A black spot (or hot spot) is a location where many road crashes occur. This may refer to the absolute number of crashes or the number of crashes related to road length or traffic volume. The Working group Black spots Amsterdam (WBA), for example, defines black spots as locations where at least three (injury) crashes have occurred in the past three years [34].
The purpose of identifying black spots is to select high-priority locations to spend safety budgets effectively. Fortunately, there are fewer and fewer black spots in the Netherlands. The black spot approach is therefore increasingly being replaced by a risk-based approach, where locations are prioritised based on their risk indicator score. The advantage of the risk-based approach is that measures can be taken before unsafe situations have resulted in crashes. For more information on the risk-based approach, see the Knowledge network SPV website.
