On the bike path everyone points angrily at each other

They pass you left and right, increasingly electrically powered, on normal tires or on the extra thick black of the fat bike. They look at their cell phones while driving, don’t hold out their hand before turning, and drive on when you cross the street on the crosswalk, even when cars do stop. Cyclists are the favorite traffic annoyance of more and more people: motorists, pedestrians and fellow two-wheelers. Especially from people who never do anything wrong in traffic, of course.

Complaints about cyclists are not unknown at the Fietsersbond, an association with over 32,000 members that has been representing the interests of cyclists since 1975. Spokesman Marloes Mol has been hearing cyclist annoyances for ten years. “In the past, the racing cyclist was the bogeyman, but that is now changing,” she says on the phone. “Now everyone who cycles is the boogeyman. Especially in the big cities.” But not only in the big cities, says Boudewijn Leeuwenburgh, chairman of the Pedestrian Movement, on the phone. He also receives complaints from smaller towns: “Elst, Bunnik, Hazerswoude-Rijndijk… After all the discussion about cars, the many cyclists are now the point of discussion.” In 2019, it was one of the reasons to set up the foundation Pedestrian Movement Netherlands.

All those Dutch bicycle irritations surprise traffic researcher Eva Heinen a bit. In 2015 she left the Netherlands; last year she became professor of transport and traffic planning at the Technical University of Dortmund and before that she worked at the University of Leeds. “Interesting to hear this from the Dutch context,” she says on the phone.

She knows the complaints from England: “That ‘all’ cyclists ‘always’ run a red light, ‘never’ follow the rules. When cycle paths are planned there to get more people to cycle, there is often a lot of resistance, with fallacies such as ‘there are hardly any cyclists’ and ‘they don’t pay road tax’. While people who cycle often also have a car and the infrastructure is certainly not paid for from road tax alone. Such resistance can really disrupt planning. And once a cyclist hits a pedestrian, the media won’t stop talking about it. If a motorist hits a cyclist, the reaction is more likely: well, it can happen.” She thought it was all because cycling is more marginal in England than here. “In the Netherlands, most people have used a bicycle at some point in their lives.” She didn’t expect it here.

Her colleague Marco te Brömmelstroet, professor of Urban Mobility Futures (the future of urban mobility) at the University of Amsterdam, is not surprised. “Oh, here we go again”, was his first reaction when I emailed him about my own cycling annoyances (because I myself am one of those people who never do anything wrong in traffic and am annoyed by cyclists). “It is summer again and we are going again rants about bicycles and cyclists. Every day on our roads, two people are killed by other people. And we’re having a good time tongue-in-cheek get rid of those pesky cyclists.”

Windshield washer fluid

This stigmatizing attitude can reinforce the aggression towards cyclists, even though they are a group of vulnerable people, he emphasizes when I sit in his office a week later. “For example, how often I don’t get windshield wiper fluid over me when I’m on the racing bike.” Some motorists specially adjust their nozzles so that the liquid shoots over their own car, into the face of cyclists who have just overtaken them. From Australian research shows that motorists who think more negatively about cyclists, drive more aggressively (and therefore more dangerously) with cyclists in the vicinity. And in the Netherlands dead according to Statistics Netherlands, 737 people will be on the road in 2022, including 225 motorists, 291 cyclists and 57 pedestrians. As an inveterate big-city pedestrian (especially since the only remaining bicycle was recently stolen from our household) I myself would have expected the latter group to be more vulnerable.

Do all those irritations about cyclists perhaps have to do with a small group of cyclists who behave antisocially in traffic and cause a lot of nuisance? “If we were to say that about dark men in the Bijlmer,” replies Te Brömmelstroet, “you would say: you can’t address that entire group, even if they have the same external characteristics?”

Well, he has himself research done to traffic violations by cyclists. In the spring of 2014 he filmed nine Amsterdam intersections for an hour during the morning rush hour. Together with students, he analyzed the behavior of more than 18,500 cyclists. One in twenty cyclists behaved really recklessly (running a red light, ‘weaving’), which he thinks is little and I think a lot, although there were no accidents or fights. But according to Te Brömmelstroet, cyclists also often break rules to stay safe themselves, for example by riding on the sidewalk when a road is very narrow. Or they break rules to “enter into dialogue with it,” he says, because maybe not every traffic light is really necessary.

There is no good comparative research, but Te Brömmelstroet thinks that the number of violations by motorists is much higher than by cyclists. “And the consequences of antisocial behavior are worse when you are in a two thousand kilo vehicle,” he underlines. Of the 737 road fatalities last year, 390 died after a collision with a car, lorry or bus, including 169 of the 291 cyclists killed in an accident.

