Mobility of goods and people is an important prerequisite for a good functioning of our society and economy. A large part of the mobility takes place on roads. Every day, billions of people move to work, school, sports or recreational places. They do so by foot, by car, on a bicycle or in another way. Also the transportation of goods generally takes place on roads. Mobility and transportation is not only a condition for our society, it also has negative consequences. The most important and most well known consequences are these in the field of the environment and road safety. The vast majority of the movements have a happy ending in terms of safety. But sometimes, mostly because of a concurrence of circumstances, things go wrong and an accident happens. In the most favourable situation, there is only material damage, but often an accident causes physical injuries or even death. Every year, worldwide 1.2 million people die as a result of a crash accident. That is more then 3,000 people every day. 140,000 People get injured every day in a traffic accident. Besides human suffering, the costs of these accidents are high; US$ 520 billion on an annual basis. It is expected that in 2020, these figures will have increased by 60% (Adams, 2004). Road safety is thus an important mondial theme. It was also the theme of the World Health Day 2004 on 7th April 2004: Road Safety Is No Accident. Not only does the World Health Organization state that traffic injuries can be prevented, it also mentions that the countries most successful at reducing the number of accidents, did so by engaging many different groups in society. Governments, society and industry worked together to achieve coordinated programmes for road safety. This remark of the WHO makes clear that an effective road safety policy is not only a matter of knowing what to do, but also of cooperation of important parties. An effective road safety policy relies on sound and well-founded scientific research. But contrary to what is sometimes assumed, the outcome of research usually doesn't affect road safety policy directly, no matter how thorough the research may have been. In the process of developing road safety policy, the rationality of the decision maker repeatedly appears to differ from the rationality of the scientist. Not only objective information about for instance road safety measures plays a part in formulating policy, but the different interests of parties involved are at least as important. If the different interests are not weighed rationally against each other in these processes, the different interests of the parties involved will gain importance and be played off against each other. Especially in decisions about important projects, many parties with different interests are involved and depend on each other. The negotiations about these interests often put a stamp on the policy as much as the scientifically based information that is used. Therefore, it is interesting to see how the decision making process should be organized so that the interests and the negotiations contribute to a good and decisive road safety policy. In this context, a decisive policy is effective, efficient, and ambitious. One of the examples of large and complicated decision making processes involving road safety, is the realization of the Dutch regional traffic and transport plans. In these plans, which were developed in 19 regions in the Netherlands, the traffic and transport policy for the next four years has been established. All regions are obliged to decide on such a plan once every four years. Accessibility, environment, public transport, goods transport, bicycle policy and road safety can be part of the policy in the plans. Road safety has thus to "compete" with other topics in this plan. A multiple case study was conducted in order to study which factors promote and hinder establishing a decisive road safety policy. This issue was studied in six regional traffic and transport plans (RTTPs) (Bax, 2003). The study had an explorative character. (Author/publisher)
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