More than 1 million vans in the Netherlands for the first time: ‘Often involved in curious collisions’ | Car

Vans are relatively dangerous: the chance that you will not be able to retell an accident with a van is twice as high as the chance that you will not survive a collision with a passenger car.

Vans are often involved in ‘curious’ accidents, including fatal ones, says a spokesperson for Veilig Verkeer Nederland (VVN). “Frontal collisions without overtaking, rear-end collisions with stationary vehicles, side collisions with crossing vehicles.”

The accident figures from SWOV, the traffic sciences institute, also show that a delivery van is more than average involved in damage accidents: a delivery van is involved in one in eight collisions, more than a few years ago. The increase is mainly due to damage to or caused by vans.

At least as striking: collisions with delivery vans claim the most lives on fifty-kilometer roads, ie within built-up areas, while across the board most road deaths occur on eighty-kilometer roads. That is a sign, according to VVN, that it is not necessarily the vans themselves that are dangerous, but the people behind the wheel.

For example, they are busy with something else behind the wheel, are tired or are trying to catch up on their schedule. “Some of those drivers have a boss, who can address his drivers on safe road behavior,” says a spokesman. “But self-employed people in a van are much more difficult to reach with such messages.”

What should that message be? “To start with: gaining time on the road is impossible. Go with the flow, That’s much better.” Fortunately, there are also companies that employ their drivers on a permanent basis, who keep a close eye on their driving behavior and notice if necessary if it needs to be improved, VVN sees. “UPS and FedEx know that it is important not to focus on safety just once, but to keep doing it.”

In the meantime, delivery vans — even if they don’t make a mess — have become a major annoyance to many road users. The reason, according to the VVN spokesperson: they block the view.

“As a road user, you never try to sit behind a van for too long, because you don’t see it when they have to brake for something; you have no overview.” That becomes difficult when you know that delivery vans are also allowed to keep to the same speed as passenger cars on the highway.

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If you want to avoid an accident with a delivery van, it is best to avoid South Holland. That province accounts for a quarter of all collisions — with and without injury — according to the SWOV figures, while only sixteen percent of all vans are registered in South Holland according to the RDW. By way of comparison: North Brabant has about the same number of delivery vans, but about half as many accidents.

The municipality where most delivery vans become bumper cars is outside South Holland: in Oostzaan, in 2021, the most recent year for which local accident figures are known, there were more than five collisions for every hundred vans registered there.

After that, it is South Holland that really counts, and in particular the roads between The Hague and Leiden: with 710 accidents, the royal city accounts for one fifth of all delivery van accidents in the entire province, and in an absolute sense is not municipality in the Netherlands.

This year, more than 53,000 delivery vans have already rolled off the assembly line to the Netherlands, according to the RDW figures. At that rate, we would have welcomed more than 85,000 new vans by the end of the year — another record.

Among the million vans (exactly: 1,000,084) that are now driving around, those of Volkswagen are by far the favourite: almost a quarter come from the German brand, which occupies two of the top three places among the most popular types. But above the Caddy and the Transporter, a car from another brand takes the crown: the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.