Last year around 22,500 children were injured in road accidents - according to the Federal Statistical Office, an all-time low. A child was injured or killed in a traffic accident on average every 23 minutes. But the number of children who died was almost 20 percent lower than in 2019 and has never been since reunification

.

This means that the number of accident victims under the age of 15 has fallen more than the number of accident victims as a whole, which has fallen by 15 percent. The number of children killed also fell: from 55 in 2019 to 48 last year.

This development is attributed to the consequences of the corona pandemic in view of the temporary closure of schools and many leisure facilities.

During the first lockdown from mid-March 2020, fewer children had an accident on the streets than in the same months of the previous year.

From May to July the number rose again, but according to the authority it was still well below the level of the previous months.

Most accidents on the bike

Most of the children who had a road accident in 2020 were cycling - this group had a share of 41 percent. Almost 33 percent were sitting in a car and 21 percent were walking when the accident happened. According to the information, however, there were differences in the various age groups. Children under six are often in their parents' car - the proportion of car accidents is 58 percent.

Schoolchildren, on the other hand, use the road independently as they get older - the proportion of cyclists and pedestrians among the victims increases accordingly. Of the children between the ages of six and nine, 36 percent had an accident in a car, 32 percent as a cyclist and more than every fourth child (27 percent) was on foot. Ten to 14-year-olds, on the other hand, were most likely to have accidents on their bikes (57 percent).

"We know that 6 to 14-year-olds have accidents between 7 and 8 a.m. and between 1 and 2 p.m. compared to other times in road traffic," said Stefanie Rink, expert in traffic accident statistics.

These are the times when children are usually on their way to school or back.

Even in their free time in the afternoon, children are usually particularly at risk in road traffic.

Overall, however, according to the statistics, children have a lower risk of accidents than other age groups compared to their share of the population.

The share of those under the age of 15 in all road accident victims was 6.8 percent, their share of the population was 13.7 percent.

There were also regional differences. In Schleswig-Holstein, for example, children were involved in road accidents relatively often: there were 288 injured children for every 100,000 children. The rates were also comparatively high in Brandenburg (265) and Saxony-Anhalt (252). The values ​​were lowest in Hesse with 151, in Baden-Württemberg with 167 and in Rhineland-Palatinate with 169 casualties per 100,000 children.