The social costs of road crashes in the Netherlands in 2018 are estimated at 17 billion euro (between € 15.8 and € 18.6 billion euro), equivalent to more than 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Moped and light-moped riders are at relatively high risk of being a crash casualty. Although there is a trend towards fewer deaths, in the Netherlands, the risk of being killed or seriously injured remains very large compared with other modes of transport. In the Netherlands, helmet use is mandatory for moped riders, but not for light-moped riders.

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.

More detailed information about the individual data sources can be found in the report Data Sources; A comprehensive overview.

This fact sheet discusses the development of the number of serious road injuries in the Netherlands. Internationally, serious road injuries are defined as persons having sustained injuries in a road crash, whose injuries have a maximum severity of 3 on the medical injury scale AIS (MAIS3+).

In 2015, 47 motorcyclists died in traffic in the Netherlands. After 2009, when their number was approximately 1,300, it has not been possible to reliably determine the number of serious road injuries due to poor registration. In the Netherlands 1,4 million people have a motorcycle licence, but as there are 656,000 registered motorcycles, less than half own a motorcycle.