Easter Weekend Claimed Three Lives and 450 Injured
Three people died in traffic accidents during the Easter holidays. Last year, five lives were lost. However, this year there was a significant increase in crashes with personal injury (373), as announced by the Ministry of the Interior on Tuesday. This was 95 (34.2 percent) more than the previous year (278 accidents). In the process, 450 people were injured, 121 (36.8 percent) more than at Easter 2024 (329 injured).
Three People Died in Traffic Accidents at Easter
On Good Friday, a 67-year-old Austrian with his tractor went off the road in the Neunkirchen district of Lower Austria and fell about 50 meters over a steep embankment into a forest. The man died at the scene of the accident. A 31-year-old motorcyclist fell on Easter Sunday in the Voitsberg district of Styria and suffered serious injuries. He succumbed to his injuries in the hospital. The third fatality, a car passenger in Upper Austria, died in the early hours of April 22 from the consequences of the accident.
The lowest number of victims since the introduction of the statistics in the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 1968 was recorded with one traffic fatality in the years 2013 and 2023. In comparison, the worst year so far saw 39 deaths over the Easter weekend in 1976, and as recently as 2004, 17 people died in road traffic at Easter.
Over 53,000 Reports Due to Increased Speed
As part of the intensified traffic monitoring by the police, 53,348 vehicle drivers were reported for exceeding the maximum permissible speed at Easter (2024: 53,180), a slight increase of 0.3 percent. Reports were filed against 355 vehicle drivers for drunk driving (2024: 303), an increase of 17.2 percent. Another 86 drug-impaired drivers had to be taken off the road by the police. This is ten people or 13.2 percent more than the previous year (76).
274 drivers had their driving license or moped license temporarily revoked over the Easter weekend (2024: 258). This is an increase of 6.2 percent. Five motor vehicles were temporarily confiscated by the federal police at Easter due to extreme speeding violations (2024: 4).
Five Deaths During the Entire Holy Week
During the entire Holy Week, including Easter Monday, five people died in road traffic accidents: a car driver, a motorcycle driver, a tractor driver, a bicycle rider, and a car passenger. On state roads L, two people lost their lives last week, one each on a highway, a state road B, and a municipal road. Two traffic fatalities were reported last week in Upper Austria, and one each in Lower Austria, Burgenland, and Styria.
The presumed main causes of accidents were in three cases inattention or distraction, and in one case each, failure to yield and inappropriate speed. Four fatal accidents were single-vehicle accidents. From January 1 to April 21, 2025, there were provisionally 85 traffic fatalities on the Austrian road network. In the same period in 2024, there were 72, in 2023 there were 84, in 2022 there were 106, in 2021 there were 64, and in 2020 there were 89.
49 Injured in Traffic Accidents in Vienna
In Vienna, there were no fatalities to report over the weekend, but there were 33 traffic accidents, resulting in a total of 49 people being injured. The Vienna State Police Directorate intensified controls over the extended weekend due to speeding as well as alcohol and drug impairments among drivers. In this context, speeding was recorded 8,253 times. 28 reports were filed for driving under the influence of alcohol or for refusing the breathalyzer test. 32 driving licenses or moped licenses were revoked.
(APA/Red)
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