Economy 24 March 2025, 4:05pm

Number of road accidents involving personal injury drop in Budapest, rise in Hungary in 2024

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Speeding is still one of the main causes of traffic accidents, while driving under the influence of alcohol is another, the head of the traffic police department of the Budapest Police Headquarters (BRFK) said in Budapest on Monday. In 2024, still a quarter of road accidents resulted in serious injuries in Budapest, a higher percentage than either 10 or 20 years ago. The share of fatalities, however, did drop to just 1.3% from over 2% over the past two decades.

Lieutenant-colonel Krisztián Léránt, Head of the Traffic Police Department of the Budapest Police Headquarters (BRFK), held a press conference on Monday to report on accident data and the results of police checks in the capital last year.

He has highlighted that

the number of road accidents in Budapest dropped to 2,900 last year from over 3,800 in 2019.

The lieutenant-colonel said that they were focusing mainly on speeding offences (whether minor or serious) and had therefore, in cooperation with the Municipality of Budapest, installed speed cameras and traffic enforcement boxes (which may or may not contain speed cameras, but as they are conspicuous they should have a deterrent effect). As a novelty, the police now also record speeders from moving vehicles.

Thanks to the measures and inspections, the nearly 53,000 speeding violations in November were reduced by more than half to under 22,000 by February, Léránt said, adding that these data are all based on the records of the measuring devices installed by the city.

Krisztián Léránt also said that they were taking strict action against participants in illegal drag races: in the past period, 202 people were prosecuted, 93 of them for the offence of modifying their vehicles without a licence.

The checks will continue, as Budapest's streets are not a race track,

the head of the department stressed.

The lieutenant-colonel mentioned drunk driving as another cause of traffic accidents. According to him, the police are taking a tough stance against this.

Last year, Budapest police officers used breathalysers in 311,117 cases, more than three times the number of tests carried out in 2020. Anyone in Budapest today can be subjected to a breathalyser test anywhere, anytime. In 2024, more than 3,000 drunk drivers were taken off the road and the proportion of drunk driving accidents fell to 4.4%.

Let's see the numbers!

The lieutenant-colonel has also given the number of traffic accidents, including those resulting in serious injury or death. His figures, and for that matter those recently quoted by Budapest's mayor Gergely Karácsony, are largely in line with those of the Central Statistical Office (KSH), but not entirely. (Both Léránt and Karácsony quoted a lower number of injuries and fatalities than that stats office, which updated its data series on 7 March.)

According to KSH data, there were 2,945 road accidents that resulted in some kind of injury in Budapest and 14,608 in Hungary last year.

The former figure represents a year-on-year decrease of 4.8%, while the latter shows an increase of 1.6%.

The number of road accidents resulting in serious injury totalled 725 in Budapest, and 4,143 in Hungary in 2024, with the former figure corresponding to a 17.1% yr/yr drop, while the latter shows practically no change (-0.9%).

The number of fatal road accidents dropped 11.6% yr/yr in Budapest to 38, but rose 1.8% to 446 in Hungary.

Looking at the percentage of serious injuries in all road accidents, the situation in Budapest has not changed much over the last 20 years. As the chart below shows the lowest share was reached in 2011 (17.4%) and the highest in 2023 (28.3%). The same percentage for the whole country, however, shows greater improvement, as it came down more or less steadily from over 35% in 2002 to 28.2% by 2024.

If we look at the percentage of fatalities in all road accidents, we see a much more obvious improvement both in Budapest and in the country, with the latter figure showing a more impressive decline over the years. In 2002, 6.4% of road accidents ended in death, compared to "only" 3% last year. The corresponding figures for Budapest are 2.4% and 1.3%.