Every day at least seven cyclists in Amsterdam are injured in traffic. In 2022, a total of more than 2,500 cyclists were injured to such an extent that an ambulance had to be called. This accounts for almost half of all traffic accidents in the city. Lowering the maximum speed for cars to 30 kilometers per hour should provide relief, but there is also another problem: the differences in speeds between e-bikes and ‘normal’ bicycles.
When an ambulance has to respond to a traffic accident in Amsterdam, the victim is a cyclist in more than half of the cases (52 percent). This is evident from an analysis of all traffic accidents in 2022 in which an ambulance had to be deployed, based on anonymous data from the Regional Ambulance Facility Amsterdam in collaboration with SafetyNL.
Expressed in the number of road deaths per kilometer traveled, for example, the risk of dying as a cyclist in traffic is more than eight times higher than the risk for car occupants.
What can be done about this, we ask today in the Poll: should the maximum speed for cyclists be reduced to 20 km per hour? Or should there be separate cycle paths everywhere in the city? Or is the problem that there are too large speed differences on the cycle path, and should we ban all e-bikes and fat bikes to the road?