Accident investigation of priority vehicles
The Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (formerly known as the Institute for Physical Safety) conducts an annual statistical study into accidents involving priority vehicles, such as police cars.
Striking things in the various studies are that exceeding the speed limit in the sector guideline – as the police officer does in this case – appears to be related to the occurrence of more serious crashes. In 2022, the institute writes: “In crashes in which the speed limit was exceeded at most 20 kilometers per hour, relatively few people were injured (25 percent). The more serious accidents occurred when driving at least 20 kilometers per hour faster than prescribed in the industry guideline. An injured person was involved in 7 of the 9 accidents (78 percent) in which the speed limit exceeded 20 kilometers per hour.” If the sector guideline is exceeded more than three times more often people are injured.
Intersections increase the chance that a police car will cause serious injury. The institute has established in several years that accidents at intersections in particular had a serious course, especially if the priority vehicle drove through a red light. “Exceeding the speed limit mentioned in the sector guideline and the degree of exceeding it appear to have a major influence,” the 2018 report states. “Most crashes took place in built-up areas,” the researchers write. “Two thirds of the accidents occurred at an intersection. This is considerably more than in regular traffic.”
A remarkable fact is how great the risk is that police officers take in their car, the researchers write in 2018 that the chance of a crash with a priority vehicle, per million hours driven, is 3000 percent (three thousand percent) higher than in regular traffic as a passenger vehicle.