Traffic Expert: Accidents Occur as Before, but Safer Cars Are Saving Lives

According to traffic expert and attorney Indrek Sirk, Estonia's road safety has improved remarkably over the past three decades: the number of people killed on the roads fell from 491 in 1991 to 43 in 2025. However, the number of people injured in traffic accidents has remained at around 2,000 per year. The number of vehicles on the road has tripled since independence, making the drop in fatalities even more notable.

Sirk attributes this progress mainly to improvements in passive vehicle safety, not necessarily a decline in the number of accidents. "These are fundamentally different cars than those we drove at the beginning of independence, when most vehicles were made in the Soviet Union and lacked even basic safety equipment," he said. "There was no point talking about passive safety in Soviet cars — they were tin boxes. In a serious collision, people were badly injured or killed."

Last year was exceptional as the number of seriously injured, usually between 400 and 450, also dropped. This year has shown how much depends on chance: 12 people died in the first five months, then 10 more in the next month. Sirk warns that we cannot rely on good luck.

Based on European road construction standards and Estonia's daily traffic volumes, Sirk believes Estonia does not actually need 2+2 highways. Traffic is sparse enough that 1+1 or 1+2 solutions would be functionally sufficient. He also notes that Estonian road conditions are in some respects better than in Latvia and Lithuania, especially on secondary roads.

General speed limit reductions have been the "magic wand" for Scandinavian countries, helping them reach the top of Europe and the world in traffic safety — they have half as many fatalities per million inhabitants as Estonia. Speed reduction saves lives. Pedestrian safety in Tallinn has improved partly because car traffic has been intentionally made more complicated and speeds reduced. At 50 km/h, the probability of death in a collision is 70 percent; at 30 km/h, it is 20–30 percent. Sirk notes that the safest speed is zero, but traffic law aims for the fastest and smoothest possible movement.

Most drivers follow the rules and trust the system. A small percentage are anarchists who fight against the rules. But the biggest problem group consists of those who break the rules when the risk of getting caught is low. Pedestrian and driver behavior has changed, with drivers now more cautious toward pedestrians.

Emergency-medicine data indicate that accidents involving light personal vehicles such as e-scooters occur several times more often than police records show, because many falls are mistakenly treated as household injuries.