What's gone wrong with road safety in the Netherlands ?

The elephant at the cross-roads: It's not cyclists who are killing more cyclists than before, but more and larger cars such as this one which are killing more cyclists than before. Anti-social vehicles like these designed in such a way that vulnerable road users in front of them are largely invisible, should be illegal.

It's been much reported over the last few days that more people died on Dutch roads in 2022 than was the case in 2021. This not the first year in which that has happened - we have seen a rising trend over the last few years.

Who dies ?

2010 was the year when the fewest Dutch cyclists died. Since then the annual cyclist death rate has nearly doubled, from 162 in 2010 to 291 in 2022, reaching a level not seen in many decades (source)

Our media has presented this story as mainly being about older people dying more than before while cycling. This is not a new angle, I covered it 13 years ago. It is true that more than 150 of the total cyclist deaths, more than half, were of cyclists aged over 75 and it is of course the case that older people are more vulnerable in a crash. The media is also presenting the number of deaths of motorists, 225, against those of cyclists, 291, and suggesting that cyclists are somehow the problem and should change their behaviour. We apparently need to go slower, or wear helmets, or we look out more for other traffic, or there needs to be more police enforcement, or there should be more campaigns to tell us to behave ourselves. But this is all nonsense unless we look at where the danger actually comes from.

Who does the killing ?

This graph shows the cause of cyclist deaths. In 2021 and 2022 almost exactly the same number of cyclists deaths were without another cause, such as cyclists crashing against fixed objects. But the number of deaths due to crashes with private cars or delivery vans increased from 81 to 141, a 74% increase and deaths due to crashed with other motor vehicles rose from 46 to 65, a 41% increase (source) 

The main cause of death for cyclists is crashes with motor vehicles. Those crashes have been increasing at an astonishing rate. Crashes with motor vehicles were responsible for 127 cyclist deaths in 2021 compared with 206 in 2022. It would therefore be more reasonable to present the data as 431 deaths due to motor vehicles vs. 85 due to cyclists.

We're not going to fix this with car oriented policies

We know that cars are deadly but they're are also the mode of transport which is rising most steeply in this country.

More consumption cannot somehow lead to a greener more sustainable future, and that's especially the case when we're talking about more cars. But that's the path we're currently on thanks to the political "leadership" of the VVD.

We have a government which has spent decades trying to fix all the many problems caused by cars by encouraging ownership of ever more cars. We also have a media which presents the idea that cars could become slightly less affordable in an attempt to persuade people to buy less fossil fuel as a terrible problem which could only be addressed by subsidizing buying new cars. In this country even Car Free Day was somehow turned into an event featuring a parade of cars. It's mindless. We're famous internationally for cycling, but who would know ?

When fuel prices increased due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our government jumped in immediately to subsidize fuel, a subsidy which was not removed after the prices dropped once again. Traffic jams are now worse than they were before the war and before covid because Dutch drivers are using more cars more than they ever have before. This is stimulated by a government which really should be trying to do something different, but which never changes its focus away from Vroom Vroom.

For a multitude of reasons, including the now very obviously rising trend of road deaths, we really do need to get people out of cars. But until we can shake off the ludicrous notion that more cars is always the answer to everything, including the completely absurd idea that buying a new car is the best way that a motorist can "do their bit" to prevent climate change, I think we're doomed to a future in which we will see higher and higher road deaths in the Netherlands, as well as more and more of all of the other problems caused by cars.

Update 28/4/2023
This week our government published its "ambitious" new plan for the climate. So far as transport is concerned they're really doing only one thing and that's encouraging more cars. If you already bought a car with a subsidy and now want to sell it to buy another there's especially good news because the buyer will also receive a subsidy to buy your car second hand. The roads are increasingly full of cars and our hospitals are increasingly full of the victims of cars, and our government can see nothing buy more cars in our future. Vroom vroom.

Update 16/1/2024

The light blue line shows the cost of taxation and subsidies adjusted for inflation per litre of petrol (gas / benzine)

How much does it cost to fill a car with fuel in the Netherlands ? Despite the moaning from motorists, the true cost relative to inflation has been dropping steadily since 1997, and the trend has accelerated sharply in the last four years. Less tax is raised from motorists now than at any time in the last 34 years. Driving a car has always been affordable in this country and now it's more affordable than ever. Read other blog posts about the cost of motoring in the Netherlands.

If you want to read more, there are a number of tags on this blog which group together articles about: Cars, Dutch Car Ownership rate, Dutch Safety figures, Electric Cars, and perhaps you might also like What Works which is a tag presenting many good ideas for stimulating cycling.

Once in every 73 lifetimes - How often the Dutch are injured by another cyclist while cycling

Dr Jon Rogers and Walker Angell
were interviewed as well as myself

Fatalities on Dutch roads and cycle-paths dropped last year but a small rise in injuries to cyclists made the news. A film crew joined us for a few minutes during the study tour last week, interviewing two of the participants on the tour as well as myself. You can watch the resulting news report, with subtitles in English, above.

Of course, a rise in injuries is most unwelcome, but we must keep this in context. Given the Dutch population of 16.8 million, the average life expectancy of a little over 80 years and assuming that the entire population cycles (which is not far from the truth), 2849 injuries per year corresponds with cyclists needing medical attention due to a crash with another cyclist on average once every 73 lifetimes. Only a fraction of these involve more than first aid.

Perhaps cycling through a red
light while on the 'phone
doesn't seem a great idea, but
she's one of the safest cyclists
in the world (although the
infrastructure she's riding on
in the video is less than ideal)

Two thirds of injuries to cyclists in the Netherlands are the result of falls from the bike not involving any other party (these are particularly dangerous for older people) while only a fifth involve a motor vehicle. If all causes of injury are added together, 8100 cyclists experience injuries requiring attendance of hospital each year in the Netherlands. That's a risk of about once every 25 lifetimes.

