In the Netherlands, there are annually nearly 1,100 road deaths and nearly 20,000 in-patients. The social damage of road safety is nearly Dfl. 18 billion (price level of 2000). The environmental pollution caused by road traffic is estimated at Dfl. 13 billion a year and the congestion on main roads costs Dfl. 1.8 billion. Compared with other countries, the Netherlands is one of the safest. However, European countries that are even safer, such as Great Britain and Sweden, have made a greater improvement during the past 10 years. SWOV's opinion is that the annual number of road deaths could be approximately 700 lower. To achieve this, suggestions have been added to the National Traffic and Transport Plan (NVVP) of the Ministry of Transport: Obtaining more public support for executing a sustainably-safe policy; Completing a sustainably-safe road network and a qualitatively better execution; Extra deployment of speeding control; Application of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and vehicle improvements; and extra attention for high-risk road user categories.
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