North Macedonia aims to halve road crashes and fatalities by 2030

The National Road Traffic Safety Strategy 2026–2030, adopted by Parliament in September 2026, was officially presented today by the Republican Council for Road Traffic Safety. The council outlined the main steps, measures and numerical targets designed to cut crashes and save lives over the next four years.

Key goal: halve crashes and deaths by 2030

The strategy carries the motto "Every life is important" and sets a concrete target: by 2030 the number of road crashes and victims should be reduced by 50 percent compared with 2024, which is taken as the reference year because it recorded the highest number of crashes and victims in the last five years.

According to the analysis included in the strategy, crashes rose between 2020 and 2024. The annual average over that period was about 7,900 incidents, with 7,215 crashes in 2020 and 8,457 in 2024. Fatality figures recorded 115 and 106 in 2020 and 2021 respectively, followed by 117 in 2022, 118 in 2023 and 124 in 2024. The strategy expects a gradual reduction that will cut these numbers in half by 2030.

Minister of Internal Affairs Panche Toshkovski said the human life is central to the plan and repeated the goal of halving the number of fatalities by 2030 compared with 2024. He added that, aligned with global and European ambitions, the country aims for zero road deaths by 2050. Toshkovski also praised the strategy as a professionally crafted document produced with input from multiple institutions.

“We know that this is a very difficult mission and a very hard task, but Macedonia has shown, especially this year, by implementing all activities, that it can be one of the best countries in terms of improving traffic conditions and reducing human victims. So, I am truly deeply convinced that the initial target is realistic and achievable – by 2030 half of the victims we had in 2024,” Toshkovski said.

The minister pointed out that the country has many critical points on its roads and that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with the Republican Council for Road Traffic Safety, is working intensively to identify and remedy them, with special attention to so-called black spots where lives are lost. He also noted a sharp fall in the number of traffic incidents after installation of cameras as part of the "Safe City" system in February 2026.

Officials highlighted that over the past 35 years the country has endured a devastating annual average of road fatalities between 145 and 150, and that the years with the lowest numbers of road deaths were 2001 and 2021. The strategy combines infrastructure measures, enforcement, public awareness and data-driven identification of high-risk locations to meet the 2030 objective.

Photo: press material from the event