The Dutch Love Their Bicycles. Helmets? Not So Much.

New York Times

17-04-2025

'It's every person for themselves,' Fallon Albrecht said while cycling on Thursday morning through a downtown Amsterdam intersection so chaotically busy that it once had its own livestream.
Like the dozens of cyclists around her, Ms. Albrecht, 39, was not wearing a helmet during rush hour, despite the risk and a national campaign in the Netherlands to change attitudes to this piece of personal protection.
'Because of my bun,' she said of why she was not wearing a helmet, referring to the knot of hair neatly scraped high on her head.
There are more bicycles than people in the Netherlands, according to government figures. But bicycle helmets are far less common. And they have become part of a debate that pits traffic safety against questions about a deeply ingrained part of Dutch culture: the primacy of cycling.
Annual statistics on traffic fatalities published by the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics on Thursday showed that road deaths among cyclists were the highest of any road user: 246 last year, compared with 220 people killed in cars and 59 pedestrians.
Since 2000, traffic accidents have claimed the lives of an average of 199 cyclists in the country each year, according to the statistics bureau. In the last five years, nearly two-thirds of cyclist road deaths were attributed to head injuries, the bureau said.
In response, the authorities are introducing awareness campaigns to promote helmets, including a daylong national initiative this past Wednesday.
The campaign, called 'Put It On,' got the message out through television ads, social media and school activities. It was aimed at reducing fatalities and serious injury, citing research that said helmets reduced fatal cycling injuries by 70 percent.
Some in the country say the safety messages should be directed instead at drivers of cars and those in charge of infrastructure and traffic policies.
'Wearing a helmet doesn't prevent having accidents in traffic, so we should work on taking away the cause of the accident,' said Esther van Garderen, the national director of Fietsersbond, a group that has campaigned for safe cycling in the Netherlands for 50 years.
Fietsersbond wants automobile speed limits in cities and residential areas reduced to roughly 18 miles per hour. It has also lobbied for limiting the size of cars, arguing that larger cars are harder for cyclists to navigate around and increase the risk of head injuries.
Marco te Brömmelstroet, an urban planning professor at the University of Amsterdam who has described the campaign as 'an ideological smoke screen,' said the helmet initiative was 'well-intended but ill-informed and therefore potentially morally problematic.'
Mr. te Brömmelstroet, popularly known as the 'Bike Professor' because of his media appearances focused on bike safety, says he has nothing against helmets, but that the campaign paints cycling as a dangerous activity in a country where people of all ages ride bikes daily.
'Why don't we call it 'the day against traffic crashes' or 'the day against road violence'?' he asked.
He said the helmet campaign also shifted responsibility from the government, including from the infrastructure minister, Barry Madlener, who increased the speed limit for cars on freeways to about 80 miles per hour just days before promoting the use of helmets at an elementary school.
'Our minister is indeed pro-automobile,' Liz Zoetekouw, an spokeswoman for his office, said on Thursday. 'Cars are getting cleaner and safer each year, and they are very important for the Dutch population.'
She said the department had set aside 450 million euros ($568 million) for the development of safe infrastructure from 2020 to 2030, and that getting cyclists to wear helmets was a part of that investment.
'To ensure that cycling remains safe, we need to do both,' Ms. Zoetekouw said.
On Amsterdam's streets, reaction to the campaign was mixed.
Nelleke Doornbal, 64, said she wore a helmet when riding her electric bicycle to her job in physical rehabilitation in the city center.
'I often see the invisible consequences of brain injury: memory loss, concentration problems, fatigue,' she said.
Ms. Doornbal said she would welcome mandatory helmet rules, and not just for older people. (The Dutch government already has a safety campaign aimed at older riders.)
'A young brain is just as vulnerable as an old one,' she said.
Berend Ramuz, 26, said he wore a helmet only when racing, and he expressed doubt that the campaign would make a difference. 'Hardly anyone wears a helmet,' he said. 'People are just not used to it at all.'
But Jop de Vrieze, 42, said he had learned about bike safety the hard way after what he described as 'a classic Dutch accident' eight years ago.
'I had too many drinks and had driven my front wheel into a tram rail,' he recalled. 'I woke up with two paramedics over my head.'
After recovering from a concussion, he started wearing a helmet on nights out, although he said he forgot to more often than not. That changed when his 8-year-old son asked him why he did not wear a helmet.
'That got me thinking,' he said. 'If I fall, it affects him, too.'