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Dutch bike path (credit: CC BY-NC 2.0/davsot on Flickr)Dutch cycle lanes could soon have speed limits, as government also targets increasing helmet use "without leading to a reduction in people cycling"
The Dutch government has proposed a trial to allow local councils to introduce speed limits on cycle paths and bike lanes, the move said to be in the name of safety and coming alongside other proposals such as testing whether routes are improved by moving electric cargo delivery bikes onto roads.
Dutch News reports that caretaker infrastructure minister Robert Tieman has sent the proposal to parliament, the idea part of a multi-year cycling strategy which policy makers hope will boost safety. The aim, he has said, is to reduce speeds in cycle lanes and on bike paths, the growth of electric bikes and micromobility meaning there is now a wide range of speeds and masses using the country's cycling infrastructure.
Amsterdam bike path (credit: CC BY-SA 4.0/wikimedia commons)It has also been suggested that local councils will be able to trial moving electric cargo bikes, primarily used for deliveries, onto roads. No formal legislation is to be finalised or decided upon until the response from the trials has been collated although, clearly, if it is a success then national traffic legislation could be updated.
The move comes as part of the aforementioned cycling strategy, the government hoping to reduce the number of cycling injuries and fatalities. Last year, around a third of the 675 people to die on Dutch roads were cyclists.
However, while a road safety research institute, Swov, has said most safety benefits would come from improving cycling infrastructure, the government has proposed this speed limit trial and set a target to increase helmet use "without leading to a reduction in people cycling".
Within 10 years the government wants 25 per cent helmet use by focusing mainly on elderly riders, children and commuters. The current use of helmets stands at around four per cent.
Swov director Martin Damen has previously stated that "creating safer and future-proof cycling infrastructure" would be an effective step, but also suggested "encouraging helmet use could prevent many head and brain injuries".
Commenting specifically on the latest proposal for speed limits and cargo bikes to use the roads, Swov spokesperson Wendy Weijermars said improving infrastructure should be the number one priority.
Dutch bike path (credit: CC BY-NC 2.0/davsot on Flickr)"That means no obstacles alongside cycle paths, good road surfaces and safe verges," she said.
It was back in April when we first reported the Dutch government's 'Zet 'm Op' (or 'Put It On') campaign for increasing helmet use – the target 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.
The Dutch Cyclists' Union and other activists have also 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.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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17 comments
Speed limits will not work because most bicycles do not have a speedometer. How to check speed when you do not know what speed you are going?
All these E-bikes that look like motorcycles are the problem because people just upgrade them to be illegally going above 25kmh limit and without pedal assist, just a throttle. Ban these!
Speed limits will not work because most bicycles do not have a speedometer
But many are equipped with Schrodinger's Speedometers according to the police: simultaneously cyclists are always travelling at less than 16kph so that crossing single and double white lines to overtake a cyclist is always legal, no matter what the visibility or circumstances...
https://upride.cc/incident/hk64pzt_audiq5_dwlcross/
https://upride.cc/incident/dp14fym_insignia_closepassdwlcross/
... while also always travelling at over 50 kph when they want to blame the cyclist for some offence against them, or to support the Telegraph and Mail
Swov director Martin Damen has previously stated that "creating safer and future-proof cycling infrastructure" would be an effective step, but also suggested "encouraging helmet use could prevent many head and brain injuries".
The amount of misinformation about helmets is staggering, even in Holland, which is very safe for cyclists despite very low levels of helmet use.
Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, as I've just come across a recently published paper which quotes the infamous and disproved Thompson RS, Rivara FP, Thompson DC study, A case-control study on the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets. N Engl J Med. 1989;320(21):1361–7. The fact that this atrocious piece of research is still being quoted today to justify helmet laws and promotion is literally incredible, and any paper quoting it can be dismissed out of hand as being abysmally researched. If you quote disproved research twenty years after it was disproved, you really shouldn't be publishing anything. It doesn't exactly reflect well on the publishers either, and they claim articles are peer reviewed: by whom? the cat?
https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-025-00596-8
Wouldn't that be 'purr reviewed'?
(By the fur-most experts in their field.)
IIRC SWOV and cycle campaigners (e.g. the Fietsersbond, Dutch Cycling Embassy etc.) don't always align, any more than RoSPA and e.g. Cycling UK.
In fact, like the UK there are a bunch of (government-affiliated or not, more or less specialised) safety organisations - e.g. the Dutch Safety Board, Veligheid.nl - the latter did some statistics-crunching for a lengthy report a few years back.