The risk of death, based on last year's figures, is about once per 990 lifetimes. People from other countries often notice that the Dutch don't wear helmets when cycling. This is quite rational: I once calculated that if Dutch cyclists wore helmets, this would save their lives on average once every 3100 lifetimes.

The safety of all road users is excellent in the Netherlands and despite alarm over a rise in cyclist injuries, cyclist safety remains ahead of the rest of the world. That's despite the sometimes unruly behaviour of cyclists, which is commented on in the video.

Of course, while subjective safety is not so easily measured, that's what makes it possible for the masses to cycle. It's just as well that removing motor vehicles from where cyclists go improves both actual safety and subjective safety.

Racing Cyclists
The news team seemed to be trying to make a story about racing cyclists being the cause of many crashes. In fact, there's no real evidence for this. For a start, there aren't many cycle-on-cycle crashes to look at. But in any case racers mainly hurt themselves, not other people. The main organisation which organises such events has responded to the accusation by producing a behaviour code for racers, but I don't think it will help because this ignores the rather irrational psychology of how people blame out-groups for problems.

A few weeks after I wrote this article, a
friend of mine had his arm broken in
a collision with another bike. He was
unfortunate enough to be hit by an older
cyclist who didn't look before changing
direction. A hit and run! It's not rational
to assume that older people are always
the victims in these rare crashes.

Older people
The TV programme also touched on the problem of older people being victims of cycling accidents more often than they used to be. This rise is largely the result of exposure to risk combined with their relative fragility. As I explained in an analysis of the same problem two years ago, retired people now cycle three times as much now as they did in the 1980s.

Children going to school by car
Another of the themes which came up again in this video is the concern than these days, Dutch children increasingly go to school by car. This is an increasing trend, but it's still very small compared with other nations. Please read my analysis of this from last year.

Study tour summary

The tour changed again this year to take into account new infrastructure and to demonstrate some things that we've not been able to demonstrate before, packed into three very busy days. Participants took a lot of photographs and there was much discussion.

The study tour group amongst other everyday cyclists riding into Groningen. It can be quite a challenge to lead the tour and keep track of everyone when we're surrounded by such a lot of other cyclists.

Always popular, we watched how children get to and from school. At this primary school, the younger children are met by parents but many ride independently.

We also saw several classes of primary school aged children going on trips by bike. Children are encouraged to ride side-by-side.

In a residential street, observing how these are planned to minimise through traffic and encourage cycling and walking.

As well as seeing what works, we also demonstrate what does not because it is not necessary to repeat mistakes made in the Netherlands as well as successes. This is the same shared space junction as featured in a video and blog post two weeks ago and as always we saw the same problems here. A significant proportion of people were scared to cycle and in an attempt to improve their chances they were crossing the road as pedestrians or riding on the pavement. Both these things are indications that the cycling environment is not good enough.

The next open study tour is on the 2nd to 4th of September. Book now.

Update 2015
Traffic deaths in the Netherlands have continued to fall, while cycling deaths appear to have reached a plateau. Note that of 185 cyclist deaths last year, 106 were of people aged over 65. I have written about this before, explaining the reasons. While it remains popular to apportion blame on other cyclists, the rate of elderly cyclist deaths in the Netherlands is not due to collisions with racing cyclists but a consequence of old age and a rise in elderly people cycling further and faster by using electrically assisted bicycles.

Amendment 30th April: Note that when this blog post was first published it referred to 2849 as the total number of cycling injuries per year for all reasons. I posted it, then woke up the next morning feeling that this sounded rather better than it ought to so I've done further research and amended the post above with reference to an article with more complete information. There are in fact 78000 injuries per year including the least serious than can be measured, 66000 of which require first aid and 8100 of which result in treatment in hospital. I'm happy to have corrected the figures above, but it remains extremely safe to cycle in the Netherlands. By comparison, a correspondent pointed out in email that 1 in 120 Americans die in a car crash while 1 in 280 British people meet that same end. It's far safer to be a cyclist in the Netherlands than to be around cars in those countries.

Challenges to growth in cycling in the Netherlands. Older people cycle more than ever before but their injury rate is rising.

One graph can never show the multitude of factors behind the cycling modal share of a nation.

In this post, I'll point out how the usual chart which shows how cycling has grown in the Netherlands since the 1970s hides some major demographic factors which influence cycling, not all of them positive.

In addition, we've recently been told that for the first time in nearly ten years, cyclist deaths rose in the Netherlands last year compared with the year before. What's this all about, and is it somehow related to the modal share ? Read on...

First challenge: Immigration
Each year, the Netherlands loses about 30000 more people due to emigration than arrive as new immigrants. Many people who emigrate were born overseas and are returning to their land of birth, but also many Dutch people emigrate. This number, you'll notice, is smaller than that of births vs. deaths.

Nevertheless, by 2010, this exchange of people between countries resulted in 11% of people living in the Netherlands having been born in other countries. Because all other countries have a lower cycling modal share than the Netherlands, this of course implies that immigrants were born in countries where it is normal to cycle less than in the Netherlands.

Immigrants to the Netherlands try hard to integrate well with the local population and this includes their cycling habits. Immigrants living in the Netherlands cycle about as much as they would had they been born in and still lived in Finland or Germany. i.e. less on average than the native Dutch, but as much as people from other leading cycling nations. Clearly, though, we can't state that growth in cycling is due to immigration.

Second challenge: Ageing
Between the 1970s and now, the population of the Netherlands grew from 13 million to 16.5 million people. As we've seen, this is not due to immigration. It is also not due to a high birth rate. As is normal for developed nations, the Total Fertility Rate of the Netherlands (how many children are born on average to each woman) has been less than 2 for some time. In the Netherlands, the TFR has been less than two since 1973.

Births still outnumber deaths in the Netherlands by almost 50000 people per year, and this is what has lead to population growth. Deaths are lagging behind births because of the increase in life expectancy and resulting increase in the average age of the population. Men can now expect to live 7 years longer than in the early 1970s and women 5 years longer. Women still live slightly longer on average than do men.

