A maximum speed of 15 kilometers per hour must be set on streets without a footpath, says director Peter van der Knaap of the Road Safety Research Foundation (SWOV) in De Telegraaf on Tuesday. That would be the only safe option if pedestrians in residential areas have to use the carriageway where vehicles currently pass at 30 kilometers per hour. Safe Traffic Netherlands (VVN) and the CROW foundation, the knowledge institute for infrastructure, public space, traffic and transport and safety, support the call.

“Now that our country wants to build a million homes in the coming years, we must design the streets in those neighborhoods to be traffic-safe from the start. This means that we must provide sufficient living space for pedestrians, including children, by means of sidewalks or a 15 km/h layout," Van der Knaap told the newspaper.

The VVN hotline receives many complaints about road safety in new housing estates. In Apeldoorn, Harderwijk and Veenendaal, among others, many parents are concerned about the safety of their children. Many of them find the maximum speed of 30 kilometers per hour too high in some places.

Van der Knaap understands the concern. “Recently built residential areas are usually more traffic-safe than the new housing estates of the 30s and XNUMXs and certainly than old city districts. Unfortunately, in this new century we are also building less safe residential areas with what traffic experts call 'long straight lines'. Streets that are straight over a length of more than a hundred meters without sidewalks and where you can drive XNUMX kilometers per hour, but where, according to residents, delivery vans in particular often drive even faster, and electric cars also accelerate quickly," according to the report. SWOVdirector in the newspaper.

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Due to the lack of a sidewalk, many parents are concerned that their child could be hit by a car. “And those parents are often just right, because a motorist needs 13 meters at that speed to come to a stop. A playing child does not have that 13 meters," says Van der Knaap.

The maximum speed of 15 kilometers per hour is a basic principle of Sustainable Safety Road Traffic, the approach that has been leading in the Netherlands since the mid-XNUMXs. However, according to VVN, the speed limit is only described as a preferred option in the approach. “Let's hope that when designing new residential areas, municipalities will simply build sidewalks or reduce speed. Because you don't want situations like in De Aurelius in Elst. Pedestrians there have to make do with a grass strip next to the carriageway. Every home has an exit that slopes down: children on roller skates, go-karts and bicycles roll onto the street, as it were," said spokesman Rob Stomphorst in De Telegraaf.

Photo above: Inge Hogenbijl Schutterstock.

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