Fatal head injury, serious head injury or mild head injury: unfortunately it all happens in the hospital. Even milder brain injuries, such as a concussion, are seen by Sjoerd Bakker, doctor in the Emergency Department (ED) at the Spaarne Gasthuis, about ten to twenty times every day.
Mild brain injury
Milder brain damage may sound like something that will pass quickly, but that can be disappointing. “I see students and people in their thirties with mild brain damage that keeps them at home from a young age. They can no longer study or work because they can no longer sit behind a computer screen. Their brains can no longer handle the stimuli,” says Maarten Bot to RTL News. As a neurosurgeon at Amsterdam UMC, he weekly operates on people with brain injuries caused by a fall from a bicycle.
Figures support what Bakker and Bot say. National figures from 2024 (these for 2025 are not yet available) from VeiligheidNL show that 66 percent of the total number of traffic victims were on bicycles. 13 percent of cycling victims suffer mild brain damage, and 4 percent seriously. The number of cycling victims with serious (general) injuries increased by 21 percent over the past ten years.
Emergency room doctor Bakker gives an example of a patient with serious brain damage. “A woman in her 50s was hit by a car in the dark. She fell off her bicycle and serious bleeding occurred in her head. From our emergency department she quickly had to be taken to an academic hospital for specialist treatment. She fell into a coma.”
According to the Road Safety Research Foundation (SWOV), research shows that wearing a bicycle helmet reduces fatal head injuries by 71 percent and the risk of serious head injuries by 60 percent.
‘Succes’
During Bicycle Helmet Day in April this year, neurosurgeon Bot handed out a hundred free bicycle helmets. He did that at the hospital, and to anyone who wanted to. “It was a campaign that attracted a huge number of people, colleagues, patients and third parties. The helmets were on in no time. It was a great success.”
The Spaarne Gasthuis recently noticed the same thing. When the hospital decided to arrange free bicycle helmets for staff, it turned out that around 900 employees were interested. That is almost a quarter of the total workforce. “We didn’t expect it to live like this,” says Hélène Jacobs, who organized the campaign for the Spaarne Gasthuis. The hospital is in favor of requiring helmets for minors on an e-bike. The first hundred employees received their helmets this week.
‘A lot of people happen’
“If I had started handing out free helmets two or three years ago, no one would have come,” says Bot. He explains that there is now ‘a huge amount of enthusiasm’ because ‘the seriousness of the accidents has come to life’. “Due to the rise of the electric bicycle, we see a large number of bicycle victims. That is why people are thinking more about protection.”
“By making it free, many people will join in. The threshold becomes low and people get the final push. This is a start. I hope that people with an e-bike wear a helmet, but it is also good for people with a normal bicycle. Because you pay attention yourself, but someone in a car or on a fat bike may not. Try to avoid having to deal with the consequences of a bicycle fall for the rest of your life.”
Abroad, a bicycle helmet is the most normal thing in the world. But in the Netherlands? RTL Nieuws previously made this video about the bicycle helmet in our country: