Dutch cyclists talk about helmets and bicycles

Paul van Bellen, who organised the Australian study tour earlier in the year, made this video on his last day in Amsterdam.

These reactions are similar to that of the waitress who we interviewed in an Assen restaurant during their tour:


Dutch people typically can't see a need to wear a helmet for everyday cycling. Cycling is seen as an inherently safe activity and the whole population takes part every day. Cycling is not associated with danger. It shouldn't be, because even here where people cycle so much, cycling is not nearly the most risky activity that most people are involved with on a daily basis.

The fact is that in this country, where there are more cyclists than any other and where cycling is common amongst a wider demographic than any other country (which means it includes more of those who are more vulnerable. i.e. the very old and the very young), the average person can expect to live several thousand lifetimes between fatal head injuries while cycling. i.e. other causes of death are thousands of times more significant than are head injuries while cycling.

If you're thinking of campaigning for helmets, keep these facts in mind. It's not cycling which is dangerous, it is the motor car. If you live in a country where cycling is more dangerous than it is here (and that's every country outside of the Netherlands) and you wish to make cycling safer, then you should address the danger at source, following best practice from the Netherlands. That will achieve far greater health benefits for your population than will imposing rules which will make cycling less popular and thereby undoing many of the great health benefits which come due to cycling.

Rather than looking at this in a one-dimensional way and missing the big picture altogether, doctors in the Netherlands take a rational approach. They prescribe cycling to keep people healthy because the huge benefits outweigh the small risks.

To discover more, book a study tour. Paul is the Gazelle importer in Australia

Stairs are dangerous - wear a helmet

In 2008, 716 cyclists died on the roads of the United States. It's quite a death toll - it would of course be better if there were fewer. However, by comparison, 12000 people die each year on stairs in the same country. It's much the same pattern in any country. Stairs are much more dangerous than bicycles. Nearly 17x as dangerous.

This article provides a list of helpful tips to prevent injuries from falling:

Here are some tips from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association to help prevent injuries from falls.

Keep muscles and bones strong, by following an exercise regimen:

1. Strength training with weight bearing and resistive exercise works for all age groups.
2. Practice exercises designed to help improve balance.
3. Exercise at least three days a week to improve strength, flexibility and balance.
4. Choose low-impact exercises, such as yoga, tai chi and Pilates to avoid stress on joints.
5. Stretch daily to improve flexibility and mobility.

Make your home safer with simple improvements:

1. Good lighting, without extension cords, to eliminate dark areas.
2. Slip-resistant walking surfaces.
3. Grab-bars and a night light in the bathroom.
4. Handrails on both sides of stairs extending one foot beyond last step.
5. Remove throw rugs from doorways and hallways.

If you have fallen before, follow these recommendations:

1. Consider a full physical evaluation and balance screen, including vision and hearing tests.
2. Wear shoes with good support, such as lace-up oxford shoes with leather soles and rubber heels.

What's more, "The actual number is probably much larger. We believe most stair incidents are not reported". This is a scandal ! Stairs are demonstrably dangerous. So much so that they are the second largest cause of unintended injuries in the United States. When will we see national campaigns about stair safety, advocacy of helmets and special safety clothing for use of stairs ?

Why are Stannah stair lifts only marketed to the elderly ?

Children should be taught to use Stannah stair lifts. We can save lives with a campaign for this. Parents should set an example by always using a stair lift themselves.

Oh, hang on, there's a worse problem
Wait. Stairs are only the second largest cause of unintended injuries. What's the largest cause ? You'll perhaps not be surprised to hear that Motor vehicles are actually the largest cause of unintended injuries. Perhaps we should be putting our efforts on safety there.

And it gets worse. If you look not just "unintended injuries" but at "preventable causes of death" for the USA, the picture changes again. Now the 43000 deaths per year due to Traffic Collisions looks a little less significant as there are five other greater preventable causes of death. However, up there in the number two position, are 112000 deaths per year due to "overweight and obesity".

