Fatbikes are terrorizing Dutch streets. Will politicians do anything about it?
A political fight about how to keep biking safe in the Netherlands
If you’ve cycled on a Dutch bike lane in the last year, you’ve probably been run over, or nearly run over, by an adolescent on a fatbike going insanely fast. If not, you’re lucky. The statistics bear out what you may have seen on the road: fatbike accidents have doubled since last year.
And as I learned the hard way last year, if 113 accidents have been recorded, thousands more have happened.
This week, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of requesting the government to enact new regulations—that children under fourteen should not be allowed to ride fatbikes, and that helmets should be required for all riders.
Sounds like a good, responsive plan. But, it’s only a motion. Not a law. And the Minister of Infrastructure, Barry Madlener (PVV), has been pretty clear that he will likely not accept the motion, and not create any new fatbike regulations.
Why would this minister block such obviously necessary regulation on a slam dunk across-the-aisle issue involving public safety, brain-damaged children, the public agitating for a safer environment, and trauma surgeons sounding the alarm?
First, I was confused about the basics of this whole thing. Why wouldn’t parliament just pass a law themselves? And can a single minister really block a parliamentary request like that?
I spoke to Dr. Tom Louwerse, an associate professor of Political Science at Leiden University, who clarified that parliament sometimes uses motions since the process can go faster than it does with actual legislation:
When adopted, ministers usually try to accommodate the House, but they are not required to, because [the motion] merely expresses an opinion. If the minister refuses, MPs can choose to draw up legislation themselves about the fat bike law. If an MP draws up their own bill, it can be passed, also if the government does not agree with it.
So this motion is the way to rush new in regulation on a sudden, pressing issue, like fatbikes. In this context, it seems even weirder that Madlener isn’t on board.
In August, one month after he became a member of the new cabinet, Madlener said:
I don’t want to be a minister of bans on everything. I would rather see the new technology, namely an electric bicycle, used properly and safely. Behave in traffic, don't text on your bike and with those earphones in the road. That is simply life-threatening.
The subtext is that he prefers putting the onus for public safety on individuals rather than the social system. The ministry has take one action so far along these individual lines—a series of ads directed at children and parents: 't Kan hard gaan' (It can go fast).
It’s fantastical to believe that this kind of safety issue can be left to individuals, and not only because the individuals in question are children. Functionally, this belief disregards those of us inhabiting the real world, cycling non-electric bikes, left to, what? Hope that eleven year-olds take those YouTube ads seriously and slow down? Philosophically, it represents the worst kind of neoliberal naïveté, the belief that by focusing on behavior we can ignore the fact that in a society individuals occasionally rely on regulation to survive each other.
Madlener has found a lot of different ways to reject pro-regulation arguments. His logic goes like this:
He argues that it’s impossible to distinguish between fatbikes and regular e-bikes…when anyone can distinguish between them by sight. If you were to point that out to him, he would say: well, legally you can’t regulate the size of tires. Only speed. And if you were to ask, well, why not change the law so that you can regulate the size of tires? He would say, oh, that’s very legally very complicated. If you were to say, what about regulating seat height instead, because fatbike seats are short? He would argue that “the market will quickly adapt” and manufacturers would quickly invent another regulation-passing bike. Which they already did—they defiantly announced “skinny bikes” just this week—and the original law wouldn’t work. If you were to point out that the existence of new bikes on the market doesn’t negate the existence of the tens of thousands already on the road, and further that market adaptation holds true for literally everything, and didn’t stop the government from, for example, banning the sale of flavored vapes last year, he would argue, well, actually that doesn’t matter, either. Because there aren’t enough police resources to enforce any fatbike regulation. And if you were to say, well it certainly seemed like there were enough police on hand in 2019 when police handed out 9,200 fines in a single month after texting while cycling was made illegal, and there are even more police officers now, and there were certainly enough police officers on hand a few months ago at the University of Amsterdam Gaza protests—well, I actually don’t know what he would say to that.
