Road deaths in France last year rose 0.5% to 3,477, with 63% of the fatalities occurring on rural roads, so how do the departments compare?

This is the third consecutive year of a reduction in road deaths in France. As alarming as even the current number sounds, the country has travelled a long way since the 1970s, when around 18,000 a year were killed on the roads.

While the number of deaths was stable compared to 2015, the number of people injured was up by 2.6% to 72,645 of whom 27,187 were hospitalised (+2.2%).

There was an increase of 19% in the number of pedestrians killed, rising to 559 compared to 2015. The same trend is observed among cyclists; in 2016,162 cyclists lost their lives, up 9% in one year. In both cases, most fatal accidents occurred mainly in urban areas.

However, two-thirds of all road deaths occurred outside of the conurbations.

As a ratio to population, the department with the worst record is rural Lozère, where over the past four years the death rate equates to 172 per million of population. The department has the lowest density of population in France at 15 inhabitants/km.

The numerically low number of deaths in the department unquestionably distorts the picture somewhat, but the record in many other rural departments is not much better.

Other departments with a low population density, such as Creuse, Alpes de Haute-Provence, Cantal, Ariège, Gers and Haut-Marne, all show a poor road accident record.

Conversely, more populated departments had a lower accident rate, notably Haute-de-Seine, Saint Seine Denis, Val-de-Marne, Rhône, and Nord.

A frequent cause of accidents in rural areas of France is due to overtaking.

The table below show the number of deaths on the road for each department of France in 2016, and the rate per million/inhabitants for the period 2012-16.