The Netherlands: Bicycle Nation

With tyres screeching, the taxi pulled up a few feet from me. I turned and looked at the driver, my eyes wide and heart pounding. ‘Geez THAT was close! Where did he come from?” I put my hand up and mouthed ‘Sorry mate‘. I was in Bucarest, Romania, and had just stepped out into the path of oncoming traffic.

One of the dangers of being an Australian abroad is that just about no other country drives on the left hand side like we do. Consequently, when crossing the street in foreign lands, I have had to be mindful that cars may appear from unexpected directions. But that day in Bucarest my mind wasn’t on the job, and instead of being focused on surviving an overseas road crossing, I acted out of deep-seated, possibly even genetic, Australian instinct. I looked right, saw no cars, and stepped into the street. So what’s nearly getting run over in Romania got to do with bicycles in The Netherlands? Read on my friends…

Growing up in Australia, all I knew about the Netherlands was that it was very flat, had dykes and canals and lots of windmills, tulips were popular, and everyone rode around on pushbikes. I expected to feel very safe in the country, albeit with some gnawing doubts about the structural integrity of the dykes.

You see, the only Dutch childrens’ story I had ever heard was all about some little kid who stuck his finger in a hole in the dyke for some excrutiatingly long period of time, and through this selfless act saved a whole town from flood. (As a child, I had no idea that this story was actually written by an American, and is not part of Dutch culture at all. In fact, I had no idea about this gross act of cultural appropriation until about 15 minutes ago). Turns out the biggest danger in The Netherlands is not the hungry waters keen to burst the levees and reclaim all the territory that was once their own. It’s bicycles.

Everywhere I looked there were bikes. Flash racing bikes, mountain bikes, retro-styled bikes, antique bikes, practical bikes, old-school single speeds, you name it. There were…

When visiting a Dutch city, you are never more than a few metres away from a bicycle. Or several thousand of them. Bicycles are so ubiquitous, that I reckon the entire population of The Netherlands could just agree to give up private pushbike ownership altogether. Then when someone needs one, they could just jump on the nearest bike, pedal it to their destination, and then leave it there for the next person.

The central place of the bicycle within Dutch culture must do wonders for keeping the population fit and active. Not to mention also minimising air pollution in the major cities.

Civic planners have catered for the Dutch penchant for cycling by installing an impressive network of bike paths. This is brilliant for commuting Netherlanders, but potentially lethal for tourists. In over five years of traveling I’d had only one near vehicle/pedestrian accident, yet in The Netherlands I found myself seconds away from hospitalisation on a frighteningly regular basis.

In Dutch cities, the immediate area on either side of the street (ie the footpath in most countries) is divvied up between walkers and cyclers. In some places, the bike section is like a little road of its own, with multiple lanes and sometimes contrasting coloured asphalt. I would be focused on getting myself across the road, then drop my safety awareness thinking the job was done, and forget about the fact that I still had to navigate my way across one, or two, bicycle lanes. I regularly wandered vacantly into the path of the peloton, and it was only the ringing of bells and the use of heavy braking that averted disaster.

It’s little wonder that The Netherlands has produced Olympic cycling champions, as the average city bicycle commuter rides like it’s their last day on earth. The pace of pushbike traffic through the busy city centres is really something to behold. Throw a growing number of electric bikes into the mix, and every day is the Tour de France.

Interestingly, bicycle riders do not wear helmets in The Netherlands. Now before anyone erupts about Australia or any other place being a nanny state for making helmets mandatory, consider this: 70,000 riders require emergency care after bicycle accidents in the Netherlands every year. And 25 percent of these cyclists suffer head injuries.*

Forced to constantly navigate a bicycally dense environment, Dutch pedestrians have evolved an innate sense of bicycle awareness. But woe betide the wandering visitor to The Netherlands. If you’re out and about, and let you guard down for even a second, you could find the local Accident and Emergency Department added to your itinerary.

*Headfirst, 2024, ‘Traumatic brain injuries from cycling accidents: The numbers and solutions.’

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