Traffic accidents, with the human victims and material damages that they cause, had received, during the last decades, the attention of the international governing. In 2004 in the European Union (U.E.), about 890
thousand accidents with victims did occurred. Thirty thousand of them result in fatal injury (CARE, 2006). In Portugal occurred in 2004, about thirty-nine thousand accidents with victims including 1,3 thousand of fatal injury, About 3,6 people died per day in result of traffic accidents (CARE, 2006). With this article authors will make a state of the art of traffic accidents, will refer some problems that still persist to the level of some definitions, in particularly accident and mortal victim, will present a brief description of the Portuguese information system that “feeds” the national and international databases, will make a characterization and data analysis on traffic accidents. It is emphasized the importance of developing the analysis at the level of the quantification of risk and exposure to the risk.

keywords: traffic accident, fatal injury, information system, mortality, risk, exposure data, road safety