LONDON - A British insurance firm has warned its customers about the dangers of driving through the Baltic states, branding the region Europe's most dangerous for drivers.
In a study conducted by financial company MoreTh>n [sic] and the UK's Brunel University, Lithuania topped the European league table of road deaths per million drivers with 223, followed by Latvia in second place (177) and Estonia in third (150).
The study was completed in advance of the planned harmonisation of driving standards across the EU in 2013 's looked into driving on the continent, with findings based on attitudes to safety, drink-driving and motoring offences in 27 European countries.
Dr Mark Young of the Brunel University Ergonomics Research Group commented: "While measures have been put in place to improve road safety across Europe, in most cases the improvements have reached a plateau. Clearly, new measures are needed to put us back on track, and in 2002 the EU set a clear and challenging target of reducing deaths and serious injuries by 50 per cent before 2010. In order to achieve this goal initiatives are already underway to harmonise legislation, but there is clearly more that needs to be done to improve road safety across European roads."
Europe's safest roads are found in Malta with just 25 fatalities for every million drivers on the road., followed by the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway, the report concluded.