Meeting these challenges
Neither older people nor recent immigrants from countries with lower cycling rates are the easiest people to convince to cycle.

Immigrants are encouraged to cycle. A successful initiative called Fiets Vriendinnen ("Cycling Girlfriends") is the only organisation that I'm aware of which cycle training for adults. Specifically, they offer cycle training and support for women new to the Netherlands, performing a useful function of helping people to integrate into Dutch society.

However, something else has happened which many people may find surprising. Elderly people in the Netherlands now cycle nearly three times as much as they did in the 1980s. It is the rise in the number of retired people cycling which has driven the growth in electric bicycle sales in the Netherlands.

A group of older people who passed us a couple of Sunday afternoons ago. It is not at all unusual to see groups of retired people cycling for pleasure in the countryside.

Other growth has come from specific areas. For instance, cycling to railway stations, where literally hundreds of thousands of extra cycle parking spaces have been built in an attempt to keep up with growth in usage in the last few years (40% of train passengers now arrive at railway stations by bicycle). Many Dutch towns have seen increases in cycling alongside improvements to infrastructure. This is true of the capital, Amsterdam, of the top cycling city in the Netherlands, Groningen, and also of the small town of Assen, where we live.

What about that rise in transport related deaths ?
Obviously any rise in deaths is something that has to be taken seriously. First some context. Overall, roads and cycle-paths in the Netherlands are amongst the safest in the world. They are much safer than they were in the early 1970s.

The improvement in safety have come in large part from following the principles of sustainable safety. Different modes are separated, keeping cyclists away from the danger from motorized vehicles even when you might not think this was happening.

While 2011 was a slight increase over 2010, this is clearly a
downward trend over time. It is not an imaginary trend.

Sadly, for the first time in several years, 2011 saw the number of deaths on Dutch roads increase. This has seen alarming commentary from some quarters about how the roads are becoming more dangerous, but I do not believe this to be the case. Rather, this is a bump on a graph which still depicts a downward trend. The rise was small, 3.3%, and 2011 was still safer than 2009. Perhaps the same sorts of comments concerning a "rise" were made when this last happened, in 2003.

In 2011, there were 661 deaths compared with 640 in 2010 (these figures are for all road users, not just cyclists). December 2011 was a particularly deadly month with 81 people losing their lives in that month alone. Without this unusual one month peak, the figures could have been lower than for 2010.

There is always "noise" in figures of this nature. It's important not to take too much notice of year on year changes as they can be so misleading. While one cannot make any prediction based on the graph, it looks more like the continuation of a steady downward trend than the beginning of an increasing trend, and we should note that the December figures which particularly made a difference last year are likely to be due to particularly unhelpful weather.

Demographics of road casualties
Of the 661 deaths last year, 40% or 269 were of people over the age of 65. Nearly 1 in five, 126 people, were aged over 80. This is a reflection of how active older people remain the Netherlands and also of how vulnerable older people can be in crashes which might cause less serious injuries in younger people.

We see the same if we look just at cycling casualties.

Over 65s cycle around 12% of the total kilometres cycled each year in the Netherlands. However, almost 2/3rds of the cyclists who died in the Netherlands last year were of people aged over 65.

In total, 200 cyclists died in the Netherlands last year, a rise of 38 over the year before. This is quite a sharp rise in one year. It compares with 185 in 2009, which makes for a less dramatic change. It is still part of a downward trend, and the Netherlands remains the safest country in the world for cyclists.

Why are older people falling victim more often ?
It is an unfortunate fact that as you get older, you also become more delicate. Injuries which might cause nothing more than a little discomfort when you are young can cause a broken bone when you are older. Those which might have resulted in a broken bone can result in death.

The rise in electric bicycles has been blamed for older people suffering more injuries and deaths. One study claims that while electric bikes are not much different in safety to non assisted bikes for younger people, there is a relationship between an assisted bike and a higher rate of injury amongst older people. Such bicycles are sold almost exclusively to retired people, and for this age-group they result in being able to ride faster and further than before, without improving the rider's reaction time or strength.

New figures from 2013 show that women over 60 with
electric assisted bikes (solid red line) are especially
at risk of injury. Two possible explanations are offered.
1. More fragile people tend to buy electric bikes.
2. Electric bikes lead to higher danger for this group
In either case, extra investigation is needed.

However, it would appear that the main reason why older people are falling victim more often is that they are cycling more often. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of kilometres ridden each year by over 65s more than doubled. Over 65s now cycle nearly three times so much as they did in the 1980s.

In the Netherlands, cycling suffers from the "Golf effect". Just as regular gentle exercise by cycling extends life-expectancy, golf has been shown to do the same. However, a surprisingly high number of people die of heart attacks when playing golf. It's not the game that kills them, as golf has few risks, however the combination of an aged demographic and that playing golf can take quite a long time means that there is a fair risk that regular players will die when they are playing golf. Many older Dutch people spend a considerable amount of time cycling, and the same will be observed.

None of this is new
In 2005, a study showed that the number of visits to hospital by older cyclists had risen by 55% between 2005 and 2009. The total distance cycled by this group had also risen by 50% over the same period.

In 2010, a study showed that elderly cyclists ran 3.2 times the risk of injury than younger cyclists, and that this was due not to having more crashes, but due to the relative fragility of older people. It also showed that 10% of total cycled kilometres in the Netherlands are ridden by the over 65s, and a link was shown (again) between improvements to cycling infrastructure, an increased rate of cycling, and lower risks for all cyclists.

What about the future ?

Average number of bike rides per day for Dutch
population separated into different age groups

It is expected that the ageing population will eventually reduce the cycling modal share because older people in the Netherlands cycle less than younger people.

In 2007, a study suggested that ageing of the population could be expected to slowly reduce the rate of cycling in the Netherlands. It also predicted a rise in serious bicycle crashes of 10% over 20 years for much the reasons that we have seen start to occur. This study also showed that immigration was thought unlikely to have a very large effect because the number of immigrants remains small.

That same study includes an interesting table which shows the percentage of cycle trips by over 65s in 2005 for each local government area, compared to what it is expected to be by 2025. In Assen, for example, 12% of cycle journeys were made by over 65s in 2005, and this is expected to grow to 16% of cycle journeys being made by over 65s in 2025. This is about average for the whole country.

Of course, the Netherlands isn't standing still. A new organisation, the National Investigation into Cycling Safety has begun to work on improving future safety for cyclists in the Netherlands.

It is important that standards for cycling infrastructure continue to improve. Only with improvements in standards can the cycling modal share be preserved despite the challenges of demographic change.

All three types of safety are important.

About comparing sensible figures
Last week, British politicians compared Dutch and British cycle safety figures in rather a confusing and perhaps even deceitful manner by referring only to the absolute number of deaths in both countries.

It is of course true that the Netherlands has a higher rate of cycling injury per hundred thousand people. However, this is because while everyone cycles in the Netherlands, and as we see above, this covers a very wide range of demographic groups, only a minority cycle in the UK and they're largely young adult males.

Comparing per km cycled, even though the Dutch cyclists include far higher levels of more vulnerable groups (not only older people, but also children and people with disabilities), the figures are very much better for the Netherlands than the UK, even taking into account the increase last year. Several people blogged about this, but I refer you to "(Drawing) rings around the world" for accurate figures.

Someone quipped that by the same logic as used by the British Transport Ministers, Switzerland could perhaps learn a lot from the UK's good record on skiing safety, and it's a valid comparison.

Any British politician who wants to know what the difference really is between cycling in the Netherlands and cycling in the UK only has to ask us to find out. We do tours specifically for this reason, but not one British politician has yet come to see for themselves.

2014 update
Traffic safety figures in the Netherlands have continued to improve despite the upward tick in 2011. The total number of deaths in 2012 was 650, roughly the same as 2011 but this improved in 2013 to 570. That's the lowest figure ever. 184 cyclists lost their lives in 2013, only five of whom were under 15 years old. 124 of the cyclist deaths were of people aged over 60. Over 2/3rds of the total and  continuing the trend of their being the most vulnerable people being injured in single-sided crashes.

Investigations into the cause of the rise in injuries and deaths continue. If the person who made the quip about skiing safety reads this, let me know and I'll link to you.

Local traffic safety figures

A few days back, the local TV news covered the rate of road deaths in our province. They gave figures for the total of all traffic deaths, including drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

In 2003, there were 46 transport related deaths in the province, but this has been dropping. 26 died in 2011.

In Assen, the capital of Drenthe, and three other council areas within the province, there were no traffic deaths last year. The highest figure was in Midden Drenthe, which has a relatively large number of busy roads.

The local government spokesman in the video explains that the reason for the reduction in deaths is that the roads have been re-engineered to reduce conflicts and remove danger, though of course he also says that behaviour of drivers is important.

Improving the infrastructure to make the roads more self-explanatory and to reduce conflict is an established way to improve safety. These are the principles of Sustainable Safety in action.

Sustainable safety not only improves conditions for cycling, but benefits all road users. This universality makes sustainable safety a good thing to campaign for in other countries as well.

Drenthe is the least densely populated province of the Netherlands. Just under half a million people spread across 2600 square kms - 190 people per square km. This density is lower than five US states and less than half that of England.

Stop the Child Murder

I often get asked what can be done to increase the cycling rate in countries outside the Netherlands. It's often noted that there is little government or public enthusiasm for spending even small amounts of money on the small number of people who are currently cyclists.

I think it's a good idea to look at what worked in the Netherlands.

Cycling in the Netherlands declined sharply in the post-second world war period. In the 1950s and 1960s, existing cycle paths were in many cases removed in order to make space for more cars. "From 1950 to 1975, the bicycle was almost entirely excluded from the government's vision"(Dutch Bicycle Master Plan 1999). The number of deaths on the roads rose, especially amongst children on their way to and from school. In 1972, a total of 3264 people were killed on Dutch roads, and at around the same time, in 1973, 450 road deaths were of children.

Note that this was a long struggle. The
photo shows Minister Zeevalking
receiving information from protestors
in 1982. (wikimedia)

1973 was also the year that the pressure group "Stop de Kindermoord" ("Stop the Child Murder") started. The object of this group was to point out the number of deaths caused to children and to campaign to reduce them. They successfully influenced the Dutch government to re-emphasize building of segregated cycle paths, and to make money available to pay for them. This resulted in both a rise in cycling and a reduction in cyclist deaths, reversing the previous trend. It has been a success not only for child cyclists, but for all cyclists, and indeed for the population as a whole.

There is a lesson here for other countries. I'll take Britain as an example.

It is difficult to campaign for better conditions for "cyclists" in Britain. Cyclists are a minority group, and not a very well liked minority at that. Cyclists can be considered to be an out-group. This is a large part of why it is that cycling initiatives come and go in Britain. There's no real emphasis placed on results because too few people see it as important. When cyclists in Britain are hit by cars, they get very little sympathy from the public at large.

Campaigning for child safety is different. Very different. Children are not a minority group. Most families include children, all adults used to be children. Child safety is an issue which is important to everyone and difficult to ignore. All parents want their children to be safe.

It is clear that there is a problem with child safety on the roads in the UK. This is the underlying reason why it is that children are increasingly being driven to school. It is the reason why American style school buses are proposed for British kids, and even the reason why someone made the news for driving with his walking child on the school run. When British parents attack traffic wardens next to a school, they even do this in part out of concern for the safety of their own children. These are not solutions to the problem, but they are reactions to it. They demonstrate that parents are not remotely happy with the roads as they are.

Campaigners often talk about there being a suppressed demand for cycling in Britain. It's true. There is. When I was a campaigner in the UK, many people would tell me that they were very keen to take up cycling, but for one reason or another.

However, the suppressed demand for conditions in which children are safe on the streets is very much greater. This is what any campaigner who wants to see mass cycling return to the UK ought to be campaigning about. Get parents on your side and there will be a mass move to change infrastructure and improve conditions.

I can see the responses from a certain element of the cycling community in the UK. i.e. those who are concerned about being "forced" to use sub-standard shared-use paths next to the road. However, this is all part of the problem. Sub-standard facilities are of no use to anyone. Not only are they no good for confident adults to cycle on, but they will also never provide the level of subjective safety required for British parents to think their children are safe on a bike. I've seen many examples of what happens in Britain. Planners think that if they provide a couple of hundred metres of astonishingly bad quality shared use next to a school that they've actually done something. People afterwards ask why it is that such facilities are not used. The answer is very simple: they are not usable. The quality is much too low. Tokenism isn't the answer.

It's a grave mistake to think that low quality off road provision "for slow and inexperienced cyclists" is all that is needed, and that "fast cyclists" will always be better off on the road. If separate infrastructure is not good enough for a confident adult to use then it's not good enough for kids to ride to school on either.

The differences between British and Dutch streets are very easy to see. They're actually almost exactly the same as the differences between Dutch streets in the 1970s and now. i.e. British streets now resemble Dutch streets 40 years ago. It's not actually all that expensive to achieve such a transition - it simply takes a consistent policy over years.

Road casualties in the Netherlands have dropped steeply, even as cycling rates have risen. Now approximately 720 people per year die on Dutch roads. 180 of them are cyclists, and 22 of those are children. The cycling figures may sound high, but they are in part a reflection of the number of cycle journeys made. The Dutch now experience an overall risk which is less than a quarter of that in 1973, and for children it's now a twentieth of that in 1973. Dutch cyclists are now the safest in the world. Of course, the campaign goes on to reduce the figures.

Meanwhile, British roads have become safer for drivers, but they have not achieved such good results for vulnerable road users. It would only take about fifteen years to turn this around, following which even better plans can be made.

Between 1972 and 2013, fatalities on the roads dropped
dramatically in the Netherlands. Child fatalities have
reduced to just 2% of the previous level.

2014 update
Since this blog post was written, Dutch roads have continued to get safer. In 2013, there were a total of 570 road deaths in the Netherlands, just nine of whom were under 15. Five were child cyclists, four were child pedestrians. Even one death may be seen as too many, but this is still startling progress over the peak in the early 1970s.

How success was achieved
Note that this great success in improved safety was achieved with children still cycling en-masse, and without distractions such as bicycle helmets. The improvement in safety came due to improving the infrastructure which people use. The Netherlands now has an extensive grid of high quality cycling infrastructure which covers the nation. This doesn't only serve children, but all cyclists and cycling is safer in the Netherlands than in any other nation.

In 1989, "Stop de Kindermoord" changed its name to "Kinderen Voorrang" ("Priority for children"). In 2001 they became part of the larger road safety campaign, 3VO / Veilig Verkeer Nederland ("Safe Traffic Netherlands") who continue to campaign for lower road deaths. The statue in the photo is "Fietsles" ("cycling lesson"), by Kees Verkade. It's in Groningen, here.

Do you want to know more about the history of cycling in the Netherlands, read more stories tagged with history and the articles linked from here, particularly The Dutch Master Plan 1999. There are also many stories about school travel. Also another post referred to current work of Veilig Verkeer Nederland.

I recommend also reading responses to this post by Karl McCracken, Dave Warnock and NicoleP.

Brain injuries and the Dutch cyclist

An Australian reader pointed me at this document which is about head and brain injuries amongst Dutch cyclists. Yes, there are also some people in NL who think that helmets for cyclists are a good idea.

Rather than reacting emotionally we have to look at the numbers to make sense of this. The overall risk to Dutch cyclists (it's on page two of the document) of a "head/brain injury" is 153 per billion kilometres ridden. That means that one such injury is one per 6.5 million kilometres ridden.

On average, every Dutch person makes a trip by bicycle 5.6 times per week. This works out as an average across the whole population of 2.5 km cycled every day. That's the highest figure for any population in the world. If we assume that people cycle every day of their lives to the age of 80, and that they cycle that 2.5 km every day of their life, they will ride a bike for a total of 73000 km during their lifetime. Divide it into 6.5 million and you find a figure that a typical Dutch cyclist can expect a "head/brain injury" once every 90 lifetimes.

Note that it doesn't say how serious the injuries have to be in order to be included. However, it does give total numbers of head/brain injuries per year as 550 + 1600 = 2150 which is more than ten times the total deaths of cyclists per year from all types of injuries. For the sake of making the maths easy, let's lazily (and very inaccurately) assume that every death when cycling is due to a head injury. We then find that the risk of death due to head or brain injury when cycling is actually around once per 900 lifetimes.

Also, note that the article points out that cycle helmets can only reduce the rate of deaths due to head injuries by 29%. So, if a helmet is worn by that typical Dutch cyclist, it will save his/her life every 3100 lifetimes or so.

Death occurs once in every lifetime. i.e. Other causes of death are more than 3100 times so significant as deaths due to cycling without a helmet and that applies even in this country where there is more cycling than in any other. It applies even if for the sake of simplifying the calculation we make the horribly inaccurate assumption that cyclists never die of any type of injury. This in a country where 93% of the population rides a bike at least once a week.

To summarize, deaths due to head injuries while cycling are not a major public health issue and should not be treated as such. Helmets are not the answer to cyclist deaths. Good infrastructure is what makes cycling safer.

A contrast with another cause of death:

A couple of days ago I saw some other statistics, about a much more common cause of death and injury. This covered the risk of car crashes to Britain's children. In this post is the alarming statistic that one in 27 children in Britain, more than one in every classroom, can be expected to be killed or injured in a road crash by the time they are 16.

