Search within
Publicatietype
Topics
31 documents found.
Since the seventies, the safety of car occupants has greatly improved, expressed in both the number of road crash fatalities and in mortality risk. Since 2011, however, the number of road deaths among car occupants has not decreased.
A light electric vehicle (LEV) is a light, electrically powered vehicle to travel relatively short distances. Most electric vehicles cannot be used on public roads in the Netherlands, whereas in many other European countries this is permitted. Not much is known about the safety of LEVs since large-scale, systematic research is hardly available.
By traffic education we mean all educational activities aimed at positively influencing road user behaviour. The activities are mainly aimed at increasing knowledge, insight, skills and motivation. In principle, traffic education is relevant to all road users, young and old, in all road user roles: lifelong traffic education.
Public communication on road safety includes all activities and products for a voluntary, lasting change in knowledge, attitude or behaviour. There is little evidence that stand-alone mass media communication is effective in changing behaviour or improving road safety. Research does show that campaigns can contribute to increasing support and knowledge of laws and regulations.
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.
Every year, about 140 fatal 'run-off-road crashes' involving motor vehicles (excluding two-wheelers) are registered in the Netherlands: they result in around 160 road deaths, more than a quarter of the total number of road deaths.
Wrong-way driving crashes are infrequent, but their outcome is often serious. Most wrong-way driving crashes occur when drivers inadvertently enter a motorway exit or when drivers turn around on a motorway.
About one third of the road deaths on Dutch roads occur at intersections. Within the urban area, this amounts to half and outside the urban area to slightly less than a quarter of the road deaths. A roundabout is the safest kind of intersection, because there are fewer conflict zones, because speed is lower, and impact angles are smaller than at a conventional intersection.
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.