Europe regains its pre-pandemic mobility, revitalizing the body repairs

European motorists are already driving their vehicles more kilometers than they did before the pandemic, as shown by a range of mobility indicators. One of the most intuitive, which is provided daily by Google with the data registered in Waze, its traffic and navigation app for drivers, shows that in the first quarter of the year the majority of European countries have recovered or surpassed the number of road trips made by private vehicles that they had registered in February 2020. This trend coincides with reports by European traffic authorities and insurance associations, which show an increase in the number of accidents and its frequency.

Throughout the course of 2021 and as the different member states of the European Union were removing the mobility restrictions that they had imposed during the pandemic, the number of traffic accidents in all of the countries increased. That evolution is continuing in the first months of 2022, as shown by the data provided by the traffic authorities and car insurance associations.

This recovery in road mobility is resulting in more accidents and more demand for body and paint shops/garages. According to the data provided by Waze, which is owned by Google, during the first quarter of the year this increase in trips made by  European motorists has already surpassed what they did in February 2020, just before the pandemic. A quick analysis of the fourteen European Union countries monitored by Waze reflects that in March only two countries had not recovered their pre-pandemic mobility, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The rest of the countries analyzed (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Slovakia, Spain, France, Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden) have.