The Netherlands—once the gold standard for bike safety—is rethinking its long-standing opposition to bike helmets.
While the nation’s streets have never been more bike-friendly, with all the safety features you would want in your neighbourhood, bike rider crash trauma has become a major concern.
Although helmets are worn by sports and touring cyclists, they are not generally used by commuters or riders on local trips. Only about 3.5% of riders use them.
And while the crash rate for bike riders can be low in the Netherlands, the injury rate can be high because riders have little protection against traumatic brain injury (TBI) when they do crash.
And crash they do. As in Australia the Netherlands is experiencing fewer bike crashes involving cars, but more that involve other bikes, or just solo riders coming to grief.
And while such incidents are less likely to involve serious injury, for those not wearing a helmet the odds of brain injury are significantly higher.
In 2022 a total of 88,000 riders ended up in a hospital emergency department, 66% of all road crash victims.
About 25% of riders admitted to ED had a brain injury.
More than half of the collisions did not involve a motor vehicle and more than two thirds were over 70 years of age.
In a recent paper two of the nation’s leading safety researchers, Fred Wegman and Paul Schepers questioned whether the country could truly be said to support Safe Systems and Vision Zero without addressing the problem of head injuries suffered by riders without helmets.
"It could be argued that helmets fit perfectly well in a Safe System approach,” they argued.
"Modifications to cars can reduce injury in a collision, but in single-bicycle crashes, a helmet is one of the few possible measures to prevent serious head injuries.
"In case of a fall or crash, the use of a bicycle helmet was found to reduce serious head/brain injury by 60% and fatal head/brain injury by 71 % on average, while it is found that the protective effect is the same for children and adults.”
Studies in the Netherlands have calculated that if the Dutch wore helmets the annual number of bike fatalities would be reduced by 85 and serious injuries would be reduced by 2500.
"In summary, wearing a helmet while cycling reduces the risk of head and brain injuries, and this reduction is higher for more severe injuries,” Wegman and Schepers said.
"For safety reasons it is recommendable to wear a helmet while cycling and this intervention fits well into the Safe System approach, especially to prevent head/brain injuries in single-bicycle crashes.
"A helmet obligation could be more effective than encouraging voluntary wearing.
"Perhaps the latter may be needed to increase support in the Dutch society for an obligation. Helmet use by cyclists seems to be a very relevant contribution towards ZERO cycle casualties in the Netherlands."
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