Canarian workers suffer a thousand traffic accidents per year going to or returning from work

Road displacements to go to or return from work or those carried out during the working day caused 53 fatalities in 2025 on the islands, six more than in 2024, in one thousand incidents of different consideration, a reality that the Government of the Canary Islands and Traffic intend to improve.

To this end, this Thursday both instances have signed a collaboration agreement to launch a joint protocol that allows to know in depth the various causes that are related to this high occupational road accident rate, which corresponds to that registered by other autonomous communities, with the aim of correcting them based on a greater culture of prevention and the collective use of road transport.

This was stated after signing this agreement by the Canarian Minister of Employment, Jéssica de León, the director of the Canarian Institute of Occupational Safety (Icasel), Elirerto Galván, and the provincial head of Traffic in Las Palmas, Eva María Canitrot, who have stressed that, a priori, this reality is explained by the increase in workers on the islands, the impact of tourism, and imprudence at the wheel, in addition to the scarce collective use of the car, which is indeed widespread in other territories of the country.

Therefore, they have alluded to the experiences of collective transport and shuttle vehicles that various business groups in the hospitality or industrial sector have promoted as one of the ways to improve occupational road accident rates, although they have admitted that it is a practice very little implemented in the archipelago.

De León has recalled that the new national Mobility Law will oblige companies from 2027 to have safe mobility plans, so this agreement implies getting ahead to train the productive fabric of the islands in this area and also raise awareness among the entire population, since, as the DGT representative in Las Palmas has stressed, "road safety is all of us".

Canitrot has considered that these figures "are inadmissible and cannot be maintained", as, however, has been happening in recent decades, which is why she has urged the population of the islands "to do their part to ensure that the roads of the archipelago are safe".

"As of today, we have nine fatalities in traffic accidents on interurban roads in the Canary Islands, seven of them in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and we closed 2025 with 53 fatalities" only on this type of roads, "a figure that had not been seen for 20 years", she asserted.

Furthermore, she has stressed that occupational accidents, of which road accidents represent a significant percentage, generate human losses, but also have a notable economic cost in terms of loss of productivity, sick leave, contributions, or insurance premiums.