With this, cycling comes into the picture again. If the population can be convinced to take regular daily exercise as a part of their everyday lives, there is a very good chance of reducing that enormous death toll. If these people cycle instead of drive, they not only will reduce their chance of being one of 112000 dying each year due to being overweight or obese, they'll also reduce their chance of having anything to do with the 43000 deaths due to motor vehicles.

By comparison, the 716 deaths of cyclists now look a bit less significant. So why are cyclists the focus of so much "safety" campaigning ? In any case, helmets can only do so much. Of those 716 cyclists who lost their lives on American roads in 2009, only some will have died due to a head injury. Of those who died due to a head injury, only some won't have been wearing a helmet at the time of the crash. And of the non-helmet wearing cyclists who died of head injuries amongst the 716, only some might have had their lives saved by wearing a helmet. The potential gain to society by scaremongering over bicycle helmets is small. By comparison, the potential gain by encouraging people out of cars and onto bikes is enormous. Also the potential gain by re-arranging the streets to resemble those of the Netherlands is also enormous. Dutch cyclists are the safest in the world, with a death rate per km cycled 5x lower and an injury rate 27x lower than in the US, even though helmets are very rarely seen except on sport cyclists.

Note that because many of the other preventable causes of death catch up with us only as we get older, if you're an American aged between 1 and 44, the most likely preventable cause of death for you is a motor vehicle crash. For children aged between 9 and 18, it is the most common preventable cause of death worldwide.

If you want to make children safer, and cyclists safer too, then don't campaign for cycle helmets, or for improvements in stair safety either. The thing to do is to copy what has been done in the Netherlands. In particular, this campaign, and always keep an eye on the need for a high degree of subjective safety.

At present, there is a "wrong headed" attempt to make cycle helmets compulsory in Northern Ireland. The last day to sign a petition against this is today.

Update a bit later in the day: Some people in the comments are getting a bit too interested in exact statistics for how dangerous stairs are. Actually, this isn't really the point. The point is that there are many things more dangerous than cycling, however you count them. This post is about keeping a sense of perspective about different risks. There is simply too much scaremongering about cycling.

Note that exercise is listed as one of the things that improves your chances when climbing stairs. Cycling is also low impact exercise, so ride a bike and you're safer there too. In the photo at the top, Judy risks climbing the stairs of a local lookout tower - without wearing a helmet. I'll end on a serious note: Hold the rail when you walk on stairs. It might save your life.

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...)

Compulsory Flags ?

I mentioned a few days ago that this weekend is the national recumbent bike weekend in the Netherlands.

Contemporaneous with this, there's a slightly worrying story from Australia. Apparently there is a proposal to make all recumbent cyclists in the country have a flag on their bikes in order to "increase regulation and legal compliance of human powered vehicles." As the linked article notes, "this proposal appears to be based based on spurious and anecdotal experiential demand."

Australia is already one of the very few places where cycling helmets are compulsory, and this is another step along the same lines. The message would seem to be that "cycling is dangerous". It's a mystery to me why Australians, who to much of the world seem to have rather a "rugged" reputation should seemingly be scared of bicycles and leading the world in such scaremongering. However, Australia's cycling rate is one of the very lowest in the world, so if the intention is to marginalize cycling then I guess it's working.

Bicycles are in themselves extremely safe. It is automobiles which kill as many people as wars, not bikes. Recumbent bikes may actually be rather safer, in that falls are often from a lower height, and if you fall, you usually land on your backside. In the case of a velomobile like my Mango, you're completely surrounded by a shell which protects in the case of a crash.

I'm not aware of any real evidence that recumbents are less visible than other bikes. Indeed, my experience on first riding one on the roads in the UK was that more drivers noticed me, and these would give me more space on the road. Sometimes dramatically more space. I certainly don't believe that my 2.5 m long bright yellow Mango would be more visible if only for a 15 cm long flag, and my brief experimentation with a flag on a two wheel recumbent (in the photo above) lead to a conclusion that from behind, the flag was the least visible part of the bike.

I don't believe that there is actually any reliable evidence one way or the other about relative safety of recumbent vs. other bicycles, so punitive laws against a particular group of cyclists are difficult to justify.

