Old inner cities are the most dangerous places in the Netherlands when it comes to serious road accidents. This is shown by research by RTL News.
Researched for 10,000 neighborhoods in the Netherlands RTL News, based on figures from Rijkswaterstaat and TomTom, how often a serious road accident occurs there. As it turned out, that number is above average in old inner cities. In 777 neighborhoods, the risk of a serious accident is no less than five times as high as average. An important part of this is a neighborhood in an old city center. The absolute leaders are d’Oude Morsch in Leiden, Leidsebuurt Southwest in Amsterdam and Lange Elizabethstraat and the Mariaplaats area in Utrecht.
Leiden is head and shoulders above the rest. As many as six of the 20 neighborhoods with the highest risk of a serious accident are in Leiden. Here, too, the problem is mainly found in the city center. The municipality of Leiden is late RTL know that in the coming years it will work intensively on more 30 km zones, more traffic-calmed zones and more space for pedestrians and cyclists. For this it received a subsidy of just under € 1 million from the government.
The fact that things often go completely wrong in old inner cities, according to professor Bert van Wee of TU Delft, is largely due to the layout. The cities were obviously not built with the current traffic and traffic in mind. There is also little or no room for a different layout, because of the buildings. Van Wee argues opposite RTL that a large part of the solution can be sought in banning motorized traffic in more parts of the inner cities. More speed bumps and a lower speed limit can also help. The study also showed that speeding and aggressive driving occurs more often than average in urban areas.