per inhabitant, which was beaten only by Luxembourg and Italy in this department.

Between 1990 and 2004, the total number of cars in the EU increased by 38 percent, with the largest increases recorded in Lithuania (+167 percent), Latvia (+142 percent) and Portugal (+135 percent). On the other hand, Sweden (+14 percent), Denmark (+20 percent) and Finland (+21 percent) registered the smallest increases.
There were 472 cars per 1 000 inhabitants on average in the EU in 2004, compared to 759 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in the USA in 2003.
The member state with the highest ratio was Luxembourg, with 659 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, followed by Italy (581) and Portugal (572).
At the other end of the scale were Slovakia (222), Hungary (280) and Latvia (297).
In 2004, more than 90 percent of the cars in Sweden (95 percent), Denmark (93 percent in 2002) and Cyprus (90 percent) had petrol engines, while the member states with the highest shares of diesel engines were Austria (49 percent), Belgium (47 percent) and France (43 percent in 2003).
There were 95 road accident deaths per million inhabitants in the EU in 2004, the rate having decreased steadily from 162 in 1991. Even if the rate has fallen in nearly all member states, the total number of deaths due to road accidents was more than 4,000 in the EU25 in 2004.
Portugal was the country that reduced its road fatality rate by the most between 1991 and 2004, followed by Estonia, Spain, Germany, France and Luxembourg. In 2004, the Member States with the highest fatality rates were Latvia (222), Lithuania (218), Cyprus (160) and Poland (150) recorded the highest rates.
In the USA the rate was 146 in 2004.