The evening rush hour is back

Tuesday, 19 October 2021
Over the past four weeks, the evening rush hour was the stage for unprecedented numbers of accidents. A great deal of traffic ensured that at the end of the afternoon, between four and six, there were nearly eight accidents per hour on the primary road network. That is 20% more than at the start of 2020. In the morning rush hour too, there was a rise in the number of accidents, although not to the extent of levels two years ago. Between six and nine a.m., IM recovery operators had to deal with an average of more than four accidents per hour, 20% below the figure at the start of 2020.

Following an accident on the A10, on 25 September 2021, Hoogwout Berging awaits completion of the police's on-scene investigations (photo: Lorenzo Derksen)

Averaged out over the whole day, the number of accidents in the past few weeks was, on average, 73, the same as in the period from 10 February up to and including 8 March 2020. Earlier this year, the figure was fluctuating between 40 and 60 collisions per day. The striking afternoon peak is not new. From mid-March 2020, up to and including April 2021, the accident figures didn't record anything that resembled a morning rush hour. Although the evening rush hour or, more accurately the afternoon rush hour, never really disappeared. Collisions were most frequent between two o'clock and six o'clock in the afternoon: on average four per hour during the curfew in spring 2021 (weeks 7-10) and twice per hour in the first weeks of the lockdown in 2020 (weeks 12-15).

Accidents per hour of the day in four periods: weeks 7-10/2020 (last four weeks before lockdown), weeks 12-15/2020 (start of lockdown), week 7-10/2021 (curfew) and weeks 38-41/2021 (last four weeks)

IM recovery operators not only had to deal with many accidents. They also had to respond to more breakdown recoveries and made more wasted trips. The number of breakdown recoveries rose sharply earlier this year from an average of 240 per day in May to 320 in June. That figure has remained at a high level. The result is that the total number of IM call outs in the past weeks ended up at a level that had previously only been reached in November and December of 2019. An overview of the number of IM call outs in the past few years can be found at the IM-Statistics page.