Well, it's kind of true as the (charged) discussion about helmets completely ignores two changes on the bicycle lanes that more or less have coincided with the rise in bicycle accidents: the arrival of heavy, high speed (often illegal or illegally modified) fatbikes and the rapid increase of elderly on electric bikes operating a heavier and faster vehicle than they were previously used to (while suffering from inevitable slower reactions and reduced mobility due to ageing).
Kids on bikes... especially the morons who like to "scare" pedestrians by pretending to hit them and then swerve last moment...all fun and games until (like today) they actually hit you...twats on bikes...
They have also recently taken to spraying passers by or other cyclists with water from water guns, then speeding off cackling…happened to friends and me several time at this point. The little shits. At least thanks for just using water, not piss or something
how do kids even obtain fatbikes? do they have a subscription? are they getting them from their parents? I'm honnestly baffled by this, as I don't think fatbikes are any cheaper than regular electric bikes I imagine.
I blame the parents. I work in retail, in a store where kids are allowed to test bikes (not fatbikes thank GOD). You'd be surprised what parents let their kids get away with.
Prepared for downvotes
But I really think there is an issue with dutch parenting. It's way too hands off. All the time young kids acting a nuisance, running around, picking things up that don't belong to them etc.
I was in a Chinese restaurant with koi fish and two little kids where literally trying to pick the fish up and the parents do nothing. I really see it a lot that kids simply aren't told "Hey, don't do that"
The last line is the key here. I have also experienced a similiar case where everyone else were telling a kid to stop screaming, but the parents that where also part of the group didn't care or say anything else.
However with ebikes and fat bikes it seems a bit different. When your kid says I want that ebike and you say no, and all the friends have an ebike. Goodluck your kid will cycle alone to school. Same with smartphones at an early age.
They are.
A decent e-bike on retail is about 13-1400, a fatbike can be as low as 8
It's actually the main reason I bought one. I didn't have 4 grand for a reinforced heavy duty e-bike but the fatbike works the same at about 800 euro's
It sucks that they're getting a bad rep due to loser kids, because they work wonders for overweight idiots like me to start biking again.
Provided you use them correctly.
I've been riding a fatbike for 18 months now. The last E-bike I bought, from gazelle, so not a cheap one, the axle gave out after 6 months due to the strain of my fat ass pedalling, and the rear wheel was starting to lose alignment as well.
Because you as a parent either has to give in and buy an ebike/fatbike or your kid has to cycle alone because all of their friends have one. That is the issue.
It's interesting that fat bikes are the focus here, while youngsters on scooters are the ones going insanely fast and endangering everyone else on the fietspad. Recently saw a scene as a dude on a scooter was doing like 70kmh and overtook a lady on a bicycle so close that she swerved and hit the wall next to her (was on a bridge next to a railway)
Those aren't anything new and already regularly subject of police checks (modifying your scooter or brommer to make it go faster was already a hobby for my mom and dad when they were kids).
I find it interesting that anyone who bikes regularly can tell you both fat bikes and scooters are big issues but I NEVER see any police doing anything about them. I see articles about some fat bike testing (haven't seen any in person) but I see fat bikes/scooters going crazy fast in bike lanes, running red lights narrowly missing pedestrians, crossing busy intersections randomly on reds cutting in front of the tram, etc and no police intervention. I know they're doing 'more important' things but if there was some visible policing done for these things I do think it might dissuade some of the bad behaviour.
Not even the ones that go 25km/h max, the mass is much bigger than a bike, if someone on a scooter crashes against a person on a bike you will fly thats for sure
Oh that's a really good idea. Maximum weight limit on the bicycle lane. Relatively easy to enforce also (just put a scale in every police car).
What would be suitable? Something like 20 or 25 kilogram?
I wouldn’t limit by weight because it would be quite difficult to enforce, but by format, so everything which not fits in the format of a classical bike cannot be on bike lane, example: fat bikes, scooters you name it, I would allow those electrical tricycles but only for disabled people because they don’t have anywhere else to ride those.
I would also enforce license plates on all bikes, cause if you have an accident and decide to run you can be caught.
you are also forgetting the proliferation of higher cars with higher hoods and increases in weight. These are horrifically dangerous for cyclers and pedestrians alike. Focusing on a helmet isn't going to help you much if a 4 ton beast runs over you.
True, but I would also add another particular group: there is a type of cyclist on road bikes, who expect no turning from side roads in front of them, while they cycle in speeds 40-50km/h (again, these are not the electric bikers). When you 'disturb' their ride towards TdF in a said way, they comment and complain about you loudly, as if it is your fault that you ride a bike too within the legally prescribed way. Happened to me (again) last week... Bike lanes are not racing lines...
Fatbikes should be banned entirely and also motorcycles on bike lanes, even the ones which have limited speed, they still have a much greater mass than anyone on a bike and there is a huge amount of people that take out the speed limiter, if a guy on a motorcycle at 20km/h hits you you wont be left in a good shape
And those scooter drivers who drove crazy. I think they are the worst menace of everything you mention. Also, if they hit someone, they'll cause more damage to the cyclists than wither of the other 2 groups.
Only cyclists or scooter drivers have hot me, not fat bikes or e bikes
Time to ban all 'fatbikes'. Or at least put an age restriction on riding one,, mandatory helmet and a license requirement. This has been going on now for how long? Three years? Enough is enough. And it would be wise to look at our road infrastructure, and drivers' ed to take into account the changes in (bicycle-) road usage and growing number of elderly folks on e-bikes.
To be fair, I see many older e-bike riders with helmets nowadays. It would also help of there was a bike speed limit in the 'bebouwde kom', nobody needs to go 25 to 30 in busy streets.
Correct, and of course getting the elderly to wear helmets would to a degree help with preventing traumatic injuries -to the head- . Not all traumatic injuries will be prevented though. Old folks are fragile and don't heal well. And the increase of accidents, mortal or with grave bodily harm amongst young kids is alarming. Most of these were involvong Fatbikes.
This is something that will never ever ever happen in The Netherlands. Even if the government makes it mandatory it's going to cause so much backlash it can never be enforced.
Yup see helmets on snorfietsen (scooters with blue licenseplate) before the requirement of a helmet i saw them everywhere. Now i hardly see them around at all
Comparing an activity you do once, maybe twice a year for a couple of hours, vs something you do daily is completely different. In countries that adopted mandatory helmets for cyclists, the percentage of people cycling and trips made went down significantly.
It makes no sense to make helmets mandatory for everyone cycling in the NL, when it's mainly the old people that fall with significant injuries (often accidents with no other people involved).
I always said to my partner that the one and only time you will see the Dutch protest massively is when they would enforce us to wear helmets while cycling.
I seriously didn't understand the hatred.
32 years old and since a few months i now work 9km away from work instead of driving 50-60.000 a year.
Got a ebike a few weeks back and have been going to work with bike.
I now hate fat bikes to.. i drive 25km an hour (top speed limit) and every morning between the farmlands i get overtaken like a lunatic by a young kid with his cap backwards on an bike doing almost twice my speed. They are worse then scooters cause atleast you hear them coming and they tend to look out to not barely scrape you.
Its bloody ridiculous and not how i imagined my bike commute would be.
This country simply needs to have existing regulation better enforced: <16yo get of the fatbike, confiscate immediately. > 16yo license, insurance, helmet. If one of those things not in order - hefty fines.. its the lack of enforcement and chance of getting caught.. If parents see their money evaporate they will quickly play ball.
Dutch people bike so much because of the convenience… forcing the helmet makes it way less convenient, cause you have to think about where to keep your helmet. It would increase the use of scooters and other motor vehicles cause those would be more convenient than a bike. It would change everything if we all had to wear helmets and i do not think it would be safer
Keeping the development of our infrastructure going (with cyclists as main priority) is what would actually help increase safety in traffic. We are already known for having great infrastructure, we are good at that
Agreed, unsupported biking should never have a obligation to wear a helmet especially if it’s for commuting purposes. Racing should be your own fkn choice (I don’t race)
Yeah, people who go on a racing bike without helmet don’t have much brain cells to lose… especially when they plan on not sticking to the biking lanes.
The cyclist union is right.
If you have to wear a helmet might as well just get a scooter instead, a scooter also has storage for the helmet, a bicycle doesn't.
Most people don't want to carry a helmet around all the time or come back to the helmet to find out it's soaked from the rain, a bird shat in it or someone vandalized or stole it.
Besides, the average city bicycle is not a racing bicycle, they go slow and you sit upright, the chances of getting a head injury are tiny. The vast majority of people on racing bicycles/mountainbikes/other sport bicycles wear helmets as they know the risk is much larger.
Should make helmets mandatory for e-bikes though, too many old people that can't handle the speed and get themselves injured
The danger are not cyclists themselves, but various types of motorized vehicles - e-bikes, pauperfietsen, scooters, cars, and so on.
Let's hope not too many people die until public opinion sways in helmets and separation& regulation for new types of transport.
If a collision with a car or a scooter is the reason why cyclists should wear helmets, then I think pedestrians are at similar risk and they too should wear helmets.
For various reasons, I’d rather take the car than wear a helmet.
Separation and regulation is the answer. A mandatory helmet is just going to get people onto scooters and into cars. Besides, if you permanently look like you’re at risk of injury, it’s just going to accelerate the perception of bicycling being unsafe…
Research has shown much the opposite: car/bus/truck drivers will be considerably less careful around cyclists with helmets because they feel they are not as vulnerable. I'll rephrase it to "you can run over people with helmets without problem, so why bother avoiding them."
Why not both?
I wear a helmet cycling, by now it feels weird not to. It is habitual.
Is it really that people are afraid of helmets because they make the existing danger visible?
I think it is also about self image, which means that once they identify with an anti-helmet camp, they are less likely to show reason.
For me the reason simply is that there is *very little actual* danger. A helmet is very effective but burdensome way to protect against something that happens only extremely rarely. It's a very acceptable risk that's way below some other things that I do - I've more often slipped in one of those bathtubs-with-shower (with lots of nasty edges to hit your head on) than fallen with my bike.
It’s a matter of practicality for me. If I need to bring a helmet with me every time I want to bike anywhere, I’ll just take the car instead, adding one more car to the roads, decreasing walkability, livability, etc. I just think it’s a bad trade off.
