When things become increasingly visible in the media, it’s easy to assume that they’re becoming more common – psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the availability heuristic. It can be difficult to separate a rise in attention from a rise in frequency. Increasing attention on terrorism can therefore make it seem like it’s always getting worse. But is this really true?

Has terrorism in Western Europe been increasing?

In this visualization we shown terrorism deaths in Western Europe since 1970. Here we use data from the most comprehensive database to date: the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Another useful resource which cross-references well with this database for Western Europe is the Wikipedia entry: you can find further context of particular events there.

The 1970s and 1980s were dominated by ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Here we see annual deaths from terrorism in the order of hundreds, and reaching over 400 deaths in some years. The United Kingdom was home to the largest share of deaths for much of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

We see quite a marked decline post-1998 with the Good Friday Agreement between British and Irish governments. Since the Millennium the annual death toll has been below 50 deaths in most years, and often below 10. For context, compare that to how many people die on the roads: in 2017 around 70 people died every day in road incidents. Road accidents kill more people in Western Europe every day than terrorism in an average year.

The year to year changes are nonetheless volatile. Large terrorist attacks – such as the Madrid train bombings in 2004; 2005 London bombings; 2011 Norway attacks; 2015 Paris attacks; the truck attacks in Nice and the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2015; and the Manchester and Barcelona attacks in 2017 – have occurred since the turn of the century.

This trend is also reflected when we look at the number of terrorist attacks.

With exception of the 1970s, terrorism data in Western Europe can be hard to see when bundled with other regions. This in itself is an important point: terrorist deaths in Western Europe are very low within the global context.

During the 1970s Western Europe was home to the most terrorist deaths globally: in many years 70% to 80% of recorded deaths from terrorism. This has changed dramatically since then. In 2017, only 0.3% of terrorism deaths occurred in the region.