Heads up Road deaths prompt a rethink over bike helmets

When 42-year-old Myrthe Boss gets on her bike to go shopping in the Dutch town of Ede, she pops on a helmet.

- Senay Boztas

This act, considered essential in many countries, marks out Boss as something of a radical in the Netherlands, where helmet-wearing is rare.

Now, however, faced with a rising number of traffic deaths linked in particular to older riders and ebikes, the Dutch government and provinces -not to mention neurologists such as Boss - are inviting cyclists to think again.

"I'm a huge fan of cycling, but it's important to protect ourselves," Boss said. "The brain is a very vulnerable organ with limited capacity to recover.

If you fall from a bike and sustain a brain injury, this has long-term consequences. And a large proportion of people who fall while cycling have brain injury."

She knows this all too well: in 2019, her mother died after a collision with a car at a roundabout. "A helmet doesn't prevent everything, but it does ensure there is less impact from the street on your head," Boss said. The number of cyclists seriously injured each year in the Netherlands has risen by 27% in the past decade, according to an injury prevention organisation, VeiligheidNL. The Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research (SWOV) found that if all cyclists wore helmets, there would be 85 fewer deaths annually.