Excess speed, driving under the influence of alcohol, drugs and using mobile phone are the main causes of fatal accidents on Spanish roads, the director of the General Direction of Traffic (DGT in Spanish) told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

Alvaro Gomez explained the DGT had "identified" the factors of risk, and that "distraction is behind 33 percent of all fatal accidents, many of which are caused by the use of mobile phones."

"High speed is also a factor in 29 percent of deaths, while the next factor is drinking alcohol and taking drugs, which cause 26 percent of road deaths," said Gomez.

According to the DGT, 1,180 people died on Spanish roads in 2018, which is 1.5 percent down on 2017.

Gomez, nevertheless, is not content with the results.

"It is negative, but if we look at between September and December, we reduced deaths by 9.5 percent in this period in respect to 2017. So the challenge is to maintain the trend of recent months," he commented, before explaining that recent measures aimed to continue the trend of reduced mortality.

"We have just reduced the speed limit on roads with one lane in each direction from 100 km/h to 90 km/h and we are going to introduce tougher punishments in terms of taking points off drivers who break the rules," said Gomez.

"The evidence shows that when you lower the speed limit, you reduce the number of fatal accidents," he explained.

Meanwhile, the DGT is looking to clamp down on mobile phone use behind the wheel, by increasing the punishment from the loss of 3 points to 6 points (when a driver loses 12 points, they lose their license).

Gomez said the number of deaths caused by drinking and driving was "very high" and said it was important to carry out campaigns to educate and raise awareness among drivers and to accompany this with more police controls on highways.

"It is an enormous problem, although we have improved," Gomez told Xinhua. "A few years ago, around 5 percent of all drivers stopped at controls tested positive for alcohol and now this has dropped to around 1 percent."

"There are problems with young people drinking and driving, but that is not just a problem in Spain," he commented.

Spain currently has 40 deaths per million inhabitants in road accidents, the fifth best figure in the EU, behind Sweden (25), the UK (27), the Netherlands (31) and Denmark (32).

"We have gone from having one of the worst death rates on roads 15 years ago to having one of the best," said Gomez.