The paper presents a geographical analysis of road accident risk figures. We use data from North Rhine-Westphalia on the municipality level covering the period 2003 to 2008. We develop a typology of municipalities based on risk figures (injured persons per 100,000 inhabitants), categorised by severity of accident and age group. What is more, we study the impact of spatial variables on accident risks by applying OLS regression. Our focus is on severe injuries and fatalities. The results show

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... some spatial attributes consistently turn out to be important impact factors for the risk of being severely injured or killed in an accident. The risk figures decrease with increasing municipality size. Arguably, the decisive factor is not the number of inhabitants in a municipality but urban structures as a whole, i.e. a compact, dense form and a low level of car ownership. What is more, economic, political, social and demographic factors appear to play a role.