In case you think I’m making this up, he made all of these arguments in the last few months.
It’s simple learned helplessness for a politician to look at the fatbike issue and throw his hands up to this extent. It means that he has internalized what the market wants to such a degree that he is not even motivated by what many of the people are seeing and feeling on the road in real life.
And what the market wants is no regulation. The market wants to sell as many fatbikes to customers, children or not, as possible, with nothing regulatory in its way. Just like it wants to sell as many strawberry-flavored vapes as possible.
As if we needed proof of this, fatbike manufacturers aren’t even trying to hide it! Pieter van Beusekom of Phatfour practically taunted the government in a statement about skinny bikes this week:
If the House of Representatives closes one door, we will open another. We have to build bicycles that we can also sell and work around the rules.
Picture the market as the devil on the government’s shoulder, whispering in its ear that any attempt at regulation will fail, that it’s pointless, too hard! Entrepreneurs are just so damned savvy! Remember when the scooter helmet law drove people to fatbikes? Helmets drive people off of bikes! You’ll destroy the fabric of the Dutch transportation if you take any kind of action at all! It’s so complicated omg, isn’t your head spinning?? There are already so many laws... do you really want to be a guy who makes another law, another regulation, when all regulations are pointless? It’s bad people, not bad bikes! Also, while I have you, would you like to buy a fatbike?
The angels (because that's how the rest of us on regular bikes behave all the time, like perfect angels) might ask Madlener to consider that none of this is as hard as the market, or Dutch bureaucracy, would have him believe. It’s only a matter of looking at it differently.
🔥 Hot Linkjes
Society
House prices in the Netherlands jumped eleven percent in one year. CBS
A debate has popped up over which Holocaust victims should be granted “stumbling stones,” brass sidewalk plaques in their honor. Guardian.
The Netherlands has released hundreds of looted artifacts back to Indonesia. New York Times.
I have no idea what category to put this in
An American woman ended her life in a “suicide capsule” designed by Exit International, a Dutch assisted suicide group. This happened in forest in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal. Nevertheless, the Swiss arrested a number of people, according a Volkskrant photographer. Washington Post
Business
On a visit to Washington, D.C. the Dutch economic minister said that ASML must be allowed “to do business as freely as possible.” Despite this sentiment, the Dutch have been allowing the Americans to push them in the U.S. trade war with China—as I wrote in January. Reuters.
Tech & Health
A report based on data from the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands makes the economic case for expensive weight loss drugs like Ozempic. Guardian
Crime
Authorities have charged the perpetrator of fatal stabbing in Rotterdam with “murder and attempted murder with terrorist intent.” AP
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
Hundreds of parachuters dropped near Ede to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of Operation Market Garden, an audacious and unsuccessful attempt to recapture key bridges and roads from Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands. It was one of the largest Allied operations of the Second World War.
📺 Kijk/Lees/Luister List
What I enjoyed watching, reading, and listening to this week.
TV / Movies
“It’s a fuckin’ showdog, with fuckin’ papers.”
I saw The Big Lebowski at the recent Coen Brothers retrospective at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam, one of my favorite places in the city. Related, I read this week that Amsterdam has 109 movie screens and over 13,000 seats!
If you want to keep up with all the (many) movies I watch and don’t like and wouldn’t recommend, you can follow me on Letterboxd.
Music / Podcasts
I’m seven episodes into “In the Dark,” an incredible podcast from The New Yorker about a U.S. war crime in Iraq. It is fascinating, an incredible feat of reporting, and shines a light on the disastrously opaque American military justice system.
*all typos in this post are on purpose
"In a society individuals occasionally rely on regulation to survive each other" is quotable. Also I caught up with your ambulance story and analysis and am now depressed/disillusioned. Thank you Kate!
For decades I've said that government is there to protect us from ourselves.