The Dutch government has launched a campaign urging people to voluntarily wear helmets while riding their bikes, after new road safety statistics revealed that 17 per cent of all cyclists involved in crashes in 2024 suffered brain or skull injuries.

The ‘Zet ‘m Op’ (or ‘Put It On’) campaign will be initially aimed at children, commuters, and elderly people, and aims to ensure that 25 per cent of all cyclists in the Netherlands will opt for a helmet within ten years – a 600 per cent jump compared to the country’s current helmet-donning population.

However, behavioural scientists have warned that, while the government’s attempt to encourage helmet use can succeed, it will be a “long-term process” and will face resistance in a nation where cycling is the norm but helmets are not.

And the Dutch Cyclists’ Union and other activists have criticised the scheme and its “one-sided” focus on helmets, arguing that it will lead people to associate cycling with danger, and that the key to ensuring the safety of cyclists is creating more safe infrastructure and clamping down on dangerous driving.

Utrecht cyclists (picture credit Visit-Utrecht.com)
Utrecht cyclists (picture credit Visit-Utrecht (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

In a country with a distinct, deeply embedded cycling culture and where 28 per cent of all journeys are made by bike, only 3.5 per cent of Dutch cyclists wear helmets, which are usually confined to the nation’s sport or leisure cyclists.

However, calls for the Netherlands’ fietsers, or everyday cyclists, to wear helmets while out and about have been increasing in volume in recent years, as the number of cyclists seriously injured each year has risen by 27 per cent over the past decade, according to injury prevention organisation Veiligheid NL.

New figures released by Veiligheid this week revealed that 74,300 cyclists ended up in hospital last year following crashes – accounting for over half of all casualties on the road – while 48,900 sustained serious injuries, a number that continues to grow despite the overall collision total dropping by just under 14,000 compared to 2023.

Of these cycling casualties in 2024, just under half (49 per cent) suffered a broken bone. Four per cent sustained serious damage to the brain or skull, while 13 per cent sustained a minor brain injury, meaning 12,500 cyclists in the Netherlands suffered some kind of brain injury last year.

40 per cent of the 246 cyclists killed on Dutch roads in 2024 were the result of a collision involving a motorist, while head injuries were the cause of 60 per cent of all cyclists’ deaths.

> Dutch government and neurologists call on cyclists to wear helmets – but cyclists’ union says “too much emphasis” on helmets discourages cycling and “has an air of victim blaming”

The Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research claimed last year that if all Dutch cyclists wore helmets, fatalities on the road would drop by 85 each year, and the number of serious injuries reduced by 2,500.

This week, David Baden, a doctor in the emergency department at Utrecht’s Diakonessenhuis hospital, told NOS that he sees cyclists who have been injured in crashes every day, and argued that more protection on the bike is “urgently needed”.

Speaking at the launch of the ‘Zet ‘m Op’ initiative at Haagsche Schoolvereniging primary school in The Hague on Wednesday, which was attended by infrastructure minister Barry Madlener, safety organisations, and former Manchester United goalkeeper and brain injury campaigner Edwin van der Sar, the chair of Doctors for Safe Cycling pointed out that voluntary helmet use should be part of a broader plan to improve road safety.

“We have a reasonable infrastructure, with good bike paths, but we cannot deny that there are a lot of falls,” intensive care neurologist Marcel Aries said at the launch, Dutch News reports.

“If you look at the injuries, almost a fifth involve brain injuries. That is a gigantic figure. If you want to keep healthcare affordable, there is much to gain here.

“But we aren’t there with just a helmet and a good campaign. The ministry should be open for rules and better infrastructure because cycling traffic is so different from 10 years ago, with speed pedelecs that go at 40 kph, e-bikes, and normal bicycles all on a relatively narrow cycling path.”

An old-style bike counter in the Netherlands
An old-style bike counter in the Netherlands (Image Credit: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Will Vanlue:Flickr)

The campaign will feature test events where cyclists can try out helmets, while the government says it will attempt to make helmets more attractive through discounts and collaborations with manufacturers to “improve” designs.

It will primarily target parents of young children, commuters, and older cyclists, after the recent safety stats revealed that 41 per cent of all cycling injuries involve people aged over 55 – which Baden says are often the result of e-bike crashes.

“That has to do with reduced muscle strength, reduced reaction time, and a faster-moving vehicle,” the doctor said.

Baden also said that children regularly end up in hospital, because “they are just starting to ride a bike, they are still learning the skill, and have even less insight into the dangers of traffic.”

“We have spent 100 years trying to tackle the behaviour of car drivers”

However, with helmet use such a rarity in the Netherlands, a behavioural scientist at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University believes encouraging a quarter of all Dutch cyclists to don helmets will be a “long-term process”.

“These kinds of changes can succeed,” Inge Merkelbach told NOS. “But it will be a long-term process. Change always leads to resistance.

“You have to buy a bicycle helmet, it does something to your hair, and no one else wears one. People find that unpleasant: we don’t want to be the odd one out.”

Utrecht cycle junction (screenshot video Dutch Cycling Embassy/Twitter)
Twitter) (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

This resistance was strikingly evident at the campaign’s launch, where activists from lobby group The Lab of Thought – who weren’t invited to the event but handed out leaflets to children at the school – accused the government of abdicating its own responsibility to keep the country’s roads safe for cyclists.

> Why is Dan Walker’s claim that a bike helmet saved his life so controversial?

“I think it’s crazy that the person with the most responsibility and influence as minister spends his time giving out free helmets,” Frank Kwanten told Dutch News.

“It is saying that if the government doesn’t protect you, you need to do it yourself. There are all kinds of effects, such as people coming to associate cycling with danger.

“The system should be such that everyone can get to school safely. We have spent 100 years trying to tackle the behaviour of car drivers.”

Meanwhile, the director of the Dutch Cyclists’ Union, Fietsersbond (who also didn’t attend the event), accused the government of making hollow political promises to reduce the number of cycling injuries without investing in safer infrastructure.

“No-one is against wearing helmets, but the one-sided focus on cycling helmets distracts from the real issues: speed and the need for safer infrastructure,” the union’s director Esther van Garderen said, while Amsterdam’s cycling mayor Romee Nicolai argued that it would be “horrendous” if the responsibility for safety was passed on to children and their choice of headgear.

> British cyclists feel less safe and more dissatisfied with their cycle lanes compared to European riders, research finds

However, speaking at the event, infrastructure minister Barry Madlener criticised the cycling campaigners’ stance and said it was “totally incomprehensive” that they believe a voluntary helmet campaign aimed primarily at children constitutes “victim blaming”.

“Traffic is of course very much about behaviour and part of it is your own personal responsibility,” Madlener, a member of Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), said.

 “I think it’s good to be aware that we all contribute to our safety, for ourselves and for others, and that we should promote this message rather than a negative one that this is victim blaming – I completely disagree.

“We need an awareness that you are very vulnerable as a participant in traffic on a bike, because a lot of people don’t realise this sufficiently.”