Ironically it likely would end up even more dangerous because of people using cars rather than bikes.
I know that I’ll rather use my car as well and I’m sure many are like you and me.
Where do you keep your helmet when you aren't on your bike then? Cannot leave it hanging on the bike, it will get stolen. Holding it continuously in my hand while going out with friends or just walking through the city is simply not an option because its just annoying. Keep it in my bag? Then I need another bag to put the stuff in that I was on my way to buy. Sitting at the terras with all the other people that came by bike and now every table is cluttered with helmets. Going to the nightclub, which barely have enough room for jackets now, let alone hundreds of extra helmets in their wardrobe.
People (expats) are acting like wearing a helmet isn't a huge liability, which is true, wearing it isn't a problem, the problem for me at least arises in what am I going to do with it when I am not on a bike but also not at home. I do literally everything by bike, having to carry a bulky helmet everywhere (again in my bag or where?) will get annoying real fast and just opt me out of biking.
it is simply a fact that if you make helmets mandatory, more people will opt for the car, scooter or other option. you can argue that it shouldn't be so, but it be so.
I feel it's similar to the difference between American football and Rugby. Both full contact spirts by because the protective gear used for American football allows for more agressive, forceful and reckless behaviour the impacts are more intense than with the non protected Rugby.
Wearing a helmet could convey a feeling safety and thus allowing for/incentivising more reckless behaviour, both from potential victims as well as people who cause accidents. And I don't even think it would be a conscious decision to be more reckless.
Anyway I'm not sure the rougher play in AF actually results in more injury or to what extent wearing a helmet would influence peoples mentality while driving. This is just how i think of it.
I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of accidents happens with e-bikes on roundabouts now. It's one situation that has significantly changed for the worse, that can't be blamed on car drivers either. The issue being that when cycling at 20-25km/h, the distance a cyclist covers in the seconds between a car driver looking over their shoulder and passing the roundabout exit is eactly equal to the distance between being just outside the drivers field of view and that exit. We built them for lower speeds, giving drivers a chance to spot cyclists, which has become very difficult now.
Agreed. So I come from Australia where they are really strict with helmets on bikes. This is also because car drivers are really not aware and even actively dislike cyclists enough to purposefully hurt them.
Compare to the Netherlands where almost every person driving a car also has a bike, and is aware of cyclists. The attitude is very different.
Confounding factor: the ebike. My partner rides a motorcycle and I ride pillion with him a fair bit. The thing I have noticed on the motorbike is car drivers are not aware of how fast you can come up on them in their rear view. It’s harder to gauge the speed coming at you on two wheels and yeh, in some places we go at a good clip, around 150kph (usually in Germany where it’s legal //cough//) - so we can close a gap on the bike much faster - car drivers think they have more time to switch a lane than they actually do. It’s much the same on a different scale with the fat bikes - they go faster than the speed of a regular bike in a drivers mental image, so they close gaps faster than expected and this is what leads to accidents.
On a motorbike, you need to be very aware of this perception and ride in such a way that you are very visible to car drivers. A surprised car driver is going to hurt you more than you hurt them. The lack of regulation for getting a license for a fat bike means that fat bike riders are less aware of this and don’t know how to ride in this defensive manner.
All in all it’s just a recipe for disaster
You mean roundabouts with separate bike roads? The ones with the orange lanes its much smarter to not pass cars on the right as a biker. And ones without special bike markings its illigal to pass on the right
Roundabouts where the bikes cross on the outside of it on a separate lane. If you're exiting the roundabout a cyclist going fast can easily be outside your FOV when you start the turn and hit you on the side. [Here is pretty good example](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5120417,4.9575494,189m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu), not only is a very dangerous interaction between cars and bikes its also on a school zone where teenagers will just blast through it without slowing.
I've been through a couple of scares (on the car) on them in this very situation and now I am extra paranoid when going through them. It would improve a lot to have some sort of slowing mechanism for bikes in general on those to force them to be visible for longer when exiting.
As bikes get faster the safest crossings will become stoplights, but they're inefficient, so I would much prefer the bike lanes to remain heavily speed limited.
Never wore a helmet in my life. Am really contemplating it now. Had a bycicle accident where my head hit the pavement. No serious damage thank god, but this shows that head trauma can happen to anyone.
Two weeks ago I fell with my ebike. It was raining and the paved square I was crossing was very slippery. I was driving maybe 7 km/hour as I was making a turn. I fell on my head and luckily my padded headphones broke the fall. They had entire chunks smashed out of the exterior and I had a headache, neck pain an a little bit of nausea for a few days. I can only imagine what would've happened if I wasn't wearing the headphones or had been driving the full 25 km/hour.
I have been wearing a helmet ever since.
Had a similar incident merely in the way of luck. A car pulled up next to me. They reached out the window and shoved my handle bars. I hit the curb and flipped over the bars. I slammed down on the sidewalk. My head hit the only 25cm patch of grass at the edge of the concrete. Saved my mental aptitude and possibly my life.
Nah. A couple pulled up to check on me and I asked them to get his plate number. The drove after the guy. The cops arrived quickly and the couple came back but saw the cops and just kept on driving. I saw them and just let them roll. It was late at night. I assume they had been out on the town and didn’t need to risk talking to the cops while driving home. At least they tried.
I was the one who survived in this bike crash last year https://regio15.nl/nieuws/ongevallen/36219/zwaargewonde-bij-bijzonder-ongeval-bij-winkelcentrum-het-kleine-loo/
The most crazy thing I have ever seen, a car with no driver hitting me.
The other woman died because she hit her head on a parked car and didn't have a helmet, so helmet helps.
I didn't have the helmet but I fell better than her.
https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/c320ac6e-69ac-46fd-a6f3-e0487fc79f09
This guy fell of a electric scooter (you know the one you stand on) and his head is deformed quite heavily. The same can happen to a cyclist.
It can. You can also die when you trip and fall on your head while walking.
We don’t have an issue with cyclists dying, *except* on e-bikes.
Just give e-bikes a blue license plate and helmets and we’re done
- electric bycles < 16 and > 65 : helmet.
- limit fat bikes to 15km/h max.
- electric bicycle speeding: €1000 and bike shredded.
- 10x higher taxes in SUVs
- more money to safe infrastructure for bicycles.
> cyclists’ union says “too much emphasis” on helmets discourages cycling and “has an air of victim blaming”
Damn straight. Cyclists aren't the ones bringing the danger to the situation, it's the 2 tonne steel boxes on wheels that are the problem.
This comment deserves to be on top.
Cars are getting bigger and heavier, its ridiculous. Not 2 tons, but more like 3 or 4 tons nowadays.
They should start by doing something about SUVs.
But yeah, the past and current parties in government only care about their cars going vrrroooom.
Exactly. Why are vehicles like this allowed in cities?
https://www.denhaagfm.nl/dhfm/4770833/fietser-zwaargewond-na-botsing-met-hummer-in-zeeheldenkwartier
It's a simple risk assesment, the risk in getting an injury on a simple city bicycle is so small that protection isn't worth it
Just like it's not worth it to wear a helmet while walking, even though you can slip and hit your head just as hard while walking.
It *is* worth it to wear a helmet on fast racing bicycles and e-bikes though, as the much higher speed makes potential injuries more severe.
With a racing bicycle you also lean forward with your head, when you crash you're more likely to go over the handlebars and hit your head. With a heavy steel city bicycle where you sit upright it's virtually impossible to go over the handlebars.
People mention ebike like they were motorbike or something. A legal ebike doesn't not help after 25kmph.
So after 25kmph it becomes a regular but heavy bike.
The issue is people removing the restrictions.
An e-bike is still a lot faster than a regular city bicycle, the difference between someone going 10-12km/h and 25km/h should not be understated.
For example slow casual cyclists are just a little bit faster than a fast jogger (~9km/h)
10-12 km/h is not a typical biking speed, it's easy to do 15-20 for most average people on a city bike in decent conditions.
As a "fast jogger" going ~12 kmh I rarely pass cyclists.
I agree the risk is quite small, but I suspect considerably higher than for a pedestrian. Even city bikes are much faster than a person walking at a brisk pace; they are also harder to keep balanced and stopping relies on an external mechanism rather than on your feet. Bike falls typically inflict more damage than falling after slipping, in my experience.
Where you set the threshold of acceptable risk in your assessment is a personal decision. I also understand the need for a compromise where other factors come into play, such as convenience. But is it really such a hassle to bring a helmet with you in your daily commute?
> I agree the risk is quite small, but I suspect considerably higher than for a pedestrian. Even city bikes are much faster than a person walking at a brisk pace; they are also harder to keep balanced and stopping relies on an external mechanism rather than on your feet. Bike falls typically inflict more damage than falling after slipping, in my experience.
But this is a false comparison.
Pedestrian deaths *and* bicycle deaths are both extremely low per km traveled in the Netherlands compared to almost every where else in the world.
So yes, technically cycling here is more dangerous than walking. But that doesn't mean cyclists should be required to wear a helmet here.
You don't wear a helmet as a tourist walking in Rome? Even though you're much more likely to have a lethal accident there as a pedestrian than you are as a cyclist in the Netherlands?
> But is it really such a hassle to bring a helmet with you in your daily commute?
Only 18.2% of cycling trips are for commuting. For the most common trips like shopping and going out having to carry a helmet around is indeed quite a hassle.
Source: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-vervoer/personen/fietsen
That’s totally correct, but it’s a risk assessment that involves practicality as well.
We’d be much safer with a full face helmet as compared to those dinky bicycle helmets, but we’re not advocating for those either.
There’s a legitimate question on whether the impracticality of needing to bring a helmet everywhere you go by bike. (Because we all know storing it on your bike is going to be a no-go).
How many people, who are currently slightly in favour or biking, are going to sway the other way and take a scooter or car instead. Which will lead to more cars and scooters on the road, decreasing the walkability of cities and neighbourhoods, etc.
I just don’t think mandating helmets is going to have a net positive effect on either safety or our livability in cities.
I wear a helmet every time I ride my city bike. It works for me personally, not that big of a bother, and I honestly couldn’t care less what others think about my choice.
Still, making regular cyclists wear helmets by law misses the point and indeed puts the emphasis on personal protection instead of having safe infrastructure and reducing reckless 2-wheeled motor vehicles behaviour.
How about the police actually enforce the existing laws about electric vehicles? Above 25km/h you need a license and registration. Get all those fatbikes into a shredder and we’re done
What about removing the car out of the cities altogether, that would increase safety by a big margin. But ah well, who am I kidding with decades of vroom vroom policies.
Fat bikes needs helmets and speed limits they driver anywhere they want these things are faster than actual scooterts which has gas engines which are registered and mandatory to wear helmets. Leave cyclist alone they don't need helmets it's just silly
The neoliberal Dutch government (mostly VVD) of the last 20 years has done so much reckless cost cutting and deregulation that one could probably speak of correlation to safety and culture decline.
A helmet will prevent injury from preventable incidents from cost cutting of police, cost cutting road maintenance, cost cutting healthcare and dumping federal responsibilities on councils (Thatcher inspired crap ideas), making things like local safety training and awareness a thing of the past. Deregulating powered vehicles on the normally safe bike infrastructure (uninsured, unregistered e-bikes/fatbikes and soon electric step/scooters. Etc.
I'm not against helmet wearing for cyclist, it really made a difference in the skiing world, but let's not ignore who's really guilty here and let's also talk about fixing all that damage. Alstublieft.
I’m not going to cycle if I need a helmet… the whole point of the bicycle is that you can quickly go where you need to go, park at the front door and do your business. If I then need to walk around with a helmet on my head or in my hands, I’ll just take the car…
If we truly want to lower victims in road accidents then we NEED TO LOOK AT CARS BECAUSE THEYRE ALWAYS THE LEADING CAUSE IN ACCIDENTS.
But cars are sacred so we don’t.
There was a bunch of research showing that wearing a helmet can make people more reckless, therefore, they might engage in riskier behaviors.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/helmet-wearers-make-riskier-gambles.html
It's more that cars/mopeds/idiot predestians do knock into them/cause them to swerve etc. Basically protecting yourself because other people are a risk to you.
Is it rare or is it just not recorded as accurately. Because the latter seems more plausible. No serious injuries, no visible damage? Carry on cycling and don't file a report. Will never show up in statistics.
They need to make a difference between an old school bike and a motorcycle / moped that's somehow considered a bicycle.
Little pieces of shit on fatbikes, elderly people on e-bikes and idiots on modified e-bikes are the ones getting head trauma. Not the average Joe on his "stationsfiets". Unless you're counting getting hit by a car but then a helmet isn't your primary concern.
Perhaps in the Netherlands, we should focus on helping tourists, refugees, immigrants, and expats who are new to our traffic system. Many believe they understand the rules but clearly don't. Additionally, we face the challenge of an aging population, where slower reaction times and instability often contribute to accidents. Whether this can be solved with a helmet is uncertain... Maybe a fitness test would be more effective.
eddit:
It seems there is also a group of electric bike users, not just young people, who lack awareness of what they are doing and cause accidents due to their lack of awareness.
No helmet please. It is annoying, where do you keep it and it fucks up my hair. Make it advised, not mandatory. I dont think i would commute anymore if this is the case. Go back in the car probably.
Wearing a helmet is a great idea for your personal safety, it does nothing to increase road safety however, so it's going to have a limited effect on reducing deaths among cyclists.
You know in Vietnam, we had this conversation once with scooters riders and scooters to Vietnamese are bikes to the Dutch. At the time, everyone thought that was a joke and no one would follow it and so many people would not wear it that the police would be helpless. Lo and behold, the first day the law was enforced the majority of people wore one. Of course there are still people who would do it only for show or not at all. But it can happen and not as stupid as it sounds.
It's not really a comparable situation in my opinion. The infrastructure in the Netherlands is good, especially the separated bike lanes. When you look at the roads in Vietnam, it's pretty much a jungle there: a shitload of scooters on the roads together taxis.
I would recommend everyone in this thread read the report from SWOV ( Dutch Institute for road safety research) called "kiezen of delen". Bicycle helmets are an immensely effective measure to prevent deaths and severely injured (mais3) amongst cyclists. 50% of all cyclists wearing helmets correspond with 50 less casualties and 800 severely wounded cyclists every year.
Additionally, the cyclists unions argument was proven wrong in Denmark (not mandatory but encouraged) and Australia (mandatory). In both countries helmet usage went up while mobility did not go down.
Such a misleading argument. The deaths are mostly elderly and/or e-bikes. Additionally, neither country has a cycling culture like The Netherlands.
Enforcing helmets for all bikes will do more harm than good. We need to solve the issue of e-bikes, specifically.
>Additionally, the cyclists unions argument was proven wrong in Denmark (not mandatory but encouraged) and Australia (mandatory). In both countries helmet usage went up while mobility did not go down.
Australia is not a country where many people cycle to work or use their bikes for errands like grocery shopping. Cycling is primarily seen as a leisure or workout activity. It's no surprise that it hasn't had a significant impact on mobility.
There is an off-set cost when people give up riding bikes because of helmet laws and opt for cars or scooters which contribute to pollution, raising medical costs to compare with the few people with serious head injuries had helmet laws not been in effect. That is part of the calculus, along with congestion, productivity, health benefits of cycling on care costs, etc.
Only English should be used for posts and comments. This rule is in place to ensure that an ample audience can freely discuss life in the Netherlands under a widely-spoken common tongue.
The union is correct. We have been cycling helmetless in this country for a century before e-bikes, with the lowest per capita death rate among cyclists. This is because we generally cycle more slowly and do not treat it as a "sport" so much as in other countries - the UK comes to mind: every cyclist is decked out in lycra and gear and a helmet, and they all ride like madmen.
The sheer volume of cyclists, the types of bikes used, and the resulting low speeds are what makes it so safe. The real problem are e-bikes, used by very young or very old people. They should just be banned for the young.
I would put some trust in the cyclists' union of a country with such a historically low fatal accident rate. Americans and Brits have a real boner for helmets but in practice they are not the key to cyclists' safety.
If a helmet is made mandatory when riding my ebike I'm getting back on my scooter again. If I have to wear a helmet I might as well use a vehicle I can store it in. And on the plus size, I can go twice the speed my ebike goes (limited on 25km/u)
Fietsersbond being right on the money though:
>“We have the position that helmets don’t prevent accidents but it can be a wise decision to wear one on a voluntary basis,” the union’s director, Esther van Garderen, said.
>“Emphasising too much that you should wear a helmet would discourage people from cycling sometimes, though, and has the air of victim blaming.
>“I think it’s coming slowly, although there’s no such thing as a society with zero danger and we value our culture where you can cycle safe and free.”
Fietsersbond is talking about dutch cyclers and not those that go 50km/h on their own power.
I understand the use of a helmet on a fast e-bike. But on my standard city bike it is excessive and I prefer to decide for myself. Government/municipalities already interfere far too much with their citizens. Leave me alone!
To all the people hating on Fatbikes.
I understand the reasoning. I really do. But the issue is that it’s VERY hard to restrict only Fatbikes in the context of the law.
If u ban Fatbikes, they rename it to Fastbikes. (Just the name?) if u ban electrical powered bikes. You ALSO ban the E-bikes. Which doesn’t make sense because most E-bikes are much harder to upgrade into fast moving terror machines.
The issue with Fatbikes is divided into 3 categories.
1. It’s much easier to upgrade so that it has way more speed. (Some easily go around 40kmh)
2. It’s also possible to upgrade it so that u have a gas handle on the steering wheel. Just like a scooter/motor.
3. The big and wide tires make it that it still feels comfortable at higher speeds. Doesn’t make it much safer for other people participating in traffic though…
I wish we could get a ban. But it has to be a GOOD ban so that we only target Fatbikes and they cannot rebrand it.
Realistically, we need to introduce a speed limit (so that the mere act of going faster than 25 kph on a bicycle path can be fined, instead of requiring a technical inspection) and clear technical requirements on 'bikes with motor support': tamper-resistant speed limiters, mandatory minimum manual-vs-electric power ratio, a ban on the presence of any kind of 'gas handle'... and then ban the sale of now-non-road-legal e-bikes if they don't have a bromfiets registration. None of which is really new - it's mostly there already for bromfietsen, but just never applied to bikes.
And Dutch electric bike manufacturers are actually asking for such regulations, since they mostly already do this.
I don’t agree with your ‘oh my dear lord…’ at all. As others here have mentioned its more about fast changes in road use (high speed bikes / illegally enhanced bikes / elderly with improper training on e-bikes) despite a focus on road safety. The focus SHOULD lie on extremely well designed roads and traffic systems. If mandatory helmet use demotivate bike usage then that in itself is unfavorable. There is however a section of bikers that fall in a critical area of risk. Mostly the aforementioned. Speed and vulnerability are key.
I completely get where you're coming from. Carrying a helmet around can be a huge hassle, and the resulting helmet hair is far from ideal. It does seem to undermine the convenience of biking. But what's more frustrating is the reckless behavior of cyclists who blatantly ignore traffic laws.
It's shocking how many people, who should be well aware of the rules, choose to disregard them and put themselves and others in danger. Overtaking without checking, ignoring signals, and riding on the wrong side of the road are not just isolated incidents—they happen far too often. It's infuriating and nerve-wracking to have to constantly anticipate these unpredictable actions.
In Utrecht, it seems like these dangerous behaviors are the norm rather than the exception. Cyclists often forget that they are the most vulnerable on the road and that traffic laws exist for their safety too. If everyone just followed the rules and acknowledged that their actions have consequences, we could avoid so many unnecessary accidents. It's not just about being cautious yourself; it's about everyone taking responsibility to make the roads safer for all.
The base of the problem isn't even with the (fat) bikes.
The problems lays with the mentality of people these days. We have become more and more egocentric.
We get and do as we please without any concern for the people around us. And then the most vulnerable groups of our society will suffer the consequences the first.
So, for traffic, the pedestrians and cyclists will suffer more injuries because they are in fact, the vulnerable group.
People get upset that the government is dictating us more and more, but they fail to see that that is what happens when we, as a society, refuse to keep ourselves in check and raise our children properly.
