Malta posts only rise in road fatalities in EU

Malta was the only country within the European Union to report an increase in road fatalities in the period between 2010 and 2017, figures released in Brussels show. According to the data published by the European Commission, road fatalities on the island shot up by 46% in the period under review. All the other 27 member states reported a drop, ranging from -1% (The Netherlands) to -41% (Greece). Malta registered a 17% drop in road deaths in 2017 when compared to the previous year. Read: Malta crashes to bottom of EU road death table The statistics were published just one day after Monday’s harrowing accident in Żurrieq when two tourists died and about 50 others were injured, some of them seriously, when a double-decker bus hit a tree branch. The European Commission noted that the small population size meant that the figures fluctuated from year to year. “The number of deaths are small, so a fluctuation of a relatively small number of deaths will look like a huge jump in percentage terms when compared to large countries,” a spokesman for the European Transport Safety Council told the Times of Malta. He said that, given small numbers, Malta could hold an independent...