It's issues like this that require cyclists to behave as a whole. It does no good for different "tribes" to develop. It's no good for racers to disregard the interests of mums with kids on bikes, or for "slow cyclists" to distance themselves from sport cyclists. Indeed, it doesn't even help for cyclists to distance themselves from drivers. If we're to see a dramatic increase in cycling around the world, people who drive now are future cyclists. These kinds of issues affect everyone. "Them and us" helps none of us.

The photo is of my old Pashley PDQ on the top of Shap Fell, part way along the one tour when I did use a flag. It was less visible than the basket. Of course, if you prefer to ride with a flag, that's your own personal choice. Good luck to you.

OV Fiets in Vancouver

40% of passengers on Dutch trains arrived at the railway station by bike. This makes it impractical to allow people to all take their bikes on the trains, especially at rush hour. In this way, cycling is a victim of its own success. One of the solutions to the problem is the OV-Fiets.

The Dutch shared bike scheme, OV-Fiets, is a bit unlike most bike share schemes in that it operates with public transport. OV stands for "Openbaar Vervoer" which is Dutch for "Public Transport."

These bikes are available at 200 locations around the country, including almost all railway stations. The idea is that they are used by commuters. An annual subscription costs just €9.50 per year, and then it costs €2.85 to hire a bike for a day. This can be a maximum of 20 hours - the idea being that it is not for tourists - though virtually every railway station also has normal hire bikes available.

OV-Fiets bikes are always either under the roof of the railway station bike shop or in the possession of someone who has hired the bike. I suspect this keeps the vandalism rate well down in comparison with some other bike share schemes. However, they are also available from lockers or even "bike dispenser" vending machines at some locations.

Anyway, the video shows the 400 OV-Fiets bikes which are currently in Vancouver in Canada for the use of Dutch athletes during the winter Olympics. It's a bit odd in that people are wearing fluorescent jackets, and even helmets... but the prime minister doesn't bother even though they're compulsory.

On to the Olympics. The photo shows Sven Kremer signing a golden OV-Fiets after winning the gold medal for the 5000 m ice skating race yesterday. He set a new Olympic record time of 6:14.60.

And talking of ice-skating... It's still pretty cold here. People have been skating on the canals, and velomobiling on lakes too...

I previously covered the amusing advertising for OV-Fiets. The video is another from Mark Wagenbuur. There are also vending machines just for innertubes rather than a whole bike.

Zeeland - getting it wrong in the "year of the bike"

Zeeland, the most south west province of the Netherlands which shares a border with Belgium, has declared 2010 to be "the year of the bike." The idea is promote more cycle usage in the province.

However, that's not all they're doing. Sadly the good stuff is rather overshadowed by Zeeland having decided to promote the use of bicycle helmets amongst school children, starting in one area with the intention of spreading across the province if they are "successful". That's pretty much a first for this country.

So, what's wrong with it ? Well, there has yet to be a helmet campaign which has been accompanied by a rise in cycle usage. In Australia, huge falls were seen.

Zeeland ought to take note of what happened in New Zealand, which was named after the province. I grew up in New Zealand, returning to the UK at the age of 15. As children we always cycled to school. However, now ? The website for my old secondary school doesn't mention cycling at all. Rather, there is now a bus route promoted for the 4 km trip that I used to make by bike. Is this the future that Zeeland wants to see ?

English speaking countries don't provide any good examples. I watched cycle sheds being torn down at the secondary school near where we lived in the UK a few years back.

Dutch secondary schools have lots of cycle parking at present because they need it. Do we want to see this go away altogether as it has in countries where cycle helmets have been promoted and cycling has not been supported ?

Also, consider how children use bicycles in the Netherlands. If someone turns up at a friend's house without a bike and an outing is planned, they borrow someone else's bike, or ride on the back of a friend's bike. No-one thinks of this as dangerous. However, if it becomes the norm that a helmet is required, neither of these options will work if just one child is without a bike helmet, so none will travel by bike. Perhaps Mum will helpfully suggest she can give them a lift in a car ? That's how it is in other countries - ones where very few people cycle.

