Estonia's road safety picture has been mixed this year. According to preliminary police data, 55 fewer people have been injured in traffic accidents than last year, while the number of fatalities has moved in the opposite direction, with four more deaths than last year, Transport Administration traffic expert Villu Vane said.

Compared with the Nordic countries and other European countries, Estonia's rate of road deaths per million inhabitants remains too high. According to a 2024 Europe-wide study, most European countries, including Norway, Denmark and Germany, had fewer traffic fatalities per million inhabitants than Estonia. With 50 deaths per million inhabitants, Estonia was also well above the European average of 44. Estonia's improvement in road safety over a 10-year period was also modest, at just 12 percent.

Vane said the root causes of the high number of fatalities lie in road users' habits and attitudes.

"This probably reflects our behavior in traffic, which isn't always what it should be and perhaps also reflects our attitudes toward things like obeying speed limits. It illustrates how we behave on the road," Vane said.

According to Vane, the situation has improved compared with 10 or 20 years ago. Seat belt use, for example, has become the norm, but there has been no comparable progress when it comes to speeding.

"If we look back, it took a little while for people to get used to wearing seat belts, but we've accepted it now. The overall picture is relatively good, with 99 percent of drivers and passengers in the front seats wearing seat belts, or 98 percent in some years. Unfortunately, when we look at fatal accidents, every year several people die in crashes because they weren't wearing a seat belt," Vane said.

When it comes to speeding, Vane said there has been improvement over the longer term, but Estonia has made little progress in recent years.

"One year we take half a step forward and the next year we take a step back," he said, describing the situation on Estonia's roads.

Vane said it is still too early to say what effect recent legislative changes — which introduced warning signs ahead of mobile speed cameras and lowered the speeding threshold at which fines are issued — have had on road safety.

"First of all, it's still relatively early to say because the signs were only recently installed ahead of mobile cameras — signs have been in place for fixed cameras for a long time. I think the impact so far has been relatively negligible. But there's always the question of whether the sign really needs to be there," Vane said.

Vane cited the legacy of the past as one reason for poor behavior on the roads. Asked what shapes the attitudes of young people who have grown up in Estonia since the country regained independence, Vane pointed to the influence of role models and their surroundings.

"It's probably the traffic environment and what they see, as well as how people behave at home. There are quite a lot of factors at play here," he said.

Elderly the most at-risk group in traffic

Looking at the profile of those killed, Vane highlighted two main risk groups. "Quite often, the road user is elderly, while young men also continue to account for a high proportion of fatalities," Vane said.

Asked who the typical person responsible for a traffic accident is, Vane said he could not give a clear answer. "We haven't specifically profiled them and it varies widely," he added.

According to 2024 European Union statistics, the most vulnerable age groups are people ages 25 to 49 and those over 65, each accounting for 31 percent. Men predominate both among those responsible for traffic accidents and among victims. The difference between the number of male and female victims is smallest among pedestrians.

Although Tallinn's traffic strategy calls for reducing road deaths to zero, there have already been several traffic fatalities in the city this year. What is Tallinn doing wrong?

Vane said the city may not necessarily be doing anything wrong as such, but the traffic environment has not been made safe everywhere and there are still places where improvements could be made.

"In cities in particular, speeds could be reduced in areas where pedestrians are present. Unfortunately, there are also fatal accidents where it's difficult to do much to prevent them. One possible example — we don't know for sure yet — is the most recent fatality in Tallinn where a person was struck by a car while directing traffic. There is a possibility that the driver suffered a medical emergency at the wheel," Vane said.

"Accidents that occur while vehicles are reversing are also relatively difficult to prevent, although there are measures that can be taken in certain cases. When it comes to freight transport, traffic arrangements can be designed so that vehicles only have to reverse short distances and pedestrians don't inadvertently enter those areas," Vane said.

People who shouldn't be driving

Speaking about medical conditions and medical certificates, Vane pointed to gaps in the system and its oversight.

"A person's health changes over time. People can develop illnesses while their medical certificate is still valid, but as I understand it, if someone develops a condition that means they are no longer allowed to drive, their medical certificate is not currently revoked automatically. That means someone can become ill and be told they must not drive, but still get behind the wheel. That's clearly dangerous," Vane said.

Doctors' decisions are also influenced by the social realities of rural areas and the availability of public transportation.

"Whether a doctor renews a medical certificate also depends on where the person lives and how accessible basic services are — whether they can take a bus to the store and back in a reasonable amount of time or whether there is no bus service at all. In that case, how are they supposed to get to a store 10 kilometers or even farther away? Unfortunately, a rural doctor may sometimes turn a blind eye and issue the certificate so the person can at least manage their day-to-day life somehow," Vane said.

Solutions: Enforcement and safer living environment

Vane said reducing traffic fatalities and improving road safety culture requires more than isolated technological solutions, with consistent work needed in three main areas.

"We need to continue doing what we've been doing. That means making the traffic environment safer as much as possible, particularly for pedestrians, and we probably also need to continue with prevention campaigns to some extent. Their impact may not be very large, but over time they do have an effect and probably influence certain groups in society. Police enforcement is, of course, another essential element. If there is no enforcement, things aren't going to improve. If drivers sense that there are certain violations the police don't respond to or don't have the resources to respond to, some drivers will start taking advantage of that," Vane said.

Vane also noted that under the implementation plan for Estonia's national road safety program, one important measure is lowering speed limits in built-up areas, which directly improves pedestrians' chances of surviving a collision.

Vane said traffic conditions in municipalities are largely determined by political decisions made by local authorities, although the state can still set the overall direction.

"The state can do that through the road safety program's implementation plan, which includes lowering speed limits in built-up areas as one of its measures. The question is always whether it will actually be implemented — that's often a political decision that leads to endless wrangling, but the state has set out the direction and the idea," Vane said.

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