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.

This fact sheet describes the road safety aspects of public transport and of level crossings – places where road and rail networks intersect. Public transport vehicles comprise buses, trams, light rail vehicles and trains.

In the Netherlands, on average, more than 50 people die every year in a submerged vehicle crash. More than two thirds die from drowning. The casualties are mainly car occupants, while cyclist and mobility scooter fatalities are also numerous. Casualties are mostly male and aged 18-24.

Risky road user behaviour is behaviour that adversely affects road safety, such as driving under the influence of alcohol, drugs or medicines, speeding, inappropriate speed, distracted or fatigued driving, red light negation, and failure to use or misuse means of protection (motorcycle or moped helmet, seatbelt).

In the Netherlands, a sustainable road safety approach, in which measures in the fields of Engineering, Education and Enforcement (3Es) are complementary, has been used for decades. Enforcement reduces high-risk road user behaviour and is therefore an important component of this safe system approach.

Intelligent transport and advanced driver assistance systems are implementations of information and communication technology in vehicles and in the transport infrastructure to make traffic safer, more efficient, more comfortable, more reliable and more eco-friendly.

Sustainable Road Safety implies that the traffic environment is designed to rule out serious crashes and to mitigate the severity of the crashes that do happen. The human dimension is the primary focus: man who is vulnerable, makes mistakes and does not abide by the rules.

Visual information is of the utmost importance to road users. In darkness, both public lighting and vehicle lighting help road users take stock of the traffic situation and help them to be seen by others. Installing public lighting leads to a 50% reduction in the number of nighttime injury crashes.

A 30 km/h zone is also known as a ‘zone 30’ or a 'residential area'. The zone is mostly situated within an urban area and consists of connected access roads with a 30 km/h speed limit. The areas have a residential function where slow traffic and motorized traffic mix. For this reason speeds must be low (30 km/h maximum).