Commissioned by the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant, SWOV studied fatal road crashes that occurred in this province in 2018 and 2019. The main research objective was to draw lessons from those crashes. The lessons may, in their turn, result in possible measures to prevent similar crashes in the future.
In 2018-2019, 221 fatal road crashes occurred in the province of Noord-Brabant, with a proportional distribution across both years. A total number of 243 road deaths resulted from these crashes. Half of the road deaths concerned car drivers or car passengers, and a quarter concerned cyclists. The road deaths among car occupants were relatively often young people aged 18 to 30, while two thirds of the cyclist road deaths were aged 60 or over.
In 2018-2019, the most common crash types were crashes involving an obstacle in the verge, such as a tree or ditch (n=71); side-impact crashes (n=64); head-on crashes (n=30); and rear-end crashes (n=26), of which half occurred at the tail end of a traffic jam (n=14).