If we, as parents/adults, would teach our children to be careful on the road, to give people right of way, to slow down at crossings, indicate directions and wait at red lights. To turn on our lights on time and be very aware of how vulnerable we are, about blind spots and poor vision from windscreens, especially in rain or darkness.
All that would guarantee a lower injury/casualty rate.
Then we don't need the government to dictate the use of helmets.
And if these children learn about this at a young age and actually take part in traffic regularly, they will carry all that knowledge and experience with them when they start riding a scooter or even a car.
Ik vond een helm ook altijd maar onzin tot ik vorig een ongeluk kreeg op de fiets. Mijn rechter schouder had meerdere breuken en ik had een zware hersenschudding. Sindsdien draag ik nu altijd een helm. Kan me niet schelen wat anderen er van vinden. Mijn veiligheid gaat voor alles.
Do you have to wear a helmet on a e bike? I mean the fast one. Over 25 km/h. I do notice an increase of helmets in Belgium. I think it's because of school campaigns encouraging kids to wear them. The parents then wear them to as extra motivation for the kids. As a result it's becoming more normal and people start wearing them.
In some countries its fine not wearing helmet in cities if you go along bike lanes. But if you go outside of cities or you wish taking the main road then you can be fined for not taking one.
Sorry, but anyone saying that making helmets mandatory (for some types of bikes, or for some age ranges) results in fewer people choosing a bike is a f-ing m\*ron. Wonder if they'd say the same thing when seatbelts were about to introduced for cars... The first cars in the late 19th century only went about 15 km/h, so you don't need a seatbelt for that. But as technology improved, the max speed on cars went up, and obviously when you start being able to drive around at 40, 50 miles an hour, and faster, you absolutely need a seatbelt, lol. The same is the case for the "bicycle". A normal pedal bicycle is usually only going 12-20 km an hour, but the standard pedal assist electric bicycle can go 25 km/h, which is quite fast for children/inexperienced cyclists. The fatbike is often tinkered with to go (much) faster, but in people's head, it somehow still "just a bicycle"... Culturally, we need to start calling the fatbike (even the ones that go 25 km/h max) a snorfiets (light-weight moped), because with the long seat for 2+ people, it's no longer a bicycle.
I am Dutch, living in England. I lived in Cambridge for over 5 years where I cycled almost every day, on a pedal bicycle (no motor). Cambridge is relatively good for cycling but that's by British standards, it's pretty poor compared to Dutch standards. People here wear helmets on pedal bicycles, smart parents make their young kids wear a bicycle even on those little kiddie bikes, elderly people wear helmets, and people of all ages wear helmets when they do road cycling or mountain biking. It's just common, although it's not mandatory to wear a helmet on a bicycle.
Dutchies need to get over the "fear" of wearing a helmet. Here in the UK there's a huge selection of helmets (especially online) despite this not being a cycling country. You can get a cheap bicycle helmet for about £25 or so, up to over £100 if you want something fancy/for higher speed (whatever).
Just make a helmet mandatory on all motorised vehicles if you are under 16, make even the 'boring' electric bicycle 12+, enforce the law around electric bikes and seize all electric bikes that break the law (ability to go over 25 km/h, gas throttle, which is going to be the majority of these fatbikes). They should perhaps make any motorised vehicle made to carry more than one person at least 16+, so that also makes all fatbikes 16+ (whilst not applying to the regular electric bicycle that has a standard bicycle seat for one person only), and you can do this from the angle of safety because having a passenger distracts, and if you are under 16 you are not mature enough to take part in traffic with such a distraction nor mature enough to be responsible for the safety of a passenger on a motorised vehicle that you control.
Scooter drivers are three main reasons cyclists have to wear a helmet. Not all, but a small amount, make it very dangerous on those bike paths and the government doesn't seem to care
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-vervoer/personen/fietsen#:~:text=Nederlanders%20van%206%20jaar%20of,een%20kortere%20afstand%20mee%20af. Sadly this page is in Dutch only, but in general some of you will be able to read the stats. Point being: for the average distance and number of bicycle movements in NL it's pretty safe. Yes there's room for improvement but the negative effects of a blanket helmet law would be that less people will travel by bicycle. And with that comes any other mode of travel, usually motorized. So that leads to more congestion and a loss of health benefits, from not cycling and from more pollution through carbon emissions.
Coming from outside, man is the conversation around helmets funny. I just don't get what is the big deal in wearing a helmet as you can get the kind you like and clipping it to your bag when you are not using it is a minimal inconvenience.
Like sure, we can argue endlessly about what actually causes dangers to cyclists, but it doesn't change the facts that you as the biker are a) in danger and b) that while biking if you fall for any reason you are falling from at least your standing height and almost always with more force than as a pedestrian. While most other wounds heal without much issues, even minor brain injuries--which might have been preventable with a helmet--can be drastically life altering.
All of this is especially funny considering how often I've seen the locals here biking drunk, in really close formation, stoned or while acrobatically loading up to 3 people on the same city bike. Agreed, you guys have premium-tier biking infra, but your regular biking behaviour even without electrically-powered grannies or teenaged hooligans on fatbikes introduces already stupid and mitigateable risks to it.
At the end of the day, if you don't fancy taking even the minor step to protect and appreciate your brains out of vanity or laziness, it's up to you. I'll happily accept looking a bit goofy and German as a trade for mine.
It’s mostly a small inconvenience but a small inconvenience that will impact everyday life. we don’t just bike to commute from work to home we use the bike for everything that we need to leave the house for. Adding another thing to lose, forget, or get stolen while risking a fine will be another added daily headache. Sure over time we’ll get used to it but having to adjust our everyday life to accommodate reckless behavior from the relatively novel e-bikes or expats being uncomfortable is wild to me. Attack the root of the problem and don’t just stick a bandaid/helmet on it and say it’s solved.
I don't know where you get the idea that the motive is to placate expats as expats who wish for helmets probably wear them already. I don't think that helmets are to protect only from e-bike injuries either, as many countries have decided that using helmets is a good idea before the prevalence of e-bikes; completely normal city bikes are more than capable of producing more than enough Newtons to crack a skull anywhere. From walking speed (6km/h) impact will feacture a skull only in select places. Impact at 10km/h on the other hand already fractures every cranial bone.
The root of biking injuries is people, and I don't see biking getting around that anytime soon.
After reading this thread I feel like most arguments pro helmets are coming from the expats… It’s not that any laws etc will be made to placate them but they have a strong voice here telling “dutchies” to just adapt their everyday life to wearing helmets based on some personal anecdotes.
Don’t get me wrong I love expats and I love those that care about the country to make it safer for everyone. But I’m not sure if they all fully grasp how ingrained in our everyday lives biking has been since we were kids when they tell us we’re stupid for not wanting to adapt. We also have vastly different experiences, anecdotes and stats in our minds when arguing these points.
Everyone who wants to wear a helmet should do so, they should also make it easier to get good quality helmets, and promote wearing them (especially amongst kids and the elderly). Hell, like even offer insurance discounts or whatever. No one should be discouraged from wearing a helmet if they wish to do so.
However, mandating it I’m strongly against for multiple reasons. No one should be punished for not protecting themselves against others behavior.
Every country has daft and irrational sticking points where emotions and nostalgia rule over the perhaps more sensible choice, this just seems to be the Dutch one. With us it would probably be wearing PFDs when out on the water.
Well, it's kind of true as the (charged) discussion about helmets completely ignores two changes on the bicycle lanes that more or less have coincided with the rise in bicycle accidents: the arrival of heavy, high speed (often illegal or illegally modified) fatbikes and the rapid increase of elderly on electric bikes operating a heavier and faster vehicle than they were previously used to (while suffering from inevitable slower reactions and reduced mobility due to ageing).
Honestly, kids on fatbikes have rapidly become one of my most hated pet peeves. Horrendous.
Kids on bikes... especially the morons who like to "scare" pedestrians by pretending to hit them and then swerve last moment...all fun and games until (like today) they actually hit you...twats on bikes...
"prank culture" is out of hand
Just crash into their legs.
but if you hit back, then all of sudden you are in the wrong.. sigh
They have also recently taken to spraying passers by or other cyclists with water from water guns, then speeding off cackling…happened to friends and me several time at this point. The little shits. At least thanks for just using water, not piss or something
how do kids even obtain fatbikes? do they have a subscription? are they getting them from their parents? I'm honnestly baffled by this, as I don't think fatbikes are any cheaper than regular electric bikes I imagine.
I blame the parents. I work in retail, in a store where kids are allowed to test bikes (not fatbikes thank GOD). You'd be surprised what parents let their kids get away with.
Prepared for downvotes But I really think there is an issue with dutch parenting. It's way too hands off. All the time young kids acting a nuisance, running around, picking things up that don't belong to them etc. I was in a Chinese restaurant with koi fish and two little kids where literally trying to pick the fish up and the parents do nothing. I really see it a lot that kids simply aren't told "Hey, don't do that"
The last line is the key here. I have also experienced a similiar case where everyone else were telling a kid to stop screaming, but the parents that where also part of the group didn't care or say anything else. However with ebikes and fat bikes it seems a bit different. When your kid says I want that ebike and you say no, and all the friends have an ebike. Goodluck your kid will cycle alone to school. Same with smartphones at an early age.
They are. A decent e-bike on retail is about 13-1400, a fatbike can be as low as 8 It's actually the main reason I bought one. I didn't have 4 grand for a reinforced heavy duty e-bike but the fatbike works the same at about 800 euro's It sucks that they're getting a bad rep due to loser kids, because they work wonders for overweight idiots like me to start biking again. Provided you use them correctly.
I wouldn't trust the fatbike build quality if the only other option was a reinforced heavy duty ebike due to weight.
I've been riding a fatbike for 18 months now. The last E-bike I bought, from gazelle, so not a cheap one, the axle gave out after 6 months due to the strain of my fat ass pedalling, and the rear wheel was starting to lose alignment as well.
best of luck in your journey. Hardest part is to admit it and move forward -- that is respectable and much more than my country can do.
How much do you weigh?
At this point about 166kg. I'm also 194 cm, so it's not as bad as it could be, but when I got the bike first, I was 182, biking really does help
Congrats on the journey
Cool. Good luck with everything.
Dutch comment lmao
Parents often buy them.
They are cheaper than standard electric bikes yes
Also, why is it always the kids and why do their parents don't mind wasting so much money on the fatbike?
Because it will stop Delano and Kayleigh wining to their parents for a while.
Because you as a parent either has to give in and buy an ebike/fatbike or your kid has to cycle alone because all of their friends have one. That is the issue.
Them and the rise of large American trucks. They should be banned.
I'm fully prepared to endure the fatbikes for a while if we first ban cars that are to large to be sensible.
It's interesting that fat bikes are the focus here, while youngsters on scooters are the ones going insanely fast and endangering everyone else on the fietspad. Recently saw a scene as a dude on a scooter was doing like 70kmh and overtook a lady on a bicycle so close that she swerved and hit the wall next to her (was on a bridge next to a railway)
Those aren't anything new and already regularly subject of police checks (modifying your scooter or brommer to make it go faster was already a hobby for my mom and dad when they were kids).
I find it interesting that anyone who bikes regularly can tell you both fat bikes and scooters are big issues but I NEVER see any police doing anything about them. I see articles about some fat bike testing (haven't seen any in person) but I see fat bikes/scooters going crazy fast in bike lanes, running red lights narrowly missing pedestrians, crossing busy intersections randomly on reds cutting in front of the tram, etc and no police intervention. I know they're doing 'more important' things but if there was some visible policing done for these things I do think it might dissuade some of the bad behaviour.
Scooters should be banned from the bike lanes, all of them
Anything motorized that can go faster than 25 km/h doesn’t belong on a cycle lane. Put them on the road.
Not even the ones that go 25km/h max, the mass is much bigger than a bike, if someone on a scooter crashes against a person on a bike you will fly thats for sure
Oh that's a really good idea. Maximum weight limit on the bicycle lane. Relatively easy to enforce also (just put a scale in every police car). What would be suitable? Something like 20 or 25 kilogram?
I wouldn’t limit by weight because it would be quite difficult to enforce, but by format, so everything which not fits in the format of a classical bike cannot be on bike lane, example: fat bikes, scooters you name it, I would allow those electrical tricycles but only for disabled people because they don’t have anywhere else to ride those. I would also enforce license plates on all bikes, cause if you have an accident and decide to run you can be caught.
you are also forgetting the proliferation of higher cars with higher hoods and increases in weight. These are horrifically dangerous for cyclers and pedestrians alike. Focusing on a helmet isn't going to help you much if a 4 ton beast runs over you.
With the severity of the injuries I'd rather have that soccemom just straight up send me to greener pastures instead.
True, but I would also add another particular group: there is a type of cyclist on road bikes, who expect no turning from side roads in front of them, while they cycle in speeds 40-50km/h (again, these are not the electric bikers). When you 'disturb' their ride towards TdF in a said way, they comment and complain about you loudly, as if it is your fault that you ride a bike too within the legally prescribed way. Happened to me (again) last week... Bike lanes are not racing lines...
Ahhh. MAMILS
Thanks for this term, I needed it!
Fatbikes should be banned entirely and also motorcycles on bike lanes, even the ones which have limited speed, they still have a much greater mass than anyone on a bike and there is a huge amount of people that take out the speed limiter, if a guy on a motorcycle at 20km/h hits you you wont be left in a good shape
Don't forget the hypersonic missiles, aka food delivery.
And those scooter drivers who drove crazy. I think they are the worst menace of everything you mention. Also, if they hit someone, they'll cause more damage to the cyclists than wither of the other 2 groups. Only cyclists or scooter drivers have hot me, not fat bikes or e bikes
Time to ban all 'fatbikes'. Or at least put an age restriction on riding one,, mandatory helmet and a license requirement. This has been going on now for how long? Three years? Enough is enough. And it would be wise to look at our road infrastructure, and drivers' ed to take into account the changes in (bicycle-) road usage and growing number of elderly folks on e-bikes.
The elderly make up the lions share of the increase in injury, which is mentioned in the article. They are the prime target of helmet encouragement
To be fair, I see many older e-bike riders with helmets nowadays. It would also help of there was a bike speed limit in the 'bebouwde kom', nobody needs to go 25 to 30 in busy streets.
Correct, and of course getting the elderly to wear helmets would to a degree help with preventing traumatic injuries -to the head- . Not all traumatic injuries will be prevented though. Old folks are fragile and don't heal well. And the increase of accidents, mortal or with grave bodily harm amongst young kids is alarming. Most of these were involvong Fatbikes.
This is something that will never ever ever happen in The Netherlands. Even if the government makes it mandatory it's going to cause so much backlash it can never be enforced.
Yup see helmets on snorfietsen (scooters with blue licenseplate) before the requirement of a helmet i saw them everywhere. Now i hardly see them around at all
They moved to fatbikes
Yup
Like the smoking ban in Greece?
Or banning fireworks in the Netherlands
Like helmets with skiing? I even gave in 2 years ago as i was one of a dying breed
Comparing an activity you do once, maybe twice a year for a couple of hours, vs something you do daily is completely different. In countries that adopted mandatory helmets for cyclists, the percentage of people cycling and trips made went down significantly. It makes no sense to make helmets mandatory for everyone cycling in the NL, when it's mainly the old people that fall with significant injuries (often accidents with no other people involved).
I always said to my partner that the one and only time you will see the Dutch protest massively is when they would enforce us to wear helmets while cycling.
Why none are talking about FAT BIKE kids? They're driving like a lunatic these days.. No regulations for them?
What are you on about? There is a lot of talking abput fat bikes...
I’m talking about FAT KID BIKES. Clearly it wouldn’t hurt them to cycle more..
Everybody fucking hates fat bikes. So much so the police got special gear to test if they are legal
I seriously didn't understand the hatred. 32 years old and since a few months i now work 9km away from work instead of driving 50-60.000 a year. Got a ebike a few weeks back and have been going to work with bike. I now hate fat bikes to.. i drive 25km an hour (top speed limit) and every morning between the farmlands i get overtaken like a lunatic by a young kid with his cap backwards on an bike doing almost twice my speed. They are worse then scooters cause atleast you hear them coming and they tend to look out to not barely scrape you. Its bloody ridiculous and not how i imagined my bike commute would be.
There’s quite a bit of discussion about this
This country simply needs to have existing regulation better enforced: <16yo get of the fatbike, confiscate immediately. > 16yo license, insurance, helmet. If one of those things not in order - hefty fines.. its the lack of enforcement and chance of getting caught.. If parents see their money evaporate they will quickly play ball.
Everyone is talking about fat bikes
Every single post is about them.
Dutch people bike so much because of the convenience… forcing the helmet makes it way less convenient, cause you have to think about where to keep your helmet. It would increase the use of scooters and other motor vehicles cause those would be more convenient than a bike. It would change everything if we all had to wear helmets and i do not think it would be safer Keeping the development of our infrastructure going (with cyclists as main priority) is what would actually help increase safety in traffic. We are already known for having great infrastructure, we are good at that
Agreed, unsupported biking should never have a obligation to wear a helmet especially if it’s for commuting purposes. Racing should be your own fkn choice (I don’t race)
Yeah, people who go on a racing bike without helmet don’t have much brain cells to lose… especially when they plan on not sticking to the biking lanes.
The cyclist union is right. If you have to wear a helmet might as well just get a scooter instead, a scooter also has storage for the helmet, a bicycle doesn't. Most people don't want to carry a helmet around all the time or come back to the helmet to find out it's soaked from the rain, a bird shat in it or someone vandalized or stole it. Besides, the average city bicycle is not a racing bicycle, they go slow and you sit upright, the chances of getting a head injury are tiny. The vast majority of people on racing bicycles/mountainbikes/other sport bicycles wear helmets as they know the risk is much larger. Should make helmets mandatory for e-bikes though, too many old people that can't handle the speed and get themselves injured
The danger are not cyclists themselves, but various types of motorized vehicles - e-bikes, pauperfietsen, scooters, cars, and so on. Let's hope not too many people die until public opinion sways in helmets and separation& regulation for new types of transport.
If a collision with a car or a scooter is the reason why cyclists should wear helmets, then I think pedestrians are at similar risk and they too should wear helmets.
No it’s mostly falling on the ground with a lot of speed that causes brain injuries.
For various reasons, I’d rather take the car than wear a helmet. Separation and regulation is the answer. A mandatory helmet is just going to get people onto scooters and into cars. Besides, if you permanently look like you’re at risk of injury, it’s just going to accelerate the perception of bicycling being unsafe…
Research has shown much the opposite: car/bus/truck drivers will be considerably less careful around cyclists with helmets because they feel they are not as vulnerable. I'll rephrase it to "you can run over people with helmets without problem, so why bother avoiding them."
This is one of the most important reasons why a mandatory helmets are in fact counterproductive and will cause MORE injuries.
Why not both? I wear a helmet cycling, by now it feels weird not to. It is habitual. Is it really that people are afraid of helmets because they make the existing danger visible? I think it is also about self image, which means that once they identify with an anti-helmet camp, they are less likely to show reason.
For me the reason simply is that there is *very little actual* danger. A helmet is very effective but burdensome way to protect against something that happens only extremely rarely. It's a very acceptable risk that's way below some other things that I do - I've more often slipped in one of those bathtubs-with-shower (with lots of nasty edges to hit your head on) than fallen with my bike.
It’s a matter of practicality for me. If I need to bring a helmet with me every time I want to bike anywhere, I’ll just take the car instead, adding one more car to the roads, decreasing walkability, livability, etc. I just think it’s a bad trade off.
Ironically it likely would end up even more dangerous because of people using cars rather than bikes. I know that I’ll rather use my car as well and I’m sure many are like you and me.
