Global Road Deaths Falling But Most Countries Off Track for 2030 UN Target, New ITF Report Warns
Road deaths are declining across the world's leading economies, but progress is uneven, youth fatalities are rising, and only a handful of nations are on course to meet the United Nations target of halving road deaths by 2030. That is the sobering picture painted by the Road Safety Annual Report 2025, published by the International Transport Forum (ITF) and its permanent road safety working group, IRTAD.
The report draws on data from 40 participating countries and offers the most detailed annual snapshot of road safety performance available at an international level. Its headline finding is encouraging: road deaths fell by five per cent in 2025 in countries with validated data. Much of that improvement was driven by an eight per cent decline in the United States during the first half of the year, a notable shift for a country that had seen road fatalities surge during and after the pandemic years and had struggled to bring them back down.
Progress was recorded across all road user groups in 2024. Cyclists saw the strongest improvement, with fatalities falling by 5.4 per cent, a result that will be welcomed by urban planners and cycling advocates who have long argued that infrastructure investment in protected lanes and lower speed limits can deliver measurable safety gains. Car occupants, pedestrians and motorcyclists also recorded falls, though the picture for powered two wheelers remains fragile in many countries given their persistent overrepresentation in serious injury statistics.
Not all the trends point in the right direction. Road deaths among 18 to 20 year olds increased in 2024, making young adults the only age group to record a rise. The finding reinforces longstanding concerns about newly licensed drivers and the elevated crash risk that comes with inexperience, social pressure and nighttime driving. Graduated licensing systems and targeted enforcement remain key policy tools, though their implementation varies widely across IRTAD member states.
The report also highlights the continued danger of rural roads, which claim more lives than urban roads and motorways combined. Despite carrying lower traffic volumes, rural roads are disproportionately deadly because of higher speeds, longer emergency response times and roads that are less forgiving of driver error. Three countries managed to achieve a fatality risk below three deaths per billion vehicle kilometres, a benchmark that illustrates just how much room for improvement remains in even the best performing nations.
Perhaps the starkest finding is the gap between aspiration and reality on the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. Of the 40 countries covered by the report, only seven are currently on track to halve road deaths by 2030 as pledged. With fewer than five years remaining, the window for the rest to close that gap is narrowing rapidly.
For policymakers in member countries, the message from the 2025 report is that progress is real but fragile. The modest gains of recent years could easily be reversed without sustained investment in safer roads, stricter enforcement of speed and drink driving laws, and continued improvement in vehicle safety standards.
