In Belgium, 36% of all kilometres driven by vehicles are driven on motorways. Although just 7% of all accidents that result in injury take place on a motorway in the period 2009-2013, the severity score is clearly higher than on other types of roads with 35 fatalities per 1,000 accidents resulting in injury. Moreover, European comparisons show that Belgium scores poorly in terms of fatal accidents on motorways. With 60.1 deaths per 1,000 km of motorway (data from 2010), Belgium is one of the worst performing European Member States. The severity of these accidents on Belgian motorways thus constitutes a problem, which therefore means that a comprehensive analysis of serious road traffic accidents on motorways is required. These types of analyses should allow us to gain more of an insight into the nature and causes of these accidents, and consequently to formulate recommendations to prevent such accidents or reduce their severity. This study is a first step in this direction. It focuses on fatal accidents on Belgian motorways and is primarily based on data from police reports, compiled following fatal road traffic accidents on motorways in the 2009-2013 period. It is pointed out that the reports are not always complete from a research perspective. A number of interesting facts are fairly systematically missing in the police reports. These involve, for example, results of blood tests, accident sketches, photographs of the accident, detailed information about damage to the vehicles and the speed the vehicles were travelling. It is important to mention that these are not ‘incomplete’ reports. It is more a problem of data transmission. Not all parts of the police report are delivered to the development policy department of the Federal Police, and are therefore also not delivered to the Belgian Road Safety Institute. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting