In the Dutch province of Friesland in February 1998, an ambitious traffic control project was started to improve road safety in the province. Among other things, the traffic control on driving speeds on the most dangerous 80 and 100 km/h rural roads was intensified in this project. This evaluation studies the effects on speeding offences and crashes with motor vehicles of the intensified control and the accompanying publicity. This is a continuation of a previous evaluation (See C 14309 (ITRD E201652)). The present evaluation used crash and driving speed data during a longer period, together with better analysis methods. With regard to speeding offences, the analyses show a clear difference between those road segments along which extra control was carried out and the reference road segments where this did not happen. On the 80 km/h roads, the percentage of offenders on segments with intensified control decreased from more than 30% in 1997 to 15% in 2001. On those segments without control, however, this remained above 25% during the same period. The greatest reduction in speeding offenders occurred on roads closed to non-motor vehicles. On the 100 km/h road segments with extra control, there was a significant reduction in speeding offences: from about 15% in 1997 to about 8% in 2001. During the same period, the reduction on 100 km/h road sections without extra control, was not significant: from 16% to about 13%. The effect of the intensified speed control was also quite positive on the numbers of injury crashes (all severities) and severely injured casualties (deaths and in-patients). The estimates have to be treated with care because the confidence margins around the effects found are very large. This is mainly due to the small numbers of crashes and casualties.
Abstract