The in 2001 published Housing Memoradum from the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment was tested for possible health effects by the Netherlands School of Public Health. The present report about the road safety effects of the Housing Memorandum is one of the section studies of this Health Effects Report (GER). The various section studies of the GER are primarily directed at the policy themes "compression and spreading", "freedom of choice for the citizens", and "domotics" in this Housing Memorandum. It is not clear what effects "domotics" (application of telematics at home) will have on car exposure (kilometres travelled) and road safety. It is expected that increasing the freedom of choice for citizens will cause a broadening of the dwellings and a lowering of the building density. A reduction in the density has a negative effect on road safety. Compression and spreading of the building density, in the Housing Memorandum, are both seen as a measure for improving the dwelling quality in problem areas. Compression has a positive road safety effect, whereas spreading has a negative effect. The policy theme "mobility, traffic, and accessibility" from the Housing Memorandum contains the recommendation to local governments to explicitly take the mobility effects into account when doing their town and country planning. If this recommendation is adopted by local government, it could have a positive road safety effect. Because no indication of the size of the effects can be given, neither for the negative nor the positive effects, it is not possible to estimate the net effect of the policy described in the Housing Memorandum. The careful prognosis can be made that the negative road safety effects will be greater than the positive effects.
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