The most dangerous road in Spain

The most dangerous stretch of road in Spain covers 11 kilometers between Casar de Talamanca (Guadalajara) and the point where it crosses the M-103 motorway to Algete (Madrid).

For proof of this, look no further than the two fatalities and 12 people who sustained serious injuries in 10 accidents there over the last three years. Six of the victims were on motorcycles or mopeds.

The number of kilometers classed as high risk has decreased from 16% last year to 14.7%”

This length of road also tops national high risk charts, with a rate of 245 serious and deadly accidents for every billion vehicles per kilometer, according to a European road assessment report released on Tuesday by the non-profit group EuroRAP.

For the third year in a row, this section is Spain’s riskiest, according to the Royal Automobile Club of Spain (RACE), which participated in the study.

The EuroRAP report analyzed nearly 25,000 kilometers of Spanish roads, where between 2012 and 2014 there were 1,139 deadly accidents, resulting in 1,321 fatalities and 3,443 crashes, in which 4,553 people sustained serious injuries.

However, the figures show that safety has been improving on Spanish roads.

“The number of kilometers classed as high risk has decreased from 16 percent last year to 14.7 percent now,” says RACE, in reference to the 208 “black spots,” representing 1,500 kilometers of roads.

After changing its plan to combat high crash rates on secondary roads and moving all its mobile radars to them, the DGT national traffic authority analyzed these black spots for three months.

The conclusion was that one out of every three road deaths in Spain occurred on these high-risk sections. The EuroRAP study confirms that the 100 or so most dangerous road sections in Spain are all located on secondary roads.

The study details the typical high-risk section: a conventional single-carriageway road with intersections and an average daily traffic intensity of fewer than 10,000 vehicles a day.

A driver will find more roads like that in three Spanish regions, according to RACE: Galicia, Catalonia and Asturias. These regions have 19 percent, 18.9 percent and 18.8 percent of Spain’s high-risk roads, respectively.

English version by Susana Urra.