The highest road accident rate in France is in Paris, with the laurels as the safest department being taken by the Ardennes.

With over 6,000 vehicle accidents* in Paris in 2015, the city suffers by far the worst accident record in France.

At an accident rate of 2.76 per 1000 inhabitants, there is nearly ten times the risk of being involved in a road accident in Paris as in Ardennes (Region: Grand Est), the safest department in the country with only 85 accidents, a rate of 0.30 per 1000 inhabitants.

The graphic below shows the number of accidents in each department within six bands, from under 150 accidents a year, to over 2000 a year. Some 16 departments in mainland France have less than 150 accidents a year, and six over 2000 a year.

In order to remove the distorting effects of population density, the table below shows the accident rate per 1000 of population, giving the figures for the 20 departments with the worst accident rate, and 20 departments at the bottom end of the scale.

The correlation between the number of accidents and the rate per population applies in most cases, but not in all, with some departments having a small number of accidents but poor rate (eg Belfort), whilst in other cases the number of accidents is comparatively high, but the rate remains impressive (eg Pas-de-Calais).