About three quarters of fatal run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles (excluding two-wheelers) occur outside urban areas. Broken down by speed limit, most fatal run-off-road crashes occur on 80km/h roads (29% of the total number of run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles) and 60km/h roads (27%). Motorways and 50km/h roads both account for about 15% of the total number of run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles.
Within the category of road types with a given speed limit, the share of run-off-road crashes is highest on 130km/h roads and on 60km/h roads. On both road types, 46% of fatal crashes are run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles.
According to BRON, most fatal run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles (excluding two-wheelers) occur on straight roads (see Table 2). Over a quarter (26%) of run-off-road crashes occur in curves. This share is relatively high as only a small proportion of roads are 'curves'. In fact, two in-depth studies of run-off-road crashes in the Netherlands found that about half of them occur in or just after a curve [2] [3] [4].
Table 2. Annual number of fatal run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles (excluding two-wheelers), averaged over 2016-2020 by road situation. Source BRON.
The majority of serious run-off-road crashes occur at weekends [4] [5]. Almost half of the road deaths in run-off-road crashes involving motor vehicles (excluding two-wheelers) occur at weekends (47%) and almost a quarter (24%) on a weekend night (BRON). In comparison: for all road deaths in crashes involving motor vehicles (excluding two-wheelers), the figures are 37% and 18% respectively.
Figure 1. Road deaths due to run-off-road crashes involving a motor vehicle (excluding two-wheelers), by time of week/day in 2016-2020. Source: BRON.
