Recent research by the Foundation for Road Safety Research (SWOV) has shown that the Dutch 80 km roads are among the narrowest in the world. The foundation calls an 2,75 meter width per lane, as it found during the investigation, 'irresponsible'.
SWOV comes to this alarming conclusion in the recently published report 'Safety requirements for the cross section of distributor roads with a limit of 80 km / h.' The narrow width of the so-called 'cross section' can partly be traced back to the 'Handboek Wegontwerp' of the CROW, which prescribes a minimum width of 7,5 meters. According to international research, this should be at least 8,5 meters and a minimum width of 9,5 meters is strongly recommended.
The cross section of a road comprises elements such as carriageways, traffic lanes, redress strips, driving direction separation, outer verges, parallel facilities, embankments / verge ditches and the like.
Reduce the number of road casualties
According to SWOV, widening the lane to 3,3 meters can make a difference of ten percent in the number of road casualties. In order to further reduce the number of head-on collisions, the foundation is calling for a better separation of driving directions on 80 km roads, including the use of a so-called 'cable barrier'. Ironically, such a physical barrier entails greater safety risks for motorcyclists. A motor-friendly solution is the use of a 'soft' driving direction separation with a double axis line, as is already the case on various secondary roads in the Netherlands. This measure leads to 17 percent fewer speeding offenses and overtaking is then hardly ever seen. Research in America has shown that a wide, 'soft' driving direction separation of at least 1 meter can lead to 52 percent fewer accidents on busy roads.
According to SWOV, at 40, percent of all Dutch 80 km roads have sufficient space available for widening.