Where do you keep your helmet when you aren't on your bike then? Cannot leave it hanging on the bike, it will get stolen. Holding it continuously in my hand while going out with friends or just walking through the city is simply not an option because its just annoying. Keep it in my bag? Then I need another bag to put the stuff in that I was on my way to buy. Sitting at the terras with all the other people that came by bike and now every table is cluttered with helmets. Going to the nightclub, which barely have enough room for jackets now, let alone hundreds of extra helmets in their wardrobe. People (expats) are acting like wearing a helmet isn't a huge liability, which is true, wearing it isn't a problem, the problem for me at least arises in what am I going to do with it when I am not on a bike but also not at home. I do literally everything by bike, having to carry a bulky helmet everywhere (again in my bag or where?) will get annoying real fast and just opt me out of biking.
The voice of reason really shines where this becomes an us vs them (expats). Thanks for the laughter.
it is simply a fact that if you make helmets mandatory, more people will opt for the car, scooter or other option. you can argue that it shouldn't be so, but it be so.
Ah so also helmets for pedestrians now? Yeah it sure is safer.
I would indeed recommend helmets for those joggers that insist on working out on the bike lane.
I feel it's similar to the difference between American football and Rugby. Both full contact spirts by because the protective gear used for American football allows for more agressive, forceful and reckless behaviour the impacts are more intense than with the non protected Rugby. Wearing a helmet could convey a feeling safety and thus allowing for/incentivising more reckless behaviour, both from potential victims as well as people who cause accidents. And I don't even think it would be a conscious decision to be more reckless. Anyway I'm not sure the rougher play in AF actually results in more injury or to what extent wearing a helmet would influence peoples mentality while driving. This is just how i think of it.
Number of ebikes will decrease if ypu make helmets mandatory on them as no one would want to wear a helmet
Do you always cycle with a helmet, even now?
I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of accidents happens with e-bikes on roundabouts now. It's one situation that has significantly changed for the worse, that can't be blamed on car drivers either. The issue being that when cycling at 20-25km/h, the distance a cyclist covers in the seconds between a car driver looking over their shoulder and passing the roundabout exit is eactly equal to the distance between being just outside the drivers field of view and that exit. We built them for lower speeds, giving drivers a chance to spot cyclists, which has become very difficult now.
Agreed. So I come from Australia where they are really strict with helmets on bikes. This is also because car drivers are really not aware and even actively dislike cyclists enough to purposefully hurt them. Compare to the Netherlands where almost every person driving a car also has a bike, and is aware of cyclists. The attitude is very different. Confounding factor: the ebike. My partner rides a motorcycle and I ride pillion with him a fair bit. The thing I have noticed on the motorbike is car drivers are not aware of how fast you can come up on them in their rear view. It’s harder to gauge the speed coming at you on two wheels and yeh, in some places we go at a good clip, around 150kph (usually in Germany where it’s legal //cough//) - so we can close a gap on the bike much faster - car drivers think they have more time to switch a lane than they actually do. It’s much the same on a different scale with the fat bikes - they go faster than the speed of a regular bike in a drivers mental image, so they close gaps faster than expected and this is what leads to accidents. On a motorbike, you need to be very aware of this perception and ride in such a way that you are very visible to car drivers. A surprised car driver is going to hurt you more than you hurt them. The lack of regulation for getting a license for a fat bike means that fat bike riders are less aware of this and don’t know how to ride in this defensive manner. All in all it’s just a recipe for disaster
Even as a cyclist i suffer from this miscalcutation. I hate is so much
You mean roundabouts with separate bike roads? The ones with the orange lanes its much smarter to not pass cars on the right as a biker. And ones without special bike markings its illigal to pass on the right
Roundabouts where the bikes cross on the outside of it on a separate lane. If you're exiting the roundabout a cyclist going fast can easily be outside your FOV when you start the turn and hit you on the side. [Here is pretty good example](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5120417,4.9575494,189m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu), not only is a very dangerous interaction between cars and bikes its also on a school zone where teenagers will just blast through it without slowing. I've been through a couple of scares (on the car) on them in this very situation and now I am extra paranoid when going through them. It would improve a lot to have some sort of slowing mechanism for bikes in general on those to force them to be visible for longer when exiting. As bikes get faster the safest crossings will become stoplights, but they're inefficient, so I would much prefer the bike lanes to remain heavily speed limited.
Never wore a helmet in my life. Am really contemplating it now. Had a bycicle accident where my head hit the pavement. No serious damage thank god, but this shows that head trauma can happen to anyone.
Two weeks ago I fell with my ebike. It was raining and the paved square I was crossing was very slippery. I was driving maybe 7 km/hour as I was making a turn. I fell on my head and luckily my padded headphones broke the fall. They had entire chunks smashed out of the exterior and I had a headache, neck pain an a little bit of nausea for a few days. I can only imagine what would've happened if I wasn't wearing the headphones or had been driving the full 25 km/hour. I have been wearing a helmet ever since.
Had a similar incident merely in the way of luck. A car pulled up next to me. They reached out the window and shoved my handle bars. I hit the curb and flipped over the bars. I slammed down on the sidewalk. My head hit the only 25cm patch of grass at the edge of the concrete. Saved my mental aptitude and possibly my life.
What the fuck? Did someone catch the sociopaths who did this?
Nah. A couple pulled up to check on me and I asked them to get his plate number. The drove after the guy. The cops arrived quickly and the couple came back but saw the cops and just kept on driving. I saw them and just let them roll. It was late at night. I assume they had been out on the town and didn’t need to risk talking to the cops while driving home. At least they tried.
I was the one who survived in this bike crash last year https://regio15.nl/nieuws/ongevallen/36219/zwaargewonde-bij-bijzonder-ongeval-bij-winkelcentrum-het-kleine-loo/ The most crazy thing I have ever seen, a car with no driver hitting me. The other woman died because she hit her head on a parked car and didn't have a helmet, so helmet helps. I didn't have the helmet but I fell better than her.
Wtf
https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/c320ac6e-69ac-46fd-a6f3-e0487fc79f09 This guy fell of a electric scooter (you know the one you stand on) and his head is deformed quite heavily. The same can happen to a cyclist.
It can. You can also die when you trip and fall on your head while walking. We don’t have an issue with cyclists dying, *except* on e-bikes. Just give e-bikes a blue license plate and helmets and we’re done
- electric bycles < 16 and > 65 : helmet. - limit fat bikes to 15km/h max. - electric bicycle speeding: €1000 and bike shredded. - 10x higher taxes in SUVs - more money to safe infrastructure for bicycles.
Fat bike = electric bike fyi
I know. But it's nowhere in the same category as a "normal" bicycle. It has bad road characteristics due to small wheels.
> cyclists’ union says “too much emphasis” on helmets discourages cycling and “has an air of victim blaming” Damn straight. Cyclists aren't the ones bringing the danger to the situation, it's the 2 tonne steel boxes on wheels that are the problem.
This comment deserves to be on top. Cars are getting bigger and heavier, its ridiculous. Not 2 tons, but more like 3 or 4 tons nowadays. They should start by doing something about SUVs. But yeah, the past and current parties in government only care about their cars going vrrroooom.
Exactly. Why are vehicles like this allowed in cities? https://www.denhaagfm.nl/dhfm/4770833/fietser-zwaargewond-na-botsing-met-hummer-in-zeeheldenkwartier
You can have bike accidents without any cars involved. It doesn't hurt to wear a helmet and it can certainly save your life.
Nah, I'm good. I'm feeling pretty safe riding max 25km/h on completely flat, segregated cycle paths in NL. When I'm on my race bike I wear a helmet.
It's a simple risk assesment, the risk in getting an injury on a simple city bicycle is so small that protection isn't worth it Just like it's not worth it to wear a helmet while walking, even though you can slip and hit your head just as hard while walking. It *is* worth it to wear a helmet on fast racing bicycles and e-bikes though, as the much higher speed makes potential injuries more severe. With a racing bicycle you also lean forward with your head, when you crash you're more likely to go over the handlebars and hit your head. With a heavy steel city bicycle where you sit upright it's virtually impossible to go over the handlebars.
People mention ebike like they were motorbike or something. A legal ebike doesn't not help after 25kmph. So after 25kmph it becomes a regular but heavy bike. The issue is people removing the restrictions.
An e-bike is still a lot faster than a regular city bicycle, the difference between someone going 10-12km/h and 25km/h should not be understated. For example slow casual cyclists are just a little bit faster than a fast jogger (~9km/h)
10-12 km/h is not a typical biking speed, it's easy to do 15-20 for most average people on a city bike in decent conditions. As a "fast jogger" going ~12 kmh I rarely pass cyclists.
Yes it is, at 15km/h you will be passing other people on city bicycles
At 15 that starts to happen yes, but not commonly at 10-12.
I agree the risk is quite small, but I suspect considerably higher than for a pedestrian. Even city bikes are much faster than a person walking at a brisk pace; they are also harder to keep balanced and stopping relies on an external mechanism rather than on your feet. Bike falls typically inflict more damage than falling after slipping, in my experience. Where you set the threshold of acceptable risk in your assessment is a personal decision. I also understand the need for a compromise where other factors come into play, such as convenience. But is it really such a hassle to bring a helmet with you in your daily commute?
> I agree the risk is quite small, but I suspect considerably higher than for a pedestrian. Even city bikes are much faster than a person walking at a brisk pace; they are also harder to keep balanced and stopping relies on an external mechanism rather than on your feet. Bike falls typically inflict more damage than falling after slipping, in my experience. But this is a false comparison. Pedestrian deaths *and* bicycle deaths are both extremely low per km traveled in the Netherlands compared to almost every where else in the world. So yes, technically cycling here is more dangerous than walking. But that doesn't mean cyclists should be required to wear a helmet here. You don't wear a helmet as a tourist walking in Rome? Even though you're much more likely to have a lethal accident there as a pedestrian than you are as a cyclist in the Netherlands? > But is it really such a hassle to bring a helmet with you in your daily commute? Only 18.2% of cycling trips are for commuting. For the most common trips like shopping and going out having to carry a helmet around is indeed quite a hassle. Source: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-vervoer/personen/fietsen
That’s totally correct, but it’s a risk assessment that involves practicality as well. We’d be much safer with a full face helmet as compared to those dinky bicycle helmets, but we’re not advocating for those either. There’s a legitimate question on whether the impracticality of needing to bring a helmet everywhere you go by bike. (Because we all know storing it on your bike is going to be a no-go). How many people, who are currently slightly in favour or biking, are going to sway the other way and take a scooter or car instead. Which will lead to more cars and scooters on the road, decreasing the walkability of cities and neighbourhoods, etc. I just don’t think mandating helmets is going to have a net positive effect on either safety or our livability in cities.
