"Lithuania has really made tremendous progress in the area of road safety and we probably don’t realize in our everyday life. Today we can definitely say we are successfully moving towards the "Vision 0" from what used to be "a war on the roads," Transport Minister Rokas Masiulis was quoted as saying in a statement.
Figures from the European Transport Safety Council show the number of road traffic deaths dropped 75.9 percent in 2001-2018 in Lithuania, the most among EU member states.
It went down by 73.1 percent in Latvia, followed by Slovenia and Spain (both 67.3 percent), compared to the average EU drop of 54.5 percent.
It is noted that considerable improvement in the area of road safety was achieved in Lithuania last year when the number of road deaths in the country decreased 11 percent. Better results were reported only in Slovenia (12 percent) and Slovakia (17 percent).
Nevertheless, Lithuania still remains above the EU average in terms of the annual road death number per population of 1 million. It stood at 61 in Lithuania last year, compared to the EU average of 49.