Mobility is not without risk. On average, each day three people are killed in Dutch traffic and around 50 people are hospitalised because of the consequences of a road accident. Another 270 people daily receive some other type of medical care due to road accidents. Road safety is considered to be an important social problem, by both the Dutch population and the Dutch government. This article gives an overview of the road safety situation in the Netherlands. Firstly, the development of the number of casualties throughout the years, as well as the current number of casualties in different transport modes and age groups are presented. Subsequently, the concepts of risk, exposure to risk and risk inducing circumstances of traffic participation are discussed. Whereas time spent in traffic may, for some types of questions, be a better measure of exposure to risk, the Dutch risk data presented is based on the distance travelled. This data show that the risk of being killed in traffic has been declining from more than 150 fatalities per billion kilometers travelled in the 1950s, to around 9 in the last few years. Based on theoretical concepts such as subjective risk and risk acceptation, it is then discussed how individual road users generally deal with risk. Several mechanisms are discussed that may explain why the majority of people are not very much inclined to adapt their behaviour to reduce the perceived risk. The last part of the article presents a survey of the developments in the Dutch governmental concerning road safety policy. The current road safety policy is based on the philosophy of sustainable safety. This aims to realise a road traffic system and a traffic environment in which the chance of an accident is virtually excluded. Finally, by introducing the concept of 'avoidable accidents', the article deals with the question whether our efforts for improving road safety are sufficient or whether we should do more. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting