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It will probably take at least several decades for completely self-driving vehicles to become commercially available, if they ever will. Yet, vehicles in which part of the driving task is automated, for example automated braking, accelerating and steering, are already available.
From 2009 to 2018, an annual average of 80 road deaths were attributable to crashes with trucks and 67 road deaths to crashes with delivery vans. Casualty numbers are higher among crash opponents than among occupants of trucks or delivery vans. The fatality rate among crash opponents is higher when they crash into a truck or delivery van than when they crash into a car. The fatality rate among occupants of a truck or delivery van, however, is lower than among car occupants. Among the occupants of trucks or delivery vans, most fatalities occurred on provincial road and on national roads.
Intelligent transport and advanced driver assistance systems are implementations of information and communication technology in vehicles and in the transport infrastructure to make traffic safer, more efficient, more comfortable, more reliable and more eco-friendly.
Visual information is of the utmost importance to road users. In darkness, both public lighting and vehicle lighting help road users take stock of the traffic situation and help them to be seen by others. Installing public lighting leads to a 50% reduction in the number of nighttime injury crashes. Disavantages of public lighting are, among other things, the risk of collisons with lamp posts, light pollution and the costs of material, maintenance and energy consumption. The road safety effects of a reduction in illuminance level on motorways vary according to the traffic situation.
In the past ten years (2006-2015) an average of 11 road deaths per year in the Netherlands was registered in crashes involving agricultural vehicles. Compared to the early 1990s, the average number of road deaths due to crashes involving an agricultural vehicle increased from 1% to 2% of the total number of road deaths in the Netherlands. Agricultural vehicles are defined as agricultural and forestry tractors as well as self-propelled machinery used in farming, construction industry, civil engineering and the maintenance of public green spaces.