Compared to other age groups, children are less often killed on account of a road crash. Relatively speaking, children are also less often seriously injured in traffic. In 2018, children aged 0-14 represented 16% of the Dutch population, while ‘merely’ representing 2.8% of the entire number of road deaths and, in 2017, an estimated 6% of the number of seriously injured road users.
Traffic risk may be calculated by relating the number of casualties to the amount of kilometres travelled by road users (mobility). Here, it is relevant to distinguish two different groups: children up until primary school leaving age and children at secondary school. The latter travel longer distances to and from school independently. In the years 2012-2017, 1.1 children were killed in traffic per billion kilometres travelled. For children aged 12-14, the fatality rate increases to 1.6 compared to 0.9 for children aged 0-11. In comparison: across all age categories, an average of 3.3 road users were killed per billion kilometres travelled.
