Zuid Holland decided to carry out a thorough exchange of ideas about the contents and organisation of road safety policy within the province. Its provincial council commissioned SWOV to analyse the road safety developments. Some results were: (1) Zuid Holland had, per head of the population, the least number of road deaths of all 12 Dutch provinces; its in-patient ratio was also relatively low; (2) The decreasing trend in the number of deaths and in-patients that was clearly visible during the 1980s, did not continue into the 1990s; (3) Seeing the decline between 1986 and 1998, if the policy efforts were to be intensified, the 2010 target for the maximum number of deaths would be achievable; (4) Most of the road deaths occur on 50 km/h roads (nationally this is on the 80 km/h roads); since 1993 there has hardly been any decrease; and (5) certain combinations of age and modal split involve relatively high risks among a number of road user groups, among other things, through experience, capabilities, and vulnerability. The province is divided into 10 groups of connected municipalities, each with its own Road Safety Project Group. They show widely diverging developments in their numbers of deaths and in-patients. What complicates matters when judging these differences are: (a) the random fluctuations caused by small absolute numbers; and (b) not knowing what the differences are in (the development of) the registration rates between the groups. It is, therefore, advisable not to base group problem analyses only on the accident numbers. It is recommended to conduct group analyses of the road network structure and features, and its use. The following can be brought into action to make the traffic safer: a sustainably safe infrastructure, increasing traffic education, and intensifying police enforcement.
Abstract