Think about it. If the risk is similar in other age groups, then there is a chance of one in five that you will be injured or killed in a road crash during your lifetime. That's a risk due to motor vehicles which is many times greater than that faced by cyclists in the Netherlands not wearing a helmet.

Britain's roads are actually amongst the safest in the world, for drivers. However the risk of death or serious injury from road crashes elsewhere is higher in every other country than this one, where there are more cyclists than in any other country.

Previously I covered the efforts that car manufacturers have put in to make driving appear safe.

Also... 2.5 km per day may not sound much, but this is the highest average cycling per day per person figure for any country in the world. It's the average distance cycled for absolutely everyone, all age groups, through the entire year, averaged across an entire lifetime. By comparison, English speaking countries all hover around 0.1 km per day by bike per person (look it up if you don't believe me). In all places, keen cyclists of course cycle a lot more than the average. Long distance journeys by bike are also more common in the Netherlands than in any other country.

(and no, we don't sell helmets...)

Just how safe are Dutch cyclists and Dutch cycle paths ?

Dutch cycle-path. Four metres wide
and well away from the road. In this
case used by school children.

I've pointed out before that the Netherlands has the safest roads in the world, and that cycle paths have also lead to this country having the safest cyclists in the world. However, for some this evidence simply isn't enough. In the English speaking world in particular, "experts" continue to insist on the ludicrous idea that cyclists are safer in the proximity of cars than without them. However, these countries also continue to have a stunningly low cycling rate.

Now the Germans have joined in too !

The Fietsberaad reports that...

Dutch cycle-path. Four metres wide
and taking a completely different
route to the road. It's good enough
for racing cyclists and it's good enough
for you too.

According to ADFC, the German Cyclists’ Union, people should cycle where they are safest: on the road among cars. Not on separate bike paths, as this would be more dangerous according to various studies. In the United States this news is eagerly distributed by opponents of bike paths. Dutch experts obviously refute this report.
The main argument in the German report is that cycling in the Netherlands is dangerous as 40% of all traffic accidents involve cyclists, whereas these only account for 27% of all travel. And this in spite of the number of bike paths. In Germany, on the other hand, there are fewer bike paths, as well as lower numbers of bicycle accidents in relation to the percentage of travel by bicycle. Conclusion: bike paths are dangerous. This conclusion about the (supposed) danger of separate bike paths in the Netherlands is however by no means well-founded or warranted.

As a matter of fact in the Netherlands cyclists are victims of traffic accidents in not 40% but even 50% of all cases, data provided by Fietsberaad demonstrate. But the percentages and statistics of CBS/Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Managements do not at first glance reveal that the overwhelming majority of these casualties are caused by unilateral accidents. A study by SWOV concluded that 80% of all bicycle accidents consists of unilateral accidents and accidents among cyclists. Moreover, this percentage is increasing. A mere 20% of all accidents involving cyclists concerns motorised vehicles, and numbers are falling steadily. The ADFC article emphasises accidents with motorised vehicles, whereas the main problem in the Netherlands consists of these unilateral accidents, instead of collisions with other vehicles, for example cyclists colliding with bollards.

Dutch cycle-path. Secondary route.
Three metres wide, parallel with
"busy" road. Part of a dense grid
of high quality cycle-routes which
go everywhere.

Anyway, unilateral accidents cause in general only minor injuries. A study by Consument en Veiligheid into unilateral bicycle accidents (November 2008), commissioned by Rijkswaterstaat Dienst Verkeer en Scheepvaart (RWS DVS), revealed that the annual number of treatments at Emergency Departments (SEH) after unilateral bicycle accidents is approximately 46,000. Approximately 6,000 of these victims require hospitalisation. The estimated annual number of traffic fatalities caused by unilateral bicycle accidents is 50. In 2007 there were 189 traffic fatalities among cyclists in the Netherlands.
And finally, improved safety by separation of traffic has by now been conclusively proven in the Netherlands. See for instance the fact sheet ‘Kwetsbare verkeersdeelnemers’ by SWOV (July 2009). This argues in favour of a complete separation of traffic participants with large differences in mass and speed. After all, in serious bilateral conflicts between for instance a car and a cyclist the inequality ratio is huge: 126. This means that in these types of conflicts the number of cyclists injured is 126 times higher than the number of motorists, seeing as people are well-protected in their cars and run relatively little risk at low speeds. In accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians the inequality ratio is a mere 1.7. In accidents involving two cyclists the ratio is of course 1. For the safety of cyclists it is therefore better to separate them from motor vehicles by providing separate bike paths.

Dutch cycle-path. Four metres wide
in quiet residential area

It's also worth pointing out that the view of safety is a bit different here. There are three types of safety to consider if you want to achieve a rate of cycling which is comparable with the Netherlands, or the safety that cyclists enjoy here.

You may also be interested in the concept of Sustainable safety which has lead to a continuing increase in safety in the Netherlands.

I have made a video comparing Dutch and German cycle paths.

Older people cycle in the Netherlands
In addition to the points made by the Fietsberaad statement above, another fact worth pointing out with regard to Dutch cycling crash statistics is that there is a far wider cycling demographic in the Netherlands, including many people who are more prone to injury when cycling and who simply don't cycle in other countries with anything like the same frequency. Retired people cycle for around a quarter of their journeys in the Netherlands and they are the unfortunate victims of 2/3rds of all the injuries and fatalities. Note that the collisions in which these crashes take places almost always involve only the retired person. No other cycles or other vehicles are involved in most cases. Without this more vulnerable group cycling, Dutch injury and death statistics when cycling per km travelled are already the best in the world and they would look about three times better than they do now if it were not for this additional burden of also having the most vulnerable cyclists in the world.

The photos show four of the many different cycle paths within a few hundred metres of our home in Assen, with different types of cyclists using them to cycle with a remarkable degree of safety compared with elsewhere. It's impossible to over-state the importance of a high density grid of extremely high quality infrastructure.