The Dutch may now (just ... perhaps ...) be at a point where it is an overall population health benefit to run some "wear helmets" campaigns - particularly for the most vulnerable e.g. young and old. However I don't recall seeing any analysis of what effect this might have on the amount of cycling. Anything that reduces that - even slightly - will probably overwhelm any "reduced injuries" benefits (again - averaged over population). The details almost certainly matter here.
OTOH it sounds like they could get even more benefit from continuing their improvements in safety and convenience for cyclists [1] [2].
As a few people from NL have commented, while the effect of the populist swing on transport is (very) debatable, there does seem to have been a measure of "taking eye off ball" with cycling at least. Although this may be a less political long term "motor brain" reasserting itself?
https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2023/04/whats-gone-wrong-with-road...
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/cycling-safety-in-the-neth...
It seems that mass cycling - like many "commons" - is not something which is necessarily self-reinforcing, or at least not terribly stable in a world of motorised everything (with vast funding behind it).
This isnt going to be good for the sale of road bikes in the Netherlands. I used to often head there on the bike when I lived in Germany. I could ride across the border and I can say that as great a nation for cycling culture it may be, riding at any pace isnt easy. Cycle path in and around towns are very busy and if you try to ride on the road you get the same impatient drivers who expect you to be on the path. I will also add the amount of people riding scooters on the cycle paths needs sorting before they start curbing cycling speeds.
I know this is something that's been mentioned before, but how exactly do you enforce a speed limit on a cycle path? Do you make cycle computers mandatory? Surely, in this case, that would go down with the average Dutch cyclist just as well as mandatory helmets?
Schwalbe Marathon Plus.
According to BRR, Schwalbe Marathon "Racer" is even slower!
And so, apparently, is at least one version of the G-one all-round. I was glad to read it because that was my subjective impression when I bought some
Well, there are already speed limits for bike lanes...technically. It applies to "motorized" vehicles, so typically that's scooters and speed pedelecs (and probably canta's too). In urban areas, the limit is 30kmh, and outisde urban areas 40kmh (from memory). The only way to enforce it is to have plod stand there with a radar gun. In my thousands of km ridden around towns, cities and polders I have never once seen that.
So, as usual, stick to enforcement of existing laws. New ones aren't necessary (or just need a tweak to include something new). FYI I did read something else on this (to do with banning fatbikes) where again they talk about enforcement instead of rules, but also upgrades to infra to account for higher speeds and higher volume (cyclists, not fatbike tire volume!).
And talking of infra upgrades, I rode along the seafront at Katwijk for the first time in quite a while. I was pleasantly surprised to see two bike lanes heading south. One segregated for slower riders, and one "express" lane (basically a murder strip) at the road edge meant for cyclists going over 20kph.
Edit: I checked, indeed it is 30 and 40 kmh for scooters (brommers) etc.
I guess it cuts both ways. So this (unpowered apparently) would be "too fast on the fietspad"?
OTOH would it be an improvement if somehow I could swap riding on the roads with Edinburgh's mostly good enough drivers (plus a few borderline incompetent and the fortunately very rare homicidal ones) for riding on the current narrow cycle infra with the same folks - but they're now on e-motorbikes?
What am I saying? At least I wouldn't have to be watching for all the pot holes as well...
Not sure you can even rely on GPS accuracy in a built up city. My Garmin struggles in London.
On my mother's road there's one of those light-up speed signs that can be triggered by a cyclist (usually a silly mid-50s idiot trying to prove he can still do 30 mph on the flat). I guess you could have them at the side of the cycle path warning a cyclist that they are breaking the limit and then an observing plod could pinch them if they failed to slow down? Not saying that would be a good thing, but it might be one way of doing it.
I think having a few of them at pinch points to educate cyclists on how fast they are going could be a good idea, but I'm not convinced linking them to formal enforcement could work. But they do come with the risk that some people will deliberately go faster to beat their previous record.
With more bikes and not-bikes going faster than ever before without needing a big clear (downhill) space to get up to speed, and many of them heavier than ever before, it makes sense to review how to keep everyone safe and happy. Wider lanes with more space for over-taking would be ideal, but where there isn't room for that, some people will have to go slower than they might otherwise want. Not everyone can work that out for themselves.
The Bristol-Bath railway path has a speed activated sign that flashes 'slow down'. The sign is located at a point where it is easy to pick up speed close to a primary school. I don't think it displays your speed, so perhaps not so tempting from a PB point of view.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xLnSYWJMjHJS51Nb7
I think you can enforce a speed limit in the absence of speedometers (even if it sounds a bit unfair). In the UK, speed limit law does apply in theory to some motor vehicles not required to have a speedometer fitted. For example 'a vehicle which it is at all times unlawful to drive at more than 25 mph' is exempt from the speedometer requirement.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1986/1078/regulation/35