‘We're definitely moving in the right direction’

Before Koos Spee, Chief Traffic Officer of the Public Prosecution Service, became involved, traffic safety in the Netherlands was not very high on the agenda. Which is remarkable really, because more than a thousand people were dying on the roads every year. However, since the founding of the traffic enforcement bureau for the Public Prosecutor (Bureau Verkeershandhaving Openbaar Ministerie (BVOM)) in 1999, that figure has been dropping every year. And technology is helping.

Spee was a member of a nationwide fraud team when he was asked to become the national Chief Traffic Officer in 1995. With a team consisting of one full-time and one part-time member, he began his job as an annex to the office of the Public Prosecutor. His job was to liaise with the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. But through the years, he has increasingly left his mark on national road safety. And in 1999, he founded BVOM, which now employs 80 people. On top of that, 700 to 800 extra police officers in the country are paid by BVOM and the bureau also supplies manpower to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Fewer traffic victims
‘At the start, it was a hard job convincing everybody that more money was needed for traffic enforcement,’ recalls Spee. ‘But after several successful projects, the politicians in The Hague were convinced. Our work always produces something positive: either money for the treasury or a reduction in the number of traffic victims, the social costs of which are also not insignificant.’ After eight years of BVOM, the number of people killed and injured by traffic has dropped considerably. ‘Although we cannot take all the credit for this,’ explains Spee. ‘The improved infrastructure has also helped a lot.’

Giving advice
The BVOM leads an independent existence within the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Besides monitoring enforcement, the organisation also issues advice to the Ministries of Justice and Transport, Public Works and Water Management. ‘As soon as any regulations in the area of traffic management are involved, either new regulations or changes to existing regulations or the abolition of regulations, we issue advice,’ says Spee.
‘A recent example is the regulation prohibiting trucks from overtaking on the motorways. It’s a familiar problem, terrible if you’re the one driving behind them.
Enforcement of the new regulation is difficult, however, because it can really only be monitored with surveillance vehicles. I’m a great advocate of getting technology to work for us wherever possible. So we are proposing an amendment to the law so that it prohibits trucks from using the left-hand lane altogether. This is much easier to enforce ─ you just have to hang a camera above the left-hand lane and the job is done. There’s a shortage of manpower in the police so if we can enforce the law using electronic devices I really think we should do it.’

Measurements
Enforcement has nothing to do with guesswork. Throughout the Netherlands BVOM has positioned around 900 induction loops that carry out all kinds of measurements. For example, they register all the vehicles that are driving past, as well as their speeds. ‘If there are a lot of accidents at a particular location as a result of speeding, then we set up speed traps at those locations. Before we start, we make a zero measurement,’ explains Spee. ‘Then we use the measuring cabinets to keep constant track of whether our efforts are having an effect.’

Useful
BVOM has demonstrated many times that the measurements which are taken are useful. ‘In the Netherlands there are eight million road users and 7.9 million traffic experts,’ jokes Spee. ‘Many of them believe that stopping offenders on the spot produces the best results. But our measurements have shown us that this is not the case. In the Veluwe area, example, we used radar vehicles for a long time to perform speed checks. Then the Commissioner of the National Police Corps suggested we try using motorcycle policemen instead of the radar vehicles. And what happened? When we started working with motorcycle policemen, everyone started driving even faster. Because when people see a motorcycle policeman talking to a motorist they think: “Hey, that’s good, he’s busy writing out a ticket so he can’t come after me. And they put their foot on the gas. On the other hand, radar vehicles create uncertainty in people. They think: ‘Is that car just parked beside that farmhouse or is it a speed trap?’ And because it is better to be safe than sorry, they slow down.’

Subjective risk of getting caught
Spee calls that uncertainly the ‘subjective risk of getting caught’. He believes it is the ideal instrument for getting people in the Netherlands to drive more safely. ‘We’re now researching whether we can divide the motorway between Gouda and The Hague into eight three-kilometre surveillance routes. Every day we will be able to perform checks in one of those eight sections, but of course we won’t reveal which one.
People who drive that route every day have a chance of being issued a ticket every day. And if you don’t know which part is being checked, you have to keep to the speed limit on the whole route. Because if you get a speeding ticket in your letterbox every day, that will lead to trouble in the long run. And that’s what we want to achieve: that people get so sick of getting tickets that they choose to drive within the limits.'

Petty?
That a lot of people are really fed up can be seen from the stream of abuse directed at Spee which is floating about on the internet. And, fair is fair, nobody likes it when they come across one of those envelopes with the purple border in their mail. But it doesn’t get Spee down. ‘It’s a funny thing, but we can only improve traffic safety by hitting people where it hurts them most: in their wallets. I recently read an editorial in a national newspaper which said how ridiculous it is that the police are busy with petty things like speed checks while there are other much more important things they could be doing. Such as those containers full of drugs being smuggled into the country. But on the front page of the same newspaper the headline was about a terrible accident in which four young people were killed, probably because they were driving too fast. Speed checks are definitely not petty.’