World's safest roads

The How We Drive blog recently covered a British document about making Britain's roads the safest in the world. At present, as shown in the diagram, Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) has the second safest roads in the world, while the United Kingdom (also including Northern Ireland) has the fourth safest. The number one position is taken by the Netherlands.

There is a very large difference between the Netherlands and the UK in the approach which has been taken to reduce casualties.

Britain has achieved its safety in large part by removing the vulnerable and increasing the safety of crashing motorists. This has happened by several different means. Road designs are such that they discourage cycling, resulting in the UK having amongst the lowest cycling rate in the world. Children are increasingly transported by their parents cars and are comparatively rarely seen on the streets alone. Pedestrians are inconvenienced by waiting for light controlled crossings or take detours behind metal barriers. Many more roads in the UK have physical barriers alongside them to prevent cars from crashing into inanimate objects, and trees near roads are removed to make crashes safer.

These things have improved overall safety, but at the expense of convenience and safety of pedestrians and cyclists. They have lead to more driving as a result, and an increasingly dangerous situation on Britain's roads for cyclists.

The Dutch approach is very different. The Netherlands has the highest rate of cycling in the world. There are far more vulnerable road users and children in particular have a remarkable degree of freedom to roam. The convenience of cyclists in particular is paramount in design. These things individually could be seen to increase the level of danger to the vulnerable, but despite all of it the roads in the Netherlands are still safer than those in the UK, or indeed anywhere else in the world.

There is a problem here for those who promote cycling in the UK. While Britain's overall safety record is comparable with that of the Netherlands, British cyclists experience about four times the level of danger (it's seventeen times as dangerous to be a cyclist in the US. Reference at the same link). Increasing their numbers will lead to the UK's overall casualty rate worsening. The only way to counter this is to do what the Dutch have done and make the vulnerable less vulnerable. It is possible to do this at the same time as making cyclist's journeys more convenient.

"Safety in numbers" is as much wishful thinking as anything else. Dutch cyclists are safe not merely because they are numerous, but because they have infrastructure which is sympathetic to cycling and makes cycling safe. The same number of cyclists plonked down in, say, London, would not fare so well.

Road deaths in the Netherlands dropped through sustainable
safety, not wishful thinking about safety in numbers.

A look at other countries in the chart shows another possible future for Britain. Belgium, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Sweden all have higher cycling rates than the UK though lower than the Netherlands. They also all have worse overall road casualty figures. You can put this down to having infrastructure which is simply not quite so good as in the Netherlands.

If Britain is to grow its rate of cycling and improve its safety then it needs a radical change to the way that planning is done. Cycling needs to be both attractive and genuinely safe. Reliance on the myth of "safety in numbers" will not make cyclists safe on unsafe roads.

The Dutch give the credit for their extremely good result for road safety to the principles of Sustainable Safety.

Other people have also written about suppression of activity by vulnerable road users.

2015 update

The blue line shows a clear rise
in cyclist injuries in the UK.

Sadly, my predication above that "Increasing their (cyclists) numbers will lead to the UK's overall casualty rate worsening" has proven to be true. The number of journeys made by bicycle in the UK has only risen a little, but cyclist injuries have risen along with that increase. The UK and other nations with the same problem need to copy those things which truly work to make cycling safe and convenient.

As for the other countries in the chart, some of you have a long way to go. American roads overall are nearly three times so dangerous as those in the Netherlands, but American cyclists experience 17x as much danger as their Dutch counterparts.

Three types of safety

Separate from the main road, a family cycles together, side-by-side. Straps on the front child seat are not done up. Slightly older children ride their own bikes. No-one wears safety equipment. The child in the rear is fiddling with something but the parents have no concerns concerned. This illustrates Subjective Safety.

The Netherlands is the safest place in the world to cycle. This is sometimes put down to a "safety in numbers" effect, but actually the infrastructure design is the vital component and shouldn't be overlooked. A lot of people would like their own country to emulate the Dutch success, but often they don't realise what is needed.

I used to do cycle promotion work in the UK, travelling from city to city and talking to a great number of people about cycling. They all already knew that cycling was healthy, good for the environment etc. Many people would like to be able to cycle. The number one reason that the average person in the street would give for not cycling was "it's too dangerous". So, what did they mean by this ?

One of many four metre wide cycle-paths
in Assen. School run cycling.

There are three measures of safety, all of which have their place in Dutch bicycle provision:

1. Actual safety - How many km you can expect to travel before you're injured on your bike.
2. Subjective safety (sometimes called "perceived" safety) - Are you near fast moving traffic ? Is it easy to make a turn across traffic ? Do you have to cycle "fast" in order to keep up ?
3. Social safety - Is there a mugger around that blind corner ? Will I be attacked in the street if I cycle ?

Cycle campaigners and planners might interest themselves in the actual safety, and it's a good thing that they do. Cyclists should of course be as safe as possible. However, no-one really makes a decision on whether to cycle or not based on these figures. Actually, cycling isn't really very risky in most countries and these figures often feature in cycle promotion literature. However, they're not successfully convincing people to take up cycling.

When people make the decision about whether it is "safe to cycle", they generally mean the second and third of our three different types of safety: Subjective Safety and Social Safety.

Also, if they're making a decision for someone else - perhaps their child or their partner - these issues become even more important.

Mother and children. Having several
metres of separation from the road
is essential for a high level of
subjective safety.