So do those annoyances have so much to do with violations? Mol thinks that all the annoyance about cyclists is mainly due to the fact that the roads are getting busier and more and more types of bicycles with different speeds are being introduced – the e-bike, the fat bike, the regular cargo bike and the electric, moped. Leeuwenburgh of the Pedestrian Movement also sees this: “Different speeds, different dimensions: what falls under ‘cyclist’ is so broad these days. It is also not always clear who is allowed to drive where. And you often don’t see whether something is a light moped or a scooter, for example.” A light moped (blue license plate) may not exceed 25 km/h, a scooter (yellow license plate) a maximum of 45 km/h.

Nobody’s fault

“You have to meet all kinds of conditions to be allowed on the road, but almost everything is allowed on a cycle path,” says Te Brömmelstroet. “Because if you call it ‘bike’, it’s cute. But space has not increased. Most of these electric innovations compete with the regular bicycle in the Netherlands, and that is not desirable at all. People no longer make the same trip on a normal bicycle, but on an e-bike, which is much more polluting, heavier and more dangerous, much more focused on speed.”

What should be done to reduce mutual annoyances on the sidewalk, road and bicycle path? In any case, you have to counter an us/them feeling between different road users, say both Heinen and Te Brömmelstroet. “If the discussion becomes too polarized,” says Heinen, “it becomes more difficult to find a solution; you see that in other countries.” As far as she is concerned, it should first be investigated who exactly is annoyed by whom and why. “And also: which stereotypical ideas exist among which groups, and about which groups? Then you can decide: should we make stricter rules, better enforce the existing rules, or is it mainly a matter of increasing mutual understanding?”

Te Brömmelstroet and his colleagues have already started that research into mutual stigmatization, as part of a project called ‘Together on the bike path’. It is striking that almost 80 percent of 400 questioned cycle path users believe that the cycle path has become less safe in recent years, and that people have something to complain about every type of cycle path user. “Respondents believe that the other person should adapt and that the current situation on the cycle path is not their fault,” the report states. “In principle, all cycle path users point to each other.” While it may just be too busy and too full, and no one’s fault.

Te Brömmelstroet would like to immediately start thinking about traffic and the design of public space in a completely different way. “Not the street as a traffic engineering puzzle, but as a social issue. Look, we have set up a technocracy in which we have an expert draw up a model and define a standard for all problems – covid, nitrogen, climate, traffic. Then you get those absurd statements like: ‘we want to halve the number of road deaths’. Oh, so 650 is too much, but 320 is okay? In no other realm of life would we accept such a danger. And what we actually want, for example that children can walk to school independently, is no longer discussed.”

Living areas and traffic areas

The Pedestrian Movement does have ideas about this: it wants to divide public space into ‘residential areas’ (residential areas, playgrounds, squares and parks) and various types of ‘traffic areas’ (all kinds of paths and roads), each with its own maximum speed. A pleading note on this, which the Pedestrian Movement sent to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in 2020, suggests about ten different maximum speeds for all those different types of locations. “I can imagine that that sounds complicated,” says Leeuwenburgh. “But the essence is: do not assume vehicles, but check the functional use of a certain part of the public space and let that determine the maximum speed in that place.” He hopes to be able to talk to officials about the plan for the second time soon.

The Fietsersbond would especially like to see the maximum speed for cars reduced further, and wants more and better equipped space for cyclists. These are the most important points from their top 10 with road safety measures, says Mol. And you can also do something yourself: “Try to cycle at a less busy time, or take a different route. We have a route planner app from the Fietsersbond, in which you can choose a low-traffic option. And maybe a bit cliché, but: take each other into account. Give each other space. Make eye contact, introduce each other for a moment. I think we all need to look at ourselves as well.”

The car is of course the elephant in the room in this conversation about cyclists, Te Brömmelstroet wants to add. “Instead of wondering ‘what should we do with all those types of bicycles’, you should actually write that down nine million cars simply no longer possible in the Netherlands. There are also no bicycle parking problems, there are just too many places in the public space where cars are parked. And cyclists may break traffic rules, but those rules are not given by God: most of them were devised in the 1930s and 1940s based on the idea that the car should be able to drive through. Before that, it was completely normal for everyone to just cross the road everywhere.”

The whole of the Netherlands is geared towards cars, he says. “Cycling is declining in most of the Netherlands. If you can park your car for free at all sports clubs, then you go by car. And then the municipality will not change that, so more and more people go by car. You see that logic everywhere. As a pedestrian you may feel pushed away by cyclists, but they are pushed away by the car. And that’s what it should be about. Because it doesn’t have to be. Everyone should have a fair place on the street.” He talks longingly about a package of measures taken in recent years to turn Paris into a city in which all basic needs of people can be fulfilled within fifteen minutes on foot or by bike. So are many streets around schools car-free made.

Before I leave, he tells another joke: “A motorist, a cyclist and a pedestrian are sitting together in the pub. There are 100 beers on their table. The motorist immediately shoves ninety beers to himself and then says to the pedestrian: ‘watch out, that cyclist wants to take your beer’.” That, he says, is what is going on in the Netherlands.