Speed demons spotted

Dutch roads are crowded with speed demons, speed watchdog bestwelsnel.nl shows.

In the past 10 days alone, motorists were clocked doing 170 km/h at least 240,000 times. The site even clocked one person at 259 km/h on the A50.

Site initiator Michael Dubbelman uses data from the National Databank on Traffic Users NDW for the live updates on bestwelsnel.nl. He was shocked when he saw the first results. “Especially at night there are so many hits that they blot out the map of the Netherlands,” he said.

Building the site satisfied an urge to share the info on the internet. “But I also wanted to show motorists that their speeds are registered, albeit anonymously,” he said.

Traffic psychologist Cees Wildervanck  warned that the 200 km/h speeds he notices on the site are dangerous. “People who have accidents at that speed are ten times more likely to perish than someone who drives 120 km/h,” he said.

While Wildervanck questioned whether bestwelsnel.nl could drive some motorists to want to break records on the site, police spokesperson Zuiderhoek gave advice to the wise: “That can have huge consequences, because we could just be doing speed-checks and the fines are hefty,” he said.