How do you improve Subjective Safety ? Here's a partial list:

• Cyclists should never mix with high speed or high volume motor traffic. A third of all roads in the Netherlands have a speed limit of 30 km/h or lower, most 50 km/h (30 mph) roads provide cyclists with a segregated path, as do many 30 km/h roads with higher volumes of traffic.
• On-road bike lanes and cycle paths without sufficient separation from the road are not suitable with high speed or high volume motor traffic.
• Reductions in speed and volume of traffic always help. All residential streets and a third of the entire road network has a 30 km/h (18 mph) speed limit or lower.
• Fully segregated cycle paths provide a good degree of subjective safety but must be built to a suitable standard. In this area they have a minimum width of 2.5 metres if for single direction use and 4 m for bidirectional use. Paths for pedestrians are separate.
• Junctions should be designed to make sure that cyclists are not left out. Cyclists can be separated in both time and space from motorists to maximise both efficiency and safety.
• In many cases, cyclists avoid junctions altogether so they cause as little inconvenience as possible.
• In Assen, the new standards require that cycle paths which follow the line of roads are separated from them by 2.5 metres. Where this isn't possible you will find a metal barrier is used, to provide a feeling of subjective safety as well as actual safety from crashing vehicles.
• Where possible, cycle routes follow a completely different route to driving routes, which of course improves the feeling of safety further.
• Reducing the noise of motor vehicles by using quieter road surfaces and installing noise barriers between the road and cyclists helps.

In the countryside away from all
motorized traffic, our family, rides
in comfort,

For social safety:

• You should always be able to see out of any tunnel as you enter it.
• Blind corners on paths are not acceptable.
• Cycle paths should be wide to allow cyclists to move out of the way of other people who may be on the path.
• Good sight-lines are required and there should be no places to hide along a cycle route.
• A low crime rate and a good conviction rate are needed. Cyclists should not feel that the police do not take their complaints seriously. 
• Areas that are clean, litter free, graffiti free, where grass is mowed and plants are not allowed to overhang the cycle path have a better feeling of social safety.
• Cycle paths should be lit at night so that you can see potential muggers, obstacles on the path etc.

If subjective and social safety are improved then people will cycle. They will want to. and so they will do it.

To summarise... No-one will do anything that feels too dangerous to them. Everyone wants their child to be safe and their partner to be safe. That's why so many journeys which ought to be cycleable are made by car. There is no point in arguing with people's decisions, or ridiculing them. The person making the decision to use a car has made it for quite logical reasons. Their level of confidence about cycling in the conditions around you is not the same as your own.

What to do... If you want people who do not cycle to take up cycling, then the right thing to do is to campaign for or design in road conditions which make cycling into an appealing option. That is what the Dutch have done. Everywhere. It is the key to the high cycle usage and high cycle safety figures.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that subjective safety is a concern only for inexperienced cyclists. No-one suffers from cycling being pleasant. Steps to increase the subjective and social safety of cyclists lead to a better cycling experience for all. Experienced cyclists are less likely to give up cycling in a subjectively safe environment. It becomes a lifetime habit. People continuing to want to cycle on the road when there is a parallel cycle-path are a sign of failure due to low quality. Always set your sights high enough when campaigning or planning.

A British child being trained. Wearing
fluorescent clothes and a helmet to ride
in the gutter on a residential street
which is subject to rat-running

So, where do helmets and fluorescent clothing fit in ? For some individuals, wearing such a thing improves their own feeling of safety to the level that they will ride. However, these items actually do little to improve actual safety and can have a negative effect on the subjective safety of other people due to making cycling look dangerous. Where cycling has a high degree of subjective safety, as it does here, no-one wears these safety aids. Dutch cyclists are safer without them than cyclists elsewhere are with them.

For more on the same theme, perhaps this post is most suitable. There are quite a few other posts tagged subjective safety which show different aspects of what makes cycling subjectively safe and the result of it. Amongst the other things needed to make cycling attractive is to make cycling more direct, so there are a lot of examples there to illustrate that concept too.

Big picture vs. small picture subjective safety
December 2011 update: I've realised since writing the text above that many people have slightly misinterpreted what I meant. There are two types of "subjective safety".

The most important, "big picture", type of subjective safety is that of society as a whole which causes everyone to cycle. This is what my article is about and this is what causes Dutch people of all ages and social positions to find cycling to be a safe activity, even wearing black clothes on an unlit bicycle at night. Cycling in the Netherlands always feels safe. This leads to a very high modal share for cycling.

The other, "small picture", type of subjective safety is that which involves people using safety equipment such as fluorescent clothes and helmets when they cycle. While this may make it possible for a few individuals who are already interested in cycling to cycle a bit more and to feel safer as they do so, it is debatable whether this does anything for the overall modal share for cycling.

Some people argue that it is detrimental to the modal share if cyclists take up visible safety equipment to improve their own "small picture" subjective safety. I suspect that "big picture" subjective safety is barely altered at all by this. The issues that people who don't cycle can see and which put them off cycling are with street design, not with the clothing of existing cyclists.

All the photos are of subjectively safe cyclists in the Netherlands, except the last which is of a British child being taught "safer cycling" in Cambridge. He is riding too close to the kerb on an unsuitable bike, but wearing fluorescent clothing and a helmet. The child in the fluorescent clothing will probably give up on cycling within a few years, while the Dutch cyclists will in all likelihood keep on cycling through their lives because high levels of subjective safety make it a pleasant thing to do.

The children in the photo at the top are all tired. Why ? Because this family is returning from the last day of a four day cycling event. They've cycled at least 40 km per day as part of the event, plus however far it is between their home and the startplace in Assen. The object which the child at the back is fiddling with as he cycles is a medal.

Per km travelled, Dutch cyclists are 3x less likely to die and 4x less likely to be injured than those in the UK, 5x less likely to be killed and 30x less likely to be injured than in the USA (statistics found here, page 506). Read more about the safety of cyclists in the Netherlands. However, this doesn't tell nearly the whole story, it's actually much safer than that for Dutch cyclists who fit the usual demographic for cycling in other countries. Two thirds of all cyclist deaths in the Netherlands are of people aged over 65. Most of their lethal injuries come from single vehicle collisions. i.e. when old people fall off their bikes, old age sadly can be enough to do the rest. This effect is virtually unknown in the UK and USA because so few older people cycle.