Technology
‘There are now eight million motorists in the Netherlands and we write out seven million speeding tickets every year,’ continues Spee. ‘That means an average of less than one ticket per motorist every year, yet the majority of people break the speed limit every single day. For the risk of being caught to rise to one hundred percent, we would have to write out a billion tickets each year. But we really don’t want to do that. All we want to do is give road users the feeling they’re being checked.’ According to Spee, technology gives enforcers many opportunities to create that feeling. ‘Section speed control, a BVOM invention, is a good example of that. We’re now busy connecting permanent speed cameras to each other so they can also be used for measuring section speed control. It will no longer make sense to slow down when passing a speed camera. By using a permanent speed camera to sometimes take a point measurement and at other times carry out section speed control, we can increase the subjective chance of getting caught.’

Adjustments to cars
In Spee’s opinion, making adjustments to cars is also a way in which technology can contribute to road safety. ‘If your car beeps constantly when you’re not wearing your seat-belt, then it doesn’t even enter your mind not to fasten it. There are now also cars that slow down when you’re driving too close to the car in front. This prevents multiple-vehicle collisions. Rijkswaterstaat (the Dutch Department of Waterways and Public Works) is conducting trials with cameras mounted on cars that monitor the lines on the road. The driver receives an alarm signal if he crosses the line ─ for example, if he has fallen asleep. A Japanese car manufacturer has developed a car that won’t start if the driver has had too much to drink. These are good developments, but in the end it is the motorists themselves who are always responsible for their driving behaviour.’

Professional
Thanks to BVOM, driving behaviour is being positively influenced in the Netherlands. Experts from Germany and Belgium visit us regularly to find out how we are doing. ‘We’ve managed to put traffic pretty well on the map,’ says Spee. ‘Traffic enforcement has started to become really professional. Sometimes what we’re doing might seem like a game of cat-and-mouse, but we are helping to stop people being killed and injured on the roads.
In the last few years before I retire I hope to see the number of traffic fatalities drop to below the 700 limit. At the moment the figure is under 900 a year. The last time the Netherlands had such a low figure was way back in the 1950s! Even though there were far fewer cars then. So we’re definitely moving in the right direction.’

Traffic data amassed thanks to solar energy and GSM
To ensure a professional level of enforcement, BVOM collects traffic data from all over the Netherlands. Around 450 metering points on municipal, provincial and national trunk roads measure diverse data, ranging from the number of vehicles passing by to their actual speed. In this way, for example, BVOM can see which locations in the country need more enforcement, but also whether checks have been successful. In a combined project, Imtech (Imtech Infra) was commissioned to upgrade the existing metering points and implement new ones, as well as to maintain them and collect the data. The new metering points operate on solar energy and transmit their data automatically via a GSM modem. This is a really efficient solution, because until recently BVOM had to actually visit each location to collect the traffic data.

Safe traffic: Monitoring with radar
We’ve all seen them at the side of the road: groups of students, often at junctions, manually counting how many and which types of vehicles are passing by. To conduct even more accurate and also more cost effective counts, Imtech (Imtech Infra) is now supplying roadside radar. This is a technological solution that detects traffic in two directions, counts and classifies it, and registers the speed of the vehicles. The roadside radar can also count cyclists. The data gives experts an insight into the current traffic situation ─ crucial information that traffic specialists can use to develop solutions for safer traffic. The roadside radar is the successor to the ‘hose counter’ (rubber hoses containing detection technology which register traffic flow). In practice, the hoses are not very accurate and it takes a lot of time to install them. The easy-to-install roadside radar uses radar, as the name would suggest. The use of this roadside radar means that detection/induction loops in the road are no longer necessary. Moreover, roadside radar is particularly suitable for temporary measurement because the radar can easily be moved to another location. And just like other products in Imtech’s traffic product line, the roadside radar can be fully recycled.

Improvements to the A2
The A2, the national trunk road from Amsterdam to Maastricht, is an important north-south link in the Netherlands. However some parts of the 213-kilometre motorway – one of the longest in the Netherlands – feature consistently in the daily traffic congestion reports. Various studies are being conducted to resolve the bottlenecks on the A2, and these include possible adjustments to the traffic systems around the Haarrijn junction. Imtech (Imtech Infra) has been commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat to gradually replace and renew innovative and safe traffic systems in the course of the next four years. One of these systems involves Dynamic Route Information Panels (DRIP), which display information to motorists about traffic congestion and any accidents or road works. Imtech is also responsible for the access ramp metering and for upgrading the Motorway Traffic Management (MTM) systems. These are signalling systems that display the maximum permitted speed in the event of road works, accidents and tailbacks. Imtech is also responsible for the software used for communication with the Oudenrijn Traffic Centre.