Last year there was less traffic than normal and there were also fewer fatalities and injuries from road accidents. Relatively speaking, however, the situation for vulnerable road users has actually deteriorated.
Although the number of road accidents fell by 23 percent last year from the start of the first lockdown to the end of the year, the number of injuries decreased by only 11.2 percent and the number of road deaths by 10.1 percent. Determined not proportional decrease. According to the traffic engineering IT agency Via, this has to do with the fact that vulnerable road users did not benefit so much from the decrease in motorized traffic. It reports that AD. Pedestrians, cyclists, e-bikers and moped riders ran a higher risk of an accident.
According to Via, this is related to the changed traffic supply. Last year there were a relatively large number of vulnerable road users, while motorists actually started driving faster because they were on the road with less than usual. About 40 percent of the drivers drove too fast during the first lockdown. In the summer, when the temporary weather was a bit busier on the road, the number of speeders immediately fell slightly, to 37 percent. According to Via, the maximum speed was then exceeded less far on average, but at the same time there was a remarkably large number of cyclists on the road, which also had an impact on the accident figures.
The police oppose it AD that with a permanently calmer traffic supply (in terms of motorized traffic then), more work must be done to separate vulnerable road users from motorized traffic. “Think of the construction of more cycle paths, wider sidewalks. More areas where the speed limit is 30 kilometers per hour also helps,” said the highest traffic policeman, Paul Broer.