Despite having more cars on the road, Hong Kong saw road safety improve in the last decade, with the number of fatal accidents dropping by 58 percent from 2014 to 2023, according to the Census and Statistics Department.

The number of fatal and serious road accidents decreased from 2,607 in 2014 to 1,096 in 2023, which had the lowest number of such accidents in the past decade, the department said in the February issue of Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics released on Monday.

“With the ongoing increases in the number of licensed vehicles and road traffic in the past 10 years, there was indeed an improvement in road safety,” the report reads.

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The accident rate in terms of the number of traffic accidents involving personal injuries per 1,000 licensed vehicles recorded a downward trend from 22.9 in 2014 to 21.0 in 2023. 

The accident rate per million vehicle-kilometers also showed a decreasing trend from 1.23 in 2014 to 1.17 in 2023, according to the report.

It added that the fatality rate per 1,000 casualties in 2023 was the lowest in the past 10 years, at 4.31 fatalities.

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Of the 22,269 traffic accident casualties in 2023, 12.4 percent were pedestrians, 29.6 percent were passengers and 58.1 percent were drivers. 

The report said there were downward trends on both the proportions of pedestrians and passengers among all traffic accident casualties while the proportion of drivers showed an increasing trend from 48.3 percent in 2014 to 58.1 percent in 2023.

The casualty rate was comparatively higher among persons aged 25-44 and showed a general uptrend in the past 10 years, the report added.