The indicator defines the number of traffic accidents, fatalities and injuries in road transport for the period 1991-2007 in Slovenia and in other EU countries. This includes all traffic accidents in road transport, in the inspection of which the police cooperated and which occurred in the current year. Fatalities are all persons killed outright or within 30 days as a result of the accident. Injured persons are all persons not killed, but injured in an accident and who usually needed medical treatment (CARE, 2009). Accidents in rail, maritime and air transport are not included due to their minimum share.

In the countries of the EU, 137 road transport participants died per million residents in 1995. In the same year in Slovenia, 208 road transport participants died, by which Slovenia exceeded the European average by 52 %. According to this criterion, Slovenia belonged in 1995 to the least safe European countries. In the last ten years, the number of fatalities on our roads has slightly decreased (in 2007, 145 fatalities per million residents). However, Slovenia is still exceeding the EU average by 69 %; in the EU, 86 persons died in road transport per million residents.

The objectives and measures for the particularly pressing transport subsystem are for the period 2007-2011 stipulated in the Resolution on National Programme on Road Traffic Safety (OG RS, no. 2/2007). The resolution has established that road safety in Slovenia has been unacceptable and unsatisfactory for a long time, and has been strongly reducing the quality of life in our society and of its members. In the period 1995-2007 in Slovenia, almost 3600 persons died due to traffic accidents. As an answer to this problem, the resolution is following the example of other European countries and setting to the foreground the vision »zero«, which represents a positive and responsible relationship of the creators and participants of the road-transport system who are, with their comprehensive operations and management, obliged to prevent the worst consequences of traffic accidents and provide a safe long-term objective: zero fatalities and zero seriously injured persons due to traffic accidents. The main objective of the programme is to keep the number of fatalities in traffic accidents in 2011 under 124. Considering the trends in recent years, when on average less people died in traffic accidents with regard to previous years, this would save approximately 600 lives by 2011. The resolution is considering five of the most exposed categories of road transport participants – pedestrians, cyclists, young drivers of passenger cars (15-24 years), elderly drivers of passenger cars (above 65) and drivers of motorcycles, who are primarily considered to be possible victims of traffic accidents. Besides the five most endangered groups of road transport participants, the Resolution draws attention to two of the most frequent causes for traffic accidents – speed and alcohol or illegal drugs and other psychoactive substances. Despite the decrease in the number of fatalities in road transport, the number of traffic accidents and injured in Slovenia, including the social costs, has been increasing above average. The annual number of traffic accidents resulting in injured people has, after 1995, increased by 78 % or 100 % respectively. There are different causes for this problem, although the majority of them come from above-average motorisation and an increase in road motor transport as well as the abandonment of safer transport modes (especially public transport).

The European Environment Agency explains the causes of such trends (less victims and more accidents and injured) in new EU Member States (EEA, 2005):
- with improved technologies of newer vehicles and their higher safety standards;
- with higher road quality, their engineering and road signalisation;
- with legislative changes in connection with driving under the influence of alcohol;
- with the introduction and implementation of stricter speed limits.

The European Commission has also been dealing a lot with road-transport safety. In 2003, it presented a new Road Safety Action Programme, which contains three main areas of action (EEA, 2005):
- encouraging road users to more responsible behaviour, especially through stricter compliance with the existing legislation, having continuous training for private and commercial drivers, and more efficient persecution of dangerous behaviour (driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs); improving police checks and promoting education and road user awareness campaigns.
- making use of the technological progress of the safety of vehicles with the improvement of safety standards;
- encouraging improvements in road infrastructure, especially by determining and spreading the examples of the best practice and eliminating accident black spots.