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1384 documents found.
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(SWOV) | Craen, S. de; Bijleveld, F.D.; Bos, N.M.; Broek, L.J. van den; Dijkstra, A.; Eenink, R.G.; Weijermars, W.A.M.
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(SWOV) | Goldenbeld, Ch.; Stelling, A.; Kint, S.T. van der
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(SWOV) | Hettema, Z.J.A.; Dijkstra, A.; Schermers, G.
In 2023, 684 people were killed in road crashes in the Netherlands. That is 61 road deaths less than a year earlier, but more than between 2010 and 2021.
In 2022, the number of serious road injuries in the Netherlands was estimated at 8,300. That number is about 1,500 (over 20%) higher than the 2021 number and also slightly higher than was to be expected considering the upward trend through 2019.
The construction of the road network and road design greatly affect road safety: firstly, because they make certain conflicts impossible or unlikely (e.g., by physical separation of driving directions, separate bicycle tracks, clear roadsides); secondly, because they direct the desired traffic behaviour (recognisability, predictability).
In the Netherlands, over a third of road deaths and well over two thirds of serious road injuries are cyclists. Cyclist fatality risk (the number of road deaths per distance travelled) is more than eight times higher than fatality risk for drivers, but over three times as low as that for motorised two-wheelers.
The social costs of road crashes in the Netherlands in 2020 are estimated at € 27 billion (between € 15 and € 36 billion). This is significantly higher than other traffic-related social costs such as traffic congestion (€ 3.5 to € 4.6 billion) and environmental damage (€ 7.3 billion).
In 2020, over a quarter of the total number of bicycle kilometres were cycled on pedelecs; particularly the over-65s opt for pedelecs. This is also borne out by the crash figures: in 2019 and 2020, almost one in three of the cyclist fatalities was a pedelec rider.
This fact sheet considers road safety in the Netherlands from an international perspective. The number of serious road injuries is hard to compare to numbers in other countries, so we almost exclusively focus on the number of road deaths. For the Netherlands, we use the actual number of road deaths provided by Statistics Netherlands; i.e. the numbers adjusted for underregistration.