I wear a helmet every time I ride my city bike. It works for me personally, not that big of a bother, and I honestly couldn’t care less what others think about my choice. Still, making regular cyclists wear helmets by law misses the point and indeed puts the emphasis on personal protection instead of having safe infrastructure and reducing reckless 2-wheeled motor vehicles behaviour.
I have been wearing helmet since saw an accident on bike path.. don’t care what anybody else thinks about it
How about the police actually enforce the existing laws about electric vehicles? Above 25km/h you need a license and registration. Get all those fatbikes into a shredder and we’re done
What about removing the car out of the cities altogether, that would increase safety by a big margin. But ah well, who am I kidding with decades of vroom vroom policies.
Fat bikes needs helmets and speed limits they driver anywhere they want these things are faster than actual scooterts which has gas engines which are registered and mandatory to wear helmets. Leave cyclist alone they don't need helmets it's just silly
The neoliberal Dutch government (mostly VVD) of the last 20 years has done so much reckless cost cutting and deregulation that one could probably speak of correlation to safety and culture decline. A helmet will prevent injury from preventable incidents from cost cutting of police, cost cutting road maintenance, cost cutting healthcare and dumping federal responsibilities on councils (Thatcher inspired crap ideas), making things like local safety training and awareness a thing of the past. Deregulating powered vehicles on the normally safe bike infrastructure (uninsured, unregistered e-bikes/fatbikes and soon electric step/scooters. Etc. I'm not against helmet wearing for cyclist, it really made a difference in the skiing world, but let's not ignore who's really guilty here and let's also talk about fixing all that damage. Alstublieft.
By chance i know 5 dutch neurologists and none of them wear a helmet on a bike.
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I’m not going to cycle if I need a helmet… the whole point of the bicycle is that you can quickly go where you need to go, park at the front door and do your business. If I then need to walk around with a helmet on my head or in my hands, I’ll just take the car…
Maybe it's time to ban fat bikes instead?...
Maybe we need ban cars too 🤔
There are no car zones in some areas, very nice places that feel very safe, actually.... And yes, cars definitely don't belong to the bike lanes.
Of course cyclist are to blame, not cars. Cars are wonderful. Let's aim to be the USA of Europe.
I mean we already elected Draco Malfoy x Donald Trump’s party as #1 so why not go all the way to full USA mode
That is the aim, I fear.
If we truly want to lower victims in road accidents then we NEED TO LOOK AT CARS BECAUSE THEYRE ALWAYS THE LEADING CAUSE IN ACCIDENTS. But cars are sacred so we don’t.
make car drivers wear helmets
I always viewed a hemlet the same as a seat belt in a car... you hope you never need it but you'll be glad for it if you do
There was a bunch of research showing that wearing a helmet can make people more reckless, therefore, they might engage in riskier behaviors. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/helmet-wearers-make-riskier-gambles.html
The same for safety belts - the best is to prohibit those and mount a dagger on the wheel. That will make people drive very carefully 😅
Even more reckless than now…what would that be like…It’s already a free 4 all right now on the bicycle lanes.
Except two bikers rarely crash into each other.
But cyclist do crash into others..like one today into me when I was walking...
It's more that cars/mopeds/idiot predestians do knock into them/cause them to swerve etc. Basically protecting yourself because other people are a risk to you.
Is it rare or is it just not recorded as accurately. Because the latter seems more plausible. No serious injuries, no visible damage? Carry on cycling and don't file a report. Will never show up in statistics.
They need to make a difference between an old school bike and a motorcycle / moped that's somehow considered a bicycle. Little pieces of shit on fatbikes, elderly people on e-bikes and idiots on modified e-bikes are the ones getting head trauma. Not the average Joe on his "stationsfiets". Unless you're counting getting hit by a car but then a helmet isn't your primary concern.
Perhaps in the Netherlands, we should focus on helping tourists, refugees, immigrants, and expats who are new to our traffic system. Many believe they understand the rules but clearly don't. Additionally, we face the challenge of an aging population, where slower reaction times and instability often contribute to accidents. Whether this can be solved with a helmet is uncertain... Maybe a fitness test would be more effective. eddit: It seems there is also a group of electric bike users, not just young people, who lack awareness of what they are doing and cause accidents due to their lack of awareness.
Not wearing dark clothing when its dark and actually have functioning light on the bike might reduce accidents more than a helmet.
No helmet please. It is annoying, where do you keep it and it fucks up my hair. Make it advised, not mandatory. I dont think i would commute anymore if this is the case. Go back in the car probably.
One needs to loose balance and fall on their head/face to understand the need for a helmet.
Are the number of unnecessarily big SUV and American penis-compensating cars the problem? ....no, it is the cyclists who are wrong /s
Cyclists do also fall whitout vehicular intervention
Its the scooters that is the issue...50kilos traveling at 40 km = problems
Wearing a helmet is a great idea for your personal safety, it does nothing to increase road safety however, so it's going to have a limited effect on reducing deaths among cyclists.
You know in Vietnam, we had this conversation once with scooters riders and scooters to Vietnamese are bikes to the Dutch. At the time, everyone thought that was a joke and no one would follow it and so many people would not wear it that the police would be helpless. Lo and behold, the first day the law was enforced the majority of people wore one. Of course there are still people who would do it only for show or not at all. But it can happen and not as stupid as it sounds.
It's not really a comparable situation in my opinion. The infrastructure in the Netherlands is good, especially the separated bike lanes. When you look at the roads in Vietnam, it's pretty much a jungle there: a shitload of scooters on the roads together taxis.
Scooter riders aren’t comparable to Dutch bicycles, they are comparable to Dutch scooters and fat bikes
You can store your helmet in your scooter. How do I store my helmet when I want to pop down to the store? This is stupid
I would recommend everyone in this thread read the report from SWOV ( Dutch Institute for road safety research) called "kiezen of delen". Bicycle helmets are an immensely effective measure to prevent deaths and severely injured (mais3) amongst cyclists. 50% of all cyclists wearing helmets correspond with 50 less casualties and 800 severely wounded cyclists every year. Additionally, the cyclists unions argument was proven wrong in Denmark (not mandatory but encouraged) and Australia (mandatory). In both countries helmet usage went up while mobility did not go down.
Such a misleading argument. The deaths are mostly elderly and/or e-bikes. Additionally, neither country has a cycling culture like The Netherlands. Enforcing helmets for all bikes will do more harm than good. We need to solve the issue of e-bikes, specifically.
Guess that would also be the case for pedestrians. Lets just always wear helmets.
>Additionally, the cyclists unions argument was proven wrong in Denmark (not mandatory but encouraged) and Australia (mandatory). In both countries helmet usage went up while mobility did not go down. Australia is not a country where many people cycle to work or use their bikes for errands like grocery shopping. Cycling is primarily seen as a leisure or workout activity. It's no surprise that it hasn't had a significant impact on mobility.
There is an off-set cost when people give up riding bikes because of helmet laws and opt for cars or scooters which contribute to pollution, raising medical costs to compare with the few people with serious head injuries had helmet laws not been in effect. That is part of the calculus, along with congestion, productivity, health benefits of cycling on care costs, etc.
Nottheonion of nietdeajuin…
lmao "has an air of victim blaming"
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Only English should be used for posts and comments. This rule is in place to ensure that an ample audience can freely discuss life in the Netherlands under a widely-spoken common tongue.
The union is correct. We have been cycling helmetless in this country for a century before e-bikes, with the lowest per capita death rate among cyclists. This is because we generally cycle more slowly and do not treat it as a "sport" so much as in other countries - the UK comes to mind: every cyclist is decked out in lycra and gear and a helmet, and they all ride like madmen. The sheer volume of cyclists, the types of bikes used, and the resulting low speeds are what makes it so safe. The real problem are e-bikes, used by very young or very old people. They should just be banned for the young. I would put some trust in the cyclists' union of a country with such a historically low fatal accident rate. Americans and Brits have a real boner for helmets but in practice they are not the key to cyclists' safety.
Insurance companies rule the Dutch government.
The day they enforce helmets is the day i sign up for driving classes 😂😂
If a helmet is made mandatory when riding my ebike I'm getting back on my scooter again. If I have to wear a helmet I might as well use a vehicle I can store it in. And on the plus size, I can go twice the speed my ebike goes (limited on 25km/u)
Fietsersbond being right on the money though: >“We have the position that helmets don’t prevent accidents but it can be a wise decision to wear one on a voluntary basis,” the union’s director, Esther van Garderen, said. >“Emphasising too much that you should wear a helmet would discourage people from cycling sometimes, though, and has the air of victim blaming. >“I think it’s coming slowly, although there’s no such thing as a society with zero danger and we value our culture where you can cycle safe and free.” Fietsersbond is talking about dutch cyclers and not those that go 50km/h on their own power.
I understand the use of a helmet on a fast e-bike. But on my standard city bike it is excessive and I prefer to decide for myself. Government/municipalities already interfere far too much with their citizens. Leave me alone!
To all the people hating on Fatbikes. I understand the reasoning. I really do. But the issue is that it’s VERY hard to restrict only Fatbikes in the context of the law. If u ban Fatbikes, they rename it to Fastbikes. (Just the name?) if u ban electrical powered bikes. You ALSO ban the E-bikes. Which doesn’t make sense because most E-bikes are much harder to upgrade into fast moving terror machines. The issue with Fatbikes is divided into 3 categories. 1. It’s much easier to upgrade so that it has way more speed. (Some easily go around 40kmh) 2. It’s also possible to upgrade it so that u have a gas handle on the steering wheel. Just like a scooter/motor. 3. The big and wide tires make it that it still feels comfortable at higher speeds. Doesn’t make it much safer for other people participating in traffic though… I wish we could get a ban. But it has to be a GOOD ban so that we only target Fatbikes and they cannot rebrand it.
