[Epidemiologic research and road traffic accidentology in Europe]

Every year there are 1.7 million road casualties on EU roads, of which 46,000 are fatal. With reference to the three main sources of information available (the police, the medical profession, and insurance companies), we have extracted epidemiological results for this important public health issue, taking into account the relevance of this approach in terms of its exhaustiveness and representativity. Finally, referring to different ad hoc etiological and evaluative research, we have put forward some ideas on the possible contribution that epidemiology could make to a better understanding of road traffic accidents. Given that current research is coordinated at an EU level, we have confined our analysis to the 15 member countries of the EU.