A total of 178 people have been killed in road accidents in Croatia since the start of 2021, 20 more than in 2020 and 17 more than in 2019, the Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

The year 2019 was the first year with fewer than 300 road fatalities (297). In the pandemic year 2020, which saw restrictions on movement, the number of fatalities dropped to 237.

This year’s figures indicate that the positive trend of declining road fatalities could be discontinued by the end of the year, contrary to the goal set by the 2021-2030 road safety national plan – a 50% decline in the number of road fatalities from 2019.

A rise in road fatalities has been reported all across Europe, said Marko Sevrovic of the Zagreb Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences. Road safety trends are observed over a period of 10 years and annual fluctuations are completely normal, he said, noting that in 2022, the number of road fatalities is expected to continue to decline.

In the last, 10-year national plan, the aim was to reduce the number of road fatalities to 213, however, that target was not achieved.

On the other hand, Sevrovic believes that great progress was made in relation to other EU countries, with only the Czech Republic faring better than Croatia.

Georg Davor Lisicin, secretary of the Road Safety association, however, believes that Croatia lacks a system of road safety management while all other EU countries have special agencies in charge of road safety management.

“We have adopted a new national plan, setting a 50% decline in road fatalities as the target in the next ten years and we did not achieve the previously set goal. The plan is a dead letter. The measures cited in the previous plan were good yet we did not implement them and nobody is held accountable,” Lisicin said, adding that the establishment of an agency for road safety was left out of the new plan and that state services were again being increasingly centralised, with the Ministry of the Interior being in charge of the firefighting service, the 112 emergency service, to road safety.

According to ministry data, in the first six months of 2021, of the 55 people killed in road accidents, 56 were not wearing a seatbelt and the dominant reason for the fatalities was speeding, Vecernji List said.