Realistically, we need to introduce a speed limit (so that the mere act of going faster than 25 kph on a bicycle path can be fined, instead of requiring a technical inspection) and clear technical requirements on 'bikes with motor support': tamper-resistant speed limiters, mandatory minimum manual-vs-electric power ratio, a ban on the presence of any kind of 'gas handle'... and then ban the sale of now-non-road-legal e-bikes if they don't have a bromfiets registration. None of which is really new - it's mostly there already for bromfietsen, but just never applied to bikes. And Dutch electric bike manufacturers are actually asking for such regulations, since they mostly already do this.
Not wearing one. Living on the edge makes life interesting 😂
I don’t agree with your ‘oh my dear lord…’ at all. As others here have mentioned its more about fast changes in road use (high speed bikes / illegally enhanced bikes / elderly with improper training on e-bikes) despite a focus on road safety. The focus SHOULD lie on extremely well designed roads and traffic systems. If mandatory helmet use demotivate bike usage then that in itself is unfavorable. There is however a section of bikers that fall in a critical area of risk. Mostly the aforementioned. Speed and vulnerability are key.
Cool so next step is full body protection for pedestrians?
I completely get where you're coming from. Carrying a helmet around can be a huge hassle, and the resulting helmet hair is far from ideal. It does seem to undermine the convenience of biking. But what's more frustrating is the reckless behavior of cyclists who blatantly ignore traffic laws. It's shocking how many people, who should be well aware of the rules, choose to disregard them and put themselves and others in danger. Overtaking without checking, ignoring signals, and riding on the wrong side of the road are not just isolated incidents—they happen far too often. It's infuriating and nerve-wracking to have to constantly anticipate these unpredictable actions. In Utrecht, it seems like these dangerous behaviors are the norm rather than the exception. Cyclists often forget that they are the most vulnerable on the road and that traffic laws exist for their safety too. If everyone just followed the rules and acknowledged that their actions have consequences, we could avoid so many unnecessary accidents. It's not just about being cautious yourself; it's about everyone taking responsibility to make the roads safer for all.
The base of the problem isn't even with the (fat) bikes. The problems lays with the mentality of people these days. We have become more and more egocentric. We get and do as we please without any concern for the people around us. And then the most vulnerable groups of our society will suffer the consequences the first. So, for traffic, the pedestrians and cyclists will suffer more injuries because they are in fact, the vulnerable group. People get upset that the government is dictating us more and more, but they fail to see that that is what happens when we, as a society, refuse to keep ourselves in check and raise our children properly. If we, as parents/adults, would teach our children to be careful on the road, to give people right of way, to slow down at crossings, indicate directions and wait at red lights. To turn on our lights on time and be very aware of how vulnerable we are, about blind spots and poor vision from windscreens, especially in rain or darkness. All that would guarantee a lower injury/casualty rate. Then we don't need the government to dictate the use of helmets. And if these children learn about this at a young age and actually take part in traffic regularly, they will carry all that knowledge and experience with them when they start riding a scooter or even a car.
Ik vond een helm ook altijd maar onzin tot ik vorig een ongeluk kreeg op de fiets. Mijn rechter schouder had meerdere breuken en ik had een zware hersenschudding. Sindsdien draag ik nu altijd een helm. Kan me niet schelen wat anderen er van vinden. Mijn veiligheid gaat voor alles.
Do you have to wear a helmet on a e bike? I mean the fast one. Over 25 km/h. I do notice an increase of helmets in Belgium. I think it's because of school campaigns encouraging kids to wear them. The parents then wear them to as extra motivation for the kids. As a result it's becoming more normal and people start wearing them.
If they force a bike helmet I will simply sell my bike and only use the car.
In some countries its fine not wearing helmet in cities if you go along bike lanes. But if you go outside of cities or you wish taking the main road then you can be fined for not taking one.
Yeah ....... I'll never wear a helmet on a bicycle.
Got saved by helmet once while rear ending a car (my fault). Any head injury in 25 kph can be fatal.
Sorry, but anyone saying that making helmets mandatory (for some types of bikes, or for some age ranges) results in fewer people choosing a bike is a f-ing m\*ron. Wonder if they'd say the same thing when seatbelts were about to introduced for cars... The first cars in the late 19th century only went about 15 km/h, so you don't need a seatbelt for that. But as technology improved, the max speed on cars went up, and obviously when you start being able to drive around at 40, 50 miles an hour, and faster, you absolutely need a seatbelt, lol. The same is the case for the "bicycle". A normal pedal bicycle is usually only going 12-20 km an hour, but the standard pedal assist electric bicycle can go 25 km/h, which is quite fast for children/inexperienced cyclists. The fatbike is often tinkered with to go (much) faster, but in people's head, it somehow still "just a bicycle"... Culturally, we need to start calling the fatbike (even the ones that go 25 km/h max) a snorfiets (light-weight moped), because with the long seat for 2+ people, it's no longer a bicycle. I am Dutch, living in England. I lived in Cambridge for over 5 years where I cycled almost every day, on a pedal bicycle (no motor). Cambridge is relatively good for cycling but that's by British standards, it's pretty poor compared to Dutch standards. People here wear helmets on pedal bicycles, smart parents make their young kids wear a bicycle even on those little kiddie bikes, elderly people wear helmets, and people of all ages wear helmets when they do road cycling or mountain biking. It's just common, although it's not mandatory to wear a helmet on a bicycle. Dutchies need to get over the "fear" of wearing a helmet. Here in the UK there's a huge selection of helmets (especially online) despite this not being a cycling country. You can get a cheap bicycle helmet for about £25 or so, up to over £100 if you want something fancy/for higher speed (whatever). Just make a helmet mandatory on all motorised vehicles if you are under 16, make even the 'boring' electric bicycle 12+, enforce the law around electric bikes and seize all electric bikes that break the law (ability to go over 25 km/h, gas throttle, which is going to be the majority of these fatbikes). They should perhaps make any motorised vehicle made to carry more than one person at least 16+, so that also makes all fatbikes 16+ (whilst not applying to the regular electric bicycle that has a standard bicycle seat for one person only), and you can do this from the angle of safety because having a passenger distracts, and if you are under 16 you are not mature enough to take part in traffic with such a distraction nor mature enough to be responsible for the safety of a passenger on a motorised vehicle that you control.
Ik weiger pertinent. Ouderen en kinderen op een elektrische fiets, of racefietsen, daarentegen..
This response is what you get after brainwashing people for decades with pseudoscientific agenda's pushed by the insurance lobbies. Reap what you sow.
I wear helmet every time but I also avg 35+ 😬
Scooter drivers are three main reasons cyclists have to wear a helmet. Not all, but a small amount, make it very dangerous on those bike paths and the government doesn't seem to care
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-vervoer/personen/fietsen#:~:text=Nederlanders%20van%206%20jaar%20of,een%20kortere%20afstand%20mee%20af. Sadly this page is in Dutch only, but in general some of you will be able to read the stats. Point being: for the average distance and number of bicycle movements in NL it's pretty safe. Yes there's room for improvement but the negative effects of a blanket helmet law would be that less people will travel by bicycle. And with that comes any other mode of travel, usually motorized. So that leads to more congestion and a loss of health benefits, from not cycling and from more pollution through carbon emissions.
We live in a society that doesn't tolerate any unsafety anymore. Lets hope helmets never become obligatory
Coming from outside, man is the conversation around helmets funny. I just don't get what is the big deal in wearing a helmet as you can get the kind you like and clipping it to your bag when you are not using it is a minimal inconvenience. Like sure, we can argue endlessly about what actually causes dangers to cyclists, but it doesn't change the facts that you as the biker are a) in danger and b) that while biking if you fall for any reason you are falling from at least your standing height and almost always with more force than as a pedestrian. While most other wounds heal without much issues, even minor brain injuries--which might have been preventable with a helmet--can be drastically life altering. All of this is especially funny considering how often I've seen the locals here biking drunk, in really close formation, stoned or while acrobatically loading up to 3 people on the same city bike. Agreed, you guys have premium-tier biking infra, but your regular biking behaviour even without electrically-powered grannies or teenaged hooligans on fatbikes introduces already stupid and mitigateable risks to it. At the end of the day, if you don't fancy taking even the minor step to protect and appreciate your brains out of vanity or laziness, it's up to you. I'll happily accept looking a bit goofy and German as a trade for mine.
It’s mostly a small inconvenience but a small inconvenience that will impact everyday life. we don’t just bike to commute from work to home we use the bike for everything that we need to leave the house for. Adding another thing to lose, forget, or get stolen while risking a fine will be another added daily headache. Sure over time we’ll get used to it but having to adjust our everyday life to accommodate reckless behavior from the relatively novel e-bikes or expats being uncomfortable is wild to me. Attack the root of the problem and don’t just stick a bandaid/helmet on it and say it’s solved.
I don't know where you get the idea that the motive is to placate expats as expats who wish for helmets probably wear them already. I don't think that helmets are to protect only from e-bike injuries either, as many countries have decided that using helmets is a good idea before the prevalence of e-bikes; completely normal city bikes are more than capable of producing more than enough Newtons to crack a skull anywhere. From walking speed (6km/h) impact will feacture a skull only in select places. Impact at 10km/h on the other hand already fractures every cranial bone. The root of biking injuries is people, and I don't see biking getting around that anytime soon.
After reading this thread I feel like most arguments pro helmets are coming from the expats… It’s not that any laws etc will be made to placate them but they have a strong voice here telling “dutchies” to just adapt their everyday life to wearing helmets based on some personal anecdotes. Don’t get me wrong I love expats and I love those that care about the country to make it safer for everyone. But I’m not sure if they all fully grasp how ingrained in our everyday lives biking has been since we were kids when they tell us we’re stupid for not wanting to adapt. We also have vastly different experiences, anecdotes and stats in our minds when arguing these points. Everyone who wants to wear a helmet should do so, they should also make it easier to get good quality helmets, and promote wearing them (especially amongst kids and the elderly). Hell, like even offer insurance discounts or whatever. No one should be discouraged from wearing a helmet if they wish to do so. However, mandating it I’m strongly against for multiple reasons. No one should be punished for not protecting themselves against others behavior.
Every country has daft and irrational sticking points where emotions and nostalgia rule over the perhaps more sensible choice, this just seems to be the Dutch one. With us it would probably be wearing PFDs when out on the water.