During the nineteen seventies the term subjective traffic safety was introduced in The Netherlands, to describe the feelings people had about the lack of traffic safety and their living with traffic, as opposed to objective traffic safety, in which accident data, behavioural observation studies etc were presented. Now a plea is given to leave the term subjective. It is too much linked to the consent of road users which does not correlate with the objective reality or is even totally different. Every person or organization wanting to make modifications in traffic and transport will make use of objective data, but is subjective in making proposals. Only if road users, road administrators, and researchers coordinate, can something be done to improve traffic safety.
Abstract