In the hope of reducing the number of accidents at the infamous intersection of Aalsmeerderweg and Bennebroekerweg in Rijsenhout, the Municipality of Haarlemmermeer is taking several measures there. Yet the stop signs that were once there, so desired by local residents, will not return.
The intersection has been in the news regularly in the past year because of accidents, which often resulted in injuries. Jabbeke de Vries lives at the intersection, hears and sees daily traffic speeding by and has already provided first aid several times. She is so tired of the scenes that she is considering moving, she told the NH Nieuws camera earlier this month. “Today or tomorrow there is one for whom I can do nothing more.”
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Rijsenhout intersection is life-threatening: “Too high speeds, often a good hit” – NH Nieuws
That cry for help is now also heard by the municipality, because it is taking care of the intersection at several points, she announced today. In concrete terms, three physical elements will be adapted: ‘pedestrian crossingability’ will be improved, lightning bolt markings will be applied to the road surface and LED lights will be installed in the yellow background of the priority signs.
Measures
It is not yet known exactly how the municipality intends to improve the ‘crossability for pedestrians’. It is clear from the answers to written questions from Forza! that the intention is to realize similar crossings as at Graan voor Visch in Hoofddorp. The image below shows one of those crossings, although it is not yet clear whether this is the variant that is also being constructed in Rijsenhout.
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The municipality hopes that crossings ‘as a by-catch’ will also attract the attention of motorists more quickly and that they will ‘adjust their behaviour’ (read: slow down).
The lightning bolt markings will be placed on both sides of the intersection on the Aalsmeerderweg. “As a result, road users are extra alerted that they are approaching a dangerous intersection”, according to the college in answering Forza!’s questions.
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LED lights in the yellow, fluorescent edges around the priority signs (see image above) are also intended to make motorists extra alert to the approaching dangerous intersection. Incidentally, the municipality itself placed the yellow, fluorescent edges in December last year, when it became clear that the intersection is regularly the scene of traffic accidents. Since the signs have the yellow edges, there have been far fewer accidents, the municipality claims.
No stop signs
Salient detail: the stop signs that once stood there – and ‘forced’ approaching traffic to come to a complete standstill – are not returning. The municipality believes that stop signs will not lead to a further decrease in traffic accidents, because those signs hardly differ in meaning from the priority signs that are there now.
In addition, “all accidents to date” have been caused by drivers who ignored the priority signs, the municipality writes. It is therefore unlikely that a different priority sign will have more effect.
“It is not plausible that the way in which priority is arranged is the cause of the accidents”
Furthermore, according to the municipality, since the redesign of the intersection in 2017 – when the stop signs were removed at the request of residents – there have been only ‘sporadic’ accidents, with the exception of the past year. According to the municipality, this shows that “it is not plausible that the way in which priority is arranged is the cause of the accidents.”
Criticism
Local resident Jabbeke de Vries is ‘glad that the municipality is moving’, she says after NH Nieuws has listed the measures for her. “But what I miss enormously are stop signs”, she criticizes the package of measures.
Jabbeke believes that the behavior of motorists does change when they see a stop sign. “When you drive up to a yellow-bordered priority sign, you don’t feel like you’re approaching a dangerous intersection, when you drive off at a stop sign you do.” She also has her reservations about the pedestrian crossing – without a zebra crossing but with broken lines. “Then you can be hit within the lines?” she responds cynically.
Control and conversation
In addition to the physical and permanent improvements to the intersections, the municipality still has a few irons in the fire. For example, the police will check on and around the intersection more often and the municipality will enter into discussions with companies in and around Rijsenhout whose drivers are known to drive too fast and cause dangerous situations.
Among those companies is a delivery service, one of the drivers of which caused a collision at the intersection at the end of June. The victim – Rijsenhouter Patrick Mes – was black and blue, but nothing else was wrong, as it turned out after a visit to the hospital.