Abstract
Since the oil crisis of 1974, in many countries all over the world an increasing amount of interest has been shown in the application of surface dressings as measures for the maintenance of roads. The principal reason for applying them lies in the relatively small quantities of expensive bitumen they require as compared with the construction of an asphalt surfacing. In the Netherlands the use of surface dressings was, prior to the 1970s, confined to rural roads and hard shoulders along motorways. In recent years, however, this method has also been used for the maintenance of roads carrying larger volumes of traffic.