I went on holiday without a family for a week and saw surprising things in places where the average metropolitan mother with children of primary school age usually does not go. The Markermeer, for example, turned out to be packed with aquatic plants. I found the answer to the question where all the insects have gone: on the IJsselmeer. And Friesland turns out to be packed with the elderly on an ordinary sunny Tuesday morning in June. The elderly on boats, the elderly on terraces, the elderly with their caravan, the elderly with backpacks on long walks, but especially the elderly on their electric bicycles. The Dutch pensioners ride in columns of kilometers through the polder on e-bikes costing four thousand euros. They looked very happy and healthy and are armed and protected to the teeth. Four times vaccinated against corona, in addition to regular shots against influenza and pneumococci. Cholesterol is safely kept low, blood pressure and sugar under control, artificial hip, pacemaker, multifocal glasses, invisible hearing aid. Everything has been thought of.
And yet not every risk has been eliminated. The neurologists and insurers, united in ‘doctors for safe cycling’, shake their heads, because not all of them wear helmets. Where we see a generation of vital elderly people, they see a procession of potential road victims and Interpolis mainly sees a rising cost item. Year on year, their numbers in the emergency department are increasing and the injuries are becoming more serious and expensive.
Now the bike path is one big finger-pointing competition. Everyone has their own annoyance and it often runs deep: the texting young person, the shared scooters, the scooters, the worked-up commuter, the kamikaze cyclist.
But here the numbers are unequivocal. The increase in road casualties is largely attributable to the elderly road user. The cycling elderly is a disaster on wheels. And that’s not the fault of ‘traffic’. The most common accident is one-sided. They lose their balance, drive into a curb or a pole or fall. And for them, the injury is often immediately serious. They break something or get a concussion. Brain injury that is easy to prevent with a helmet.
The figures always argue in favor of a helmet and wearing it costs nothing from the hospital’s point of view, certainly not when compared to the prevention of suffering. Life over the age of seventy is already full of vaccines, medicines and aids. The increasingly fragile body must be protected against bumps and knocks at all costs, preferably in a world full of handles, cushions and airbags. Can you still wear a helmet?
And yet, as an older person, I would rebel somewhere. For every older cyclist with a brain injury, the neurologists see about ten patients with strokes and TIAs. Do you know what protects against that? Right, moving, cycling. The numbers can calculate exactly what all that reckless cycling costs us. Meanwhile, it appears that thanks to the electric bicycle, the elderly have started cycling more often, and beyond. All these accidents reflect excellent news: the Dutch elderly are healthy, exercise, see something again, go somewhere again and enjoy retirement to the fullest. What will the bicycle helmet change about that enthusiasm?
But the falls have more adverse effects than just on themselves and on healthcare costs. ‘Doctors for safe cycling’ aim at nothing less than a real cultural change. That the older now more often crashes is reason to immediately bring the whole of the Netherlands to the helmet, starting with the youth. They organize ‘the day of the bicycle helmet’ and hand these things out for free at school with the authority of the white coat to emphasize from an early age that they are always in danger on the bicycle. Horrible things can happen. That we shouldn’t be so stubborn.
The column of geriatric vitality that pedals past makes me happy. But I also see a statistic passing by that endangers our Dutch informal free cycling culture. Nothing in this world should ever get more dangerous.
The day is coming when we have to protect our insecurity and revolt against the patronizing safety cult from the hospital.
Rosanne Hertzberger is a microbiologist.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 24, 2023.