Dutch cycling stats

The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, is heavily touted as a haven
for cyclists, with a cornucopia of cycling infra that appears to be the
envy of the world.

At least one cyclist group is calling for yet more money to be spent, as a matter of urgency, upgrading London cycling infra to the level of
Amsterdam.

Yet what is the real picture of cycling life and death in Holland, compared
to the UK, the latter of which apparently needs so much taxpayers money
spent on it as a matter of urgency to bring it up to Dutch standards?

QUOTE 
In the Netherlands, comparatively many women aged over 50 and men
aged over 65 are killed in traffic. This is probably partly due to
intensive bicycle use by these older road users. Measured against the
number of inhabitants, the Netherlands has the highest number of road
deaths among cyclists. ENDQUOTE

<https://swov.nl/sites/default/files/media/media.up/fs_international_fig5.png>

QUOTE 
As can be seen in Figure 5, mortality among cyclists is
significantly higher in the Netherlands than in the other well-performing countries. Even when comparing mortality among cyclists to that in a larger number of countries, the Netherlands is right at the bottom of the list. ENDQUOTE

Dreadful statistics here:

<https://swov.nl/sites/default/files/media/media.up/fs_international_fig6.png>

The population of the UK is 68m, that of the Netherlands is 17.2m.
Cyclist deaths in the UK are 114 per year; in Holland the figure is 207.

There are two ways of looking at these figures, given that the UK
population is 4x that of Holland.

On a per head per annum basis, if the UK was taken as the datum, the Netherlands would have 52 cycle deaths instead of 207; or taking the Netherlands, the UK should have 828 cyclist deaths instead of 114.

Quite why there are strident calls to upgrade the UK cycling infra to Dutch standards is a mystery, it is clear the UK is far ahead of Holland in terms
of cycle safety. They should be taking lessons from us, rather than the
other way round.

The conclusions to be drawn from this dismal picture are:

… if you want to cycle, don’t do so in the Netherlands

… don’t use the Dutch model for cycle safety.

--
Spike

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