Abstract
In the year 1990 the Dutch central government prescribed the local communities to introduce a traffic safety plan to get a subsidy for traffic safety projects. But half of the local communities have got a subsidy without a traffic safety plan. This has several reasons. Firstly, the government has introduced regulation too late. Secondly, the local communities should pay half of the projects themselves. Thirdly, local communities asked for the subsidy before their traffic safety plan was really introduced. Now, central government has given the provinces the task to divide the subsidies for the local communities in order to have a better control and to decentralize the tasks of the government.