Drivers Warned After 106 Holiday Crashes and 2 Serious Injuries in Portugal

More motorists were lucky to walk away than usual, but the roads were still unkind. In just one day, 106 accidents kept emergency teams busy, leaving 2 people in intensive care and 38 nursing lighter injuries. The figures arrive in the middle of the PSP’s holiday clamp-down and, when set against 2025’s broader road safety picture, they paint a sobering portrait of a country that still struggles to tame speed, alcohol and distraction behind the wheel.

Key take-aways at a glance

• No fatalities in the latest 24-hour tally, yet the toll in pain and cost remains high.

• Police visibility is at its peak as the second phase of the Polícia Sempre Presente – Festas em Segurança operation rolls on.

• Holiday traffic volumes are up, driven by family gatherings and last-minute shopping.

• National statistics for 2025 already show more than 52,000 accidents in PSP territory alone.

• Speeding, drink-driving and phone use continue to dominate infraction charts.

A sharp holiday reminder

What should have been an uneventful Sunday ended with rescue sirens echoing from Braga to Faro. Between midnight and midnight the PSP logged 106 separate crashes. Though nobody lost their life, two victims were classified as graves—medical shorthand for life-altering injuries that can take months of rehabilitation—and nearly four dozen others sought treatment for bruises, whiplash and fractures.

Traffic analysts blame the seasonal cocktail of heavier flows, longer nights and a false sense of security—especially on familiar urban routes where excess speed creeps in unnoticed. The PSP’s incident map shows clusters near retail zones and motorway junctions, areas already flagged as high-risk in last year’s Plano Nacional de Fiscalização.

How 2025 stacks up so far

Looking beyond this single day, the year has been a roller-coaster:

• 52,370 crashes recorded by the PSP from January through November, a hair above 2024’s figure.

• 72 deaths in those incidents, up by two year-on-year.

• 713 serious injuries—that is 69 more than last year.

• 16,436 minor injuries, a rise of roughly 400.

Contrast that with the broader national ledger, where combined PSP and GNR numbers reach 118,078 collisions and 359 fatalities by the end of October. On average, Portugal still wakes up to 390 accidents each day—and at least one empty seat at the breakfast table.

Speed, alcohol and phones: the usual suspects

If the causes sound repetitive, it is because they are stubbornly consistent. Internal PSP audits tie roughly 60 % of infractions to speeding alone. A separate chunk involves drivers who blow above the legal 0.5 g/L alcohol limit or glance at a smartphone the moment a notification pops up. Road-safety academics warn that a pedestrian struck at 50 km/h faces a 90 % chance of dying, versus 10 % at 30 km/h—a statistic the current Viajar Sem Pressa campaign hammers home on billboards.

What police are doing—and why it matters

The Festas em Segurança operation, now in its second phase, puts extra patrols on arterial roads, saturates nightlife hotspots with breath-test checkpoints and deploys mobile radar vans outside shopping centres. In the first week of the campaign alone, officers made 459 arrests—the bulk for drink-driving or driving without a licence—and flagged 2,734 infractions. A PSP spokesperson told Público that the mere sight of a blue-light unit can cut average speeds by 5-10 km/h, the difference between a scare and a funeral.

What drivers can do before heading out

A handful of habits offer the biggest safety dividend:

Plan extra time—holiday congestion adds 20-30 % to trip length.

Skip the second drink; even one beer bumps reaction times.

Stow the phone where it cannot tempt you.

Check tyre pressure and lights, especially ahead of long motorway runs.

Use child restraints correctly—police still issue hundreds of fines every month for loose belts.

The road ahead

Portugal’s lawmakers have signalled that the upcoming National Road Safety Strategy 2030 will push for lower urban speed limits and smarter enforcement tech—think automatic licence suspensions for extreme speeders. Until those reforms hit, the responsibility sits squarely with drivers. As the PSP keeps reminding holiday travellers, the best present is to arrive—and the easiest way to do that is to slow down, sober up and keep both eyes on the asphalt.