Inconvenience is a large part of the problem with requiring people to have special equipment in order to cycle. The same problem as Mike Rubbo pointed out makes bike share impractical in Australia.

Just imagine if you could only walk somewhere if you took along some special piece of personalized equipment. Say expensively custom fitted walking boots, and if there was a campaign to say that without fitted walking boots, walking was dangerous. If you cycled to a friend's house, with your normal comfortable cycling shoes, and they suggested that you go for a walk you'd not be able to take part.

What's more, this type of cycle promotion plants a seed of an idea. The idea being that here in the world's safest cycling country, cyclists are not actually safe at all. Perhaps this suggests that it's best not to cycle. Cycling relies on a high degree of subjective safety. Without this, cycling declines.

Zeeland is also the province where the fuss arose last year about considering implementing a speed limit on cycle paths. Apparently, Belgian cycle racers who come across the border to ride on Zeeuwse cycle paths are a nuisance. However, the only reason these cyclists come across the border is because conditions are better for them in Zeeland than on the roads in their own country.

I found the story on ligfiets.net.

Bike share... and helmets

I've pointed out before that I'm a skeptic about the potential for bike share schemes because the numbers just don't add up to a significant culture of cycling.

I also rarely post about helmets, as I see them more as a symptom of a problem, primarily that there is inadequate subjective safety which causes people to see a need for safety equipment.

However, Mike Rubbo's latest blog post and film, makes an excellent point that compulsory helmets and bike share are fundamentally incompatible. Neither can exist with the other.

Incidentally, we had a film crew here in Assen yesterday who only after the shoot realised that they'd not worn a helmet as they would have in the UK. It just doesn't feel necessary to wear one in somewhere like Assen.

Sue Abbott without a helmet

From Mike Rubbo's blog Sit-Up Cycle, this video is of Sue Abbott, an Australian who is facing legal action in Australia for refusing to wear a helmet when cycling.

As most readers will know, Dutch cyclists are both the most numerous and the safest in the world. In fact, the roads of the Netherlands are the safest in the world. Helmets are very rarely worn in this country, virtually not at all for utility journeys, though sport cyclists tend to wear them as part of the uniform. Australia's helmet compulsion is a misguided attempt to improve cyclist safety, when what really needs to happen is investment in cycling infrastructure. That is the way to increase the cycling rate and to make the population more healthy.

Update: Sue has now been to court. See the follow up post and video on Mike's blog.

Mike Rubbo is an Australian who has directed, produced, and filmed many wonderful movies that you may already have seen. Sue now has her own blog.

Dutch cycling retains its popularity

Velomondial points to the latest version of the wonderful "Cycling in the Netherlands" document from the Fietsberaad. I highly recommend a read of this document. It contains a lot of statistics, but gives them in an easy to read form with some really wonderful photos.

Commentators from elsewhere may be interested in this passage from page 71 (page 36 of the PDF file): "Wearing a bicycle helmet for daily trips is unusual in the Netherlands. Only competitive cyclists or mountain bikers tend to wear a helmet for their sport. Some parents give young children bicycle helmets. Usually the helmet is simply packed away for good before the offspring are 10 years old. There is certainly no support for mandatory helmeting. The fear exists that making it mandatory would cause a drop in bicycle use."

Pushing of cycle helmets has recently been blamed for a reduction in cycling in Denmark.

Policies here are still aimed mainly at increasing cycle usage by improving infrastructure to result in an improved experience for cyclists. This has been pursued to a greater extent than in any other country and it has succeeded to a greater extent than in any other country. Overall, the Netherlands still has by far the highest cycling rate with 26% of journeys by bike. Denmark is still in second place with around 19% of journeys by bike and by way of comparison, the English speaking countries all still have around 1% of journeys by bicycle.

The photo shows bikes outside a village church last Sunday. This is a popular way of getting to church. Sadly, the Danish cycling rate dropped since this article was written.

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.