Data from the National Road Safety Authority (ANSR), released in the middle of last month, showed that in 2025 the number of road accidents rose to more than 125 thousand, between January 1st and November 13th. There were fewer deaths than in 2024, but more accidents with serious injuries. This weekend, a tragic road accident made the news: six young people, aged between 18 and 20, burned to death after the vehicle they were traveling in crashed and crashed into a pillar on one of Lisbon’s main roads.
The story is tragic, and nothing will be able to alleviate the pain that the families of these young people must be feeling at this moment. But while the authorities work to try to understand what really happened on a night that, we calculated, should have been just one of revelry and fun, the case should make us think as a society.
A few months ago, Dinheiro Vivo/DN published an interview with two managers from the Zurich insurance company, who drew attention to the increase in accident rates with serious consequences, especially among younger people – who are, for natural reasons – less averse to risk. Something that is transversal to several European countries, but which has significant numbers in Portugal. At the time, they identified three main factors that contributed to this reality: inappropriate speed for existing conditions, consumption of some type of intoxicating substances (more drugs than alcohol in the new generations) and, in first place on the podium of causes of deaths on European roads: inattentive driving.
The fact is that we increasingly see people looking everywhere except the road: cell phones, increasingly interactive panels in their own cars… forgetting that they have in their hands a weapon weighing approximately two tons that easily causes irreparable damage to themselves or others. And if you believe that it only “happens to others”, let me add a few more numbers: this year, accidents in Portugal have already caused 2,451 serious injuries (40 more than in the same period of 2024) and 39,316 minor injuries, 686 more year-on-year.
Tragedies like the one with which I began the text are one of the biggest nightmares for anyone. As a society, we owe it to the bereaved families to make a serious reflection on what is happening on Portuguese roads and where we are failing: the rulers, as legislators; educators as a vehicle of information and all of us, society, as an example behind the wheel.
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