A description is given of a study into aspects of municipal traffic safety policy in Dutch municipalities. The study was carried out by means of a postal questionnaire survey in which 60% of all Dutch municipalities took part. A still growing part of all municipalities has a special traffic safety coordinator. Municipalities where this is the case, are more active in the field of traffic safety than other municipalities. They also have a municipal traffic safety plan more often. In general, municipal policy effort in the field of traffic safety is still increasing and 30% of the municipalities assess the priority of their traffic safety policy as high. Measures to increase traffic safety are taken at a large scale. However, there is little insight into the positive or negative effect of the measures taken. All the same, this limited insight does not prevent municipalities from keeping measures and from a belief in a (further) decrease of numbers of casualties in traffic. As in earlier years, the "Actie -25%", a national project of the Dutch Ministry of Transportation, aiming at a decrease of 25% of the number of traffic casualties by the year 2000 (reference year 1985) has a positive effect on the municipal effort in the field of traffic safety.
Abstract