It is not known exactly how often wrong-way driving occurs in the Netherlands. Presumably the average annual number of wrong-way driving incidents involving police presence is about 375. The real number of wrong-way driving incidents will be higher; after all, the police will by no means receive reports of all wrong-way driving incidents or register their efforts at a wrong-way driving incident.
The annual number of 375 recorded wrong-way driving incidents is an estimate, based on a police analysis of its incident registration system for a SWOV study [1]. To this end, the police searched for registrations of traffic cases in 2015-2019 in which the term ‘wrong-way dri*’ occurred, in combination with terms indicating a motorway or other national road (search terms included an “A”road number, motorway , exit, entry ramp, national road). A total of 1944 police records during the aforementioned five-year period were identified in this way. The actual number of wrong-way drives is probably higher. The police file obviously includes only those incidents in which police were present, either because of a crash or in the capacity of law enforcement or emergency responders.
