The provinces of Zeeland and Noord-Brabant have the highest rate of fatal road accidents in the Netherlands.
According to research from NU.nl of more than 400,000 traffic accidents from 2007 to 2012. The data comes from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment and ongelukken.staanhier.nl.
Bert van Wee, professor of transport policy at TU Delft, suspects that this is due to the low concentration of highways in these provinces. “Highways are in fact a lot safer than people think.”
Traffic Safety Netherlands (VVN) draws the same conclusion. “Noord-Brabant has the most extensive road network of the Netherlands, and a large proportion of these are municipal and provincial roads,” said a VVN spokesman.
“Most accident happen on these roads. Motorways are the safest roads thanks to segregation of traffic types, fairly similar speeds and overpass crossings.”
Night
It also turns out that in the morning and evening rush most accidents happen and most people in traffic death. Most accidents occur between 17:00 and 18:00.
Compared to the total number of accidents, the most risk of a fatal accident at night. Most fatalities are occupants of a car.
According to Bert van Wee the high probability of a fatal night accident can be explained. “I suspect that when something in traffic during the night goes wrong, it goes very wrong. Drivers have less visibility and are driving at higher speeds.”
VVN also thinks this is the case. “There is little traffic on the road, wherefore traffic drives at higher speeds. These accidents are often single-vehicle accidents.”
Passenger cars
Of all accidents in which the cause is known, one of the four results from non-yielding to traffic. After that, not keeping enough distance (19.9 percent) and steering errors (12.9 percent) are the most common causes.
More than half of all recorded accidents occurs between cars. In 8.1 percent a car collides with a fixed object such as a tree or wall. Collisions between cyclists and cars account for nearly 4 percent of the accidents.
NU.nl would like to know where you are experiencing dangerous traffic situations. Report dangerous traffic situations at NUjij.