The next cabinet must invest billions of euros to improve road safety, now that the number of road deaths and injuries remains unabated. That call will be made on Thursday by the Road Safety Coalition, consisting of traffic organizations and knowledge institutes.
The Road Safety Coalition, consisting of, among others, the ANWB, the Victim Support Fund and the large municipalities, offers politicians the Road safety manifesto 2.0 with the five solutions that this coalition believes are necessary to reduce the number of road casualties. According to the coalition, it is mainly about making roads and cycle paths in and between cities safer, combating distraction in traffic through better enforcement and making vehicles safer.
Last year 610 people died in traffic, in 2019 there were 661. According to the Road Safety Coalition, those numbers are significantly higher than a few years ago. The number of injuries also continues to rise, to more than 21,000 per year. These traffic victims cost society € 17 billion annually, the traffic organizations estimate. Many injured people are left with permanent damage and limitations from their accident. This also keeps the pressure on acute and long-term care high.
Compared to countries around us, we are not necessarily in a good position either. Although the Netherlands is certainly not the most dangerous EU country when it comes to road safety, it is the only EU Member State where there was no decrease in the number of road casualties between 2010 and 2020. In fact, the number of victims rose. Across the EU, the number of road deaths fell by 36 percent in that period.
More concrete goals
According to the Road Safety Coalition, traffic can be made safer by formulating more concrete objectives. “The Netherlands has the ambition for 2050: zero road casualties. That is good, but politically and from a policy point of view it is also too informal. The European Union and the United Nations are aiming to halve the number of road casualties for the next ten years. That would be our country. at least must also want to, “said the coalition.
Billions of euros extra would also have to be invested. Calculations show that in the next thirty years at least € 12 billion extra will be needed compared to the current budgets, of which more than € 5 billion for investments in a traffic-safe infrastructure.