Making minor rural road networks safer: The effects of 60 km/h-zones

For safety reasons a maximum speed limit of 60km/h has been applied to minor rural roads in the Netherlands since 1998. To support this structurally, a part of these roads have also received additional physical measures in a so-called "low cost design" that is expected to reduce the number of traffic casualties by 10-20%. This measure has been implemented as much as possible in an area oriented way. To measure the design's effectivity, road safety in 20 specific rural areas was studied for 5 years before changes were implemented and, on average, 3.5 years thereafter. The study examined 851km of roads, and a control study was done on 2105km of comparable roads with a speed limit of 80km/h. Both the study and the control roads are managed by water boards. Results show that the measures implemented on the roads in the 60km/h-zones had statistically significant effects (p