What the Numbers Say
The research, carried out by Motivaction, surveyed 527 adults and 421 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18. The findings paint a picture of widespread unease, cutting across generations. Three-quarters of adults said they worry about children and young people riding e-bikes and fatbikes.

Two-thirds believe e-bikes are inherently more dangerous than regular bicycles — and for fatbikes specifically, that figure climbs to 84 percent.

Support for concrete safety measures is strong across the board. Two-thirds of Dutch adults back an age limit of 14 for all e-bikes.

More than 60 percent want mandatory helmets for anyone under 18. What's particularly notable is that teenagers themselves are largely on board. A majority of young people surveyed supported both an age limit of 14 and a helmet requirement, with support for mandatory helmets among teens coming in at 48 percent — just shy of a majority.



RAI Vereniging Chairman Frits van Bruggen admitted the level of public support caught even him off guard. "If we had commissioned this study ten years ago, the results would likely have been very different," he said. For him, the shift reflects just how urgent road safety has become.

He pointed to stark figures: in the most recent year on record, 759 people died in traffic across the Netherlands, 281 of them cyclists. On top of that, 81,000 cyclists ended up in emergency rooms — a.