oDuring a busy lunch hour, an electric bicycle with thick tires speeds through the green streets of Amsterdam’s Vondelpark. But these vehicles, which the Dutch call “fat bikes”, have been banned in some parts of the Netherlands after a notable increase in accidents, especially involving children.
“That’s nonsense!” Henk Hendrik Wolthers, 69, said from the seat of his wide-tire electric Mate bike. “I drive a car, I ride a motorcycle, I ride a moped and now I ride a fat bike. It’s the fastest mode of transportation in the city, so it should be available.”
A growing number of Dutch road safety experts, doctors and politicians disagree. Motor assist on e-bikes is limited to 15 miles per hour, but many fat bike riders modify the factory settings to reach speeds of 25 miles per hour in these crowded parks.
Safety agency VeigheidNL estimates, based on a recent hospital sample, that 5,000 fat bike riders receive treatment in A&E departments each year. “And it turns out that young people, especially between the ages of 12 and 15, have the most accidents.” Spokesperson Tom de Beus said.
Now Amsterdam’s transport chief Melanie van der Horst has said “unorthodox measures” are needed and has announced that such large electric bikes will be banned from city parks, starting with Vondelpark. Like the city of Enschede, which is preparing a ban on city centers, she is acting on a series of requests “pleading to ban fat bikes.”
Her plans at the park drew mixed reactions. Four of the five fat bike riders who passed by quickly said they were “too busy” to talk, but Joost, 31, was skeptical. “It would be pointless,” he said. “Regular bicycles use the park, and city vehicles use the park. Maintaining an appropriate speed is key.”
But Muriel Winkel, 33, running with her dog Joop, was enthusiastic. “They are all exaggerated actions that people don’t do with malicious intent, but they are often just driving carelessly and carelessly,” she said. “Sometimes my dog gets really scared.”
Some point out that the tensions surrounding electric bicycles could soon affect other countries, especially as political interest grows in stimulating active mobility.
In this land of early adopters, 48% of bikes sold in 2024 were electric bikes and 13% were fat bikes, according to figures from RAI Vereniging and the BOVAG automotive association. In Amsterdam, a third of trips are made by bicycle.
Roadside assistance group ANWB said the problem was not necessarily with bike models with wide tires, but with the ease with which people could speed up their rides to use them like mopeds, “combined with risky behaviour”.
Florrie de Pater, president of the Fietsersbond Amsterdam cycling association, said the increase in illegal bikes and lack of enforcement were scaring older people and children off the roads. “People who ride fast, especially those over 55 or 60, should leave their bikes at home because it is dangerous,” she said. “We also heard that parents no longer dare allow their children to ride their bikes to school.”
Marcel Aries, a consultant and brain injury expert at Maastricht University Medical Center, said more authorities should consider a controversial ban alongside a helmet requirement for children riding electric bikes from 2027. “It is reasonable for governments and local governments to consider measures that may be unpopular,” he said. “This is a public health response to increasingly congested streets and a widening speed gap between cars, cyclists and pedestrians.”
His views are shared by Marlies Schijven, professor of surgery at the University Medical Center Amsterdam. His disappointing LinkedIn post about dangerous riders in 2024 has been viewed 2.9 million times. “It’s a good step, but it’s a very small step, and it can only be done in one of Amsterdam’s parks,” she said. “The problem is much bigger. We still see pain, misery and death every day during our morning meetings in hospitals.”
Wolthers, a fat bike owner, agreed that getting kids to ride these powerful vehicles is a problem. “Kids don’t run red lights, they don’t signal, and they can’t evaluate traffic,” he said. “Hospitals use the callous term ‘potential donor.’”