The enormous increase in the number of road casualties requires action. In 2022, 745 people were killed and 8,300 injured. The Road Safety Coalition, of which BOVAG is a member, strongly calls on the new cabinet to invest in more enforcement and a safe infrastructure. Without these measures, the objective of significantly reducing the number of victims will not be achieved.
In the past, motorcyclists were jokingly called organ donors in hospitals, but if you ask, any surgeon will confirm that nowadays it is no longer the motorcyclists, but the cyclists who have been given that nickname.
Not surprising when you look at the accident statistics. There were 745 road deaths in 2022, the highest number in 15 years. Cyclists in particular are more likely to be victims (290 deaths). But the number of fatalities among motorists has also increased, to 221. The government’s ambition to reduce the number of road casualties to zero by 2050 is therefore further away than ever.
According to the Road Safety Coalition, a partnership of social organizations, private parties and knowledge institutions, major investments in traffic enforcement and bicycle safety are necessary to reduce the number of road casualties. The 500 million euro investment incentive for Road Safety for improving infrastructure is a step in the right direction, but according to the coalition this is insufficient to turn the tide.
The Choosing or Sharing report from SWOV (the Institute for Scientific Research on Road Safety) shows that doubling enforcement and a safe cycling infrastructure will result in significantly fewer deaths and injuries. The Road Safety Coalition therefore calls on the government to take the following measures:
Invest in safe infrastructure. Nearly 70 percent of serious road injuries and more than a third of road fatalities are cyclists. In addition, the number of cyclists is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. Measures are desperately needed.
The Road Safety Coalition asks the government to take the following steps:
– Invest in safe cycling infrastructure. That is the best way to prevent accidents.
– Encourage the wearing of a bicycle helmet and provide more information and advice about good bicycle helmets and helmet wearing.
– Encourage 30 km/h within built-up areas, where it improves unsafe situations.
– Ban the boosting of e-bikes, fat bikes and other light electric vehicles (LEVs).
– Reduce speed differences on the cycle path.
The road safety coalition believes that investments should be made in traffic enforcement. If there is a greater chance of being stopped or fined, this will lead to different behavior on the road. In order to deploy traffic enforcement effectively, the Road Safety Coalition believes that police capacity must be increased:
– Explore the possibility of re-establishing traffic enforcement teams.
– Police training must include more attention to traffic enforcement in the program.
– More innovation in the field of enforcement: invest in MONOcams to combat handheld telephone use, automate enforcement and increase the number of stops, for example by deploying special investigating officers (BOAs).
Given the increasing number of accidents involving pedestrians, bicycles and e-bikes on the one hand, and cars and trucks on the other, the Road Safety Coalition advocates encouraging vehicle technology to protect pedestrians, cyclists and other road users.
Facts and numbers
– More than a third of road fatalities and more than two-thirds of serious road injuries in the Netherlands are cyclists.
– There are 23 million bicycles in the Netherlands, of which 4.9 million are e-bikes (2022).
– In 2020, a quarter of cycling kilometers were traveled on an electric bicycle.
– In the event of an accident, cyclists wearing helmets have 60 percent less chance of serious and 70 percent less chance of fatal head/brain injuries than cyclists without helmets.
– The number of motorists driving under the influence of alcohol has almost doubled in five years (period = 2017-2022).
– With regular alcohol checks, the number of accidents decreases by 17 percent.
– 71.5 percent of motorists indicate that they sometimes use their mobile phone while driving.
– Laughing gas has been banned since the beginning of this year. However, there is no method to determine whether a road user has used nitrous oxide. A ban is therefore difficult to enforce.
The government has an ambition of 0 road casualties by 2050. However, this target is becoming increasingly out of reach. The decline in the number of road fatalities has been stagnant for years. Road accidents cause untold human suffering and cost society 27 billion euros annually.
– Thanks for information from Motorfreaks.