The registration of road fatalities in the Netherlands; Description and assessment of the registration process. In order to be able to develop policy for the reduction of road safety hazards, it should be known how big the road safety problem is and where the biggest problems occur. Information about the number of road crashes and casualties is therefore very important. Even more important, however, is information about the characteristics of the crashes and casualties. The most relevant characteristics are to be derived from the Database Registered Crashes in the Netherlands (BRON). This database is compiled on the basis of data collected by the police and presented to the Centre for Transport and Navigation (DVS) of the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management. However, not all crashes are registered in BRON. Nevertheless, to get a proper impression of the road safety situation in the Netherlands, two important indicators, the number of road fatalities and the number of serious road injuries, are not determined on the basis of BRON alone. The number of serious road injuries is estimated by SWOV annually. For this, the Dutch National Medical Registration (LMR) is used in addition to BRON. Since 1996 the number of road fatalities in the Netherlands has been determined by Statistics Netherlands annually, in cooperation with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment (IenM). This occurs on the basis of three sources: the so-called B-records (cause-of-death records that in principle are sent to Statistics Netherlands in the case of any death), records of the district prosecutor’s office and BRON. On 18 April 2011 the Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment published the number of road fatalities in 2010 as determined by Statistics Netherlands: 640. This shows that the number of road fatalities was reduced by 11% in comparison with 2009. At the same time, the registration rate of road fatalities in BRON dropped to 84%, which is much lower than in previous years. This was reason for SWOV to study the quality of the registration of road fatalities in the Netherlands in greater depth. First of all, the objective of the study was to discover what the reasons are for the reduction of the registration rate of BRON in 2010. Next, the aim was to determine whether it is plausible that road fatalities are overlooked, in other words, whether the number of fatalities in the Netherlands is in actual fact different from what Statistics Netherlands has determined.
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