In order to chart the way for long-term policies in the field of public health, the Dutch government needs to have the best possible insight into potential future trends and the problems to which these could give rise. It was with a view to compiling a number of long-range studies that the independent Steering Committee on Future Health Scenarios was set up in 1983. In 1985 the Steering Committee appointed a board of experts to conduct a long-range study of "Accidents and traumatology" (traumatology being that aspect of medicine concerned with the treatment of accident victims). In close consultation with this board, the Institute of Public Health and Social Medicine of the Erasmus University Rotterdam carried out a scenario study, the results of which are briefly summarized below. 0.1 Aims and approach The research had two objectives: To explore possible "autonomous" developments (in the sense of being independent of government intervention) in the field of accidents and the treatment of accident victims. To specify the effects of possible policy measures, in relation to both the prevention of accidents and improvements in the care for accident victims. The research was exploratory rather than predictive. It did not go beyond the year 2000, since it was felt that the pace of change in this field ruled out looking much further than ten to fifteen years ahead.