In addition to casualty characteristics, crash location characteristics (type, location) are also important for road safety research and policy making in this field. Currently, hardly any data are available about crash locations of serious road injuries, because crash locations are only available in BRON which only includes part of the serious road injuries (see the question How is the number of serious road injuries determined in the Netherlands?). Particularly for serious road injuries sustained in crashes without involvement of a motor vehicle, hardly any crash location information is available. The reason for this lack is that the data of these crashes are almost all derived from the hospital discharge register LBZ which does not register location characteristics.
Of the serious road injuries in crashes that do involve motor vehicles, more crash information is available. Up to 2010, the quality of their registration in BRON was higher, although still not complete. Therefore, we know that up to 2010 about 60% of the registered serious road injuries (former definition, see the question What is the official definition of a serious road injury?) occurred in urban areas. Of the serious road injuries involving a motor vehicle in rural areas (about 40%), about one fifth occurred on roads with a speed limit of 100 km/h or higher [6]. No reliable data are available for the years following 2009. It is expected that, in the future, the link with ambulance data will provide more insight into the locations where serious injury crashes occur [17].
