Abstract

Baltic Sea Region (BSR) is a specific region of Europe, bringing together countries with different levels of socio-economic development. The main common point is territorial access to the Baltic Sea and the importance of maritime transport in the transportation of goods. The region consists of 9 countries, including Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Russia (more specifically, Kaliningrad and Leningrad Oblast), of which all, except Russia, are members of the European Union. BSR is an extremely important European region. With the most competitive economies of the world (Scandinavian countries, Germany, Finland), the region (excluding Russia) generates 30% of European GDP. The specificity of BSR is, however, very diverse. The countries differ in almost every way, economic, political, social or cultural. For many years Eastern Europe countries (EEC) versus Western Europe and Scandinavian countries (WEC) have been shared by a large economic and social distance. These differences, although diminishing in result of political transformations, are not without impact on other areas of life. Although Europe is the continent with the lowest level of danger regarding fatal road crashes, when analysing road safety data of the BSR countries we can observe the impact that the socio-economic situation has on road safety. Against the backdrop of other countries, highly developed WEC countries can be clearly distinguished having the lowest road fatality rates. Sweden, in result of implementing Vision Zero, achieved one of the world lowest road fatality rates. On the other hand, Russia can be distinguished with more than twice higher road fatality rate than in other EEC and with the same indicator 5-8 times higher than in WEC countries. Base on the data collected for BSR countries, attempts were made to analyze and assess the impact of the level of socio-economic development on road safety in the road network of analyzed countries. The results are discussed in the paper.

Authors (3)