Italian road safety and motorway infrastructure boost

Italy has received a double transport-related boost after new figures revealed a fall in national road accident deaths, while €40 billion of new investment is being made in the peninsula’s motorway infrastructure.

Fatal road accident deaths fell by 7.1% to around 3,800 in 2011, according to official data provided by Istat and ACI. There were 205,000 road accidents involving injuries in Italy last year, a drop of 3%. The Italian rate of 63 fatalities per million people was just above EU average for 2011, while the number of fatalities out of 100 accidents increased on motorways from 3.1 in 2010 to 3.2 in 2011, but fell from 5 to 4.8 on large roads and from 1.1 to 1 on urban roads.

The entirely private companybacked investment in Italian motorway infrastructure will be financed by tolls. In the first four months of 2012, around €700million was invested in Italy's motorway infrastructure.