Alarming amount of fatbike injuries involve brain trauma; 40% of victims younger than 14
Emergency room doctors are seeing a worrying increase in the number of patients coming in after an accident with a fatbike. Even more alarming is the amount of brain injuries. One in six people treated in the emergency room after a fatbike injury have serious brain injuries, and another sixth have mild to moderate brain trauma. A massive 40 percent of patients are between 10 and 14 years old, Nieuwsuur and Telegraaf report based on figures from VeligheidNL, the center for injury prevention.
“In many cases, it concerns head and brain injuries,” Martijntje Bakker of VeiligheidNL told Nieuwsuur. “And brain damage is often irreversible, so if you have it, you rarely recover from it. And when it concerns children between the ages of 10 and 14, that is, of course, very worrying.” The center is pushing for a fatbike ban for children under the age of 16.
Last year, emergency room doctors treated 59 people injured on their fatbikes, up from only seven in 2022. In the first four months of 2024 alone, there were already 33 fatbike injuries that required emergency room treatment, VeiligheidNL reported based on data from 14 of the 83 emergency rooms in the Netherlands. The type of bicycle involved in an accident is not always recorded, so the actual number of fatbike injuries may be higher. The number of fatbikes on the road also increased, which naturally increases the number of accidents involving the vehicle.
“We think fatbikes will follow the same trends as the e-bike,” Bakker told Nieuwsuur. “There was a fourfold increase in the number of injuries among young victims in five years.” Fatbikes can go even faster than electric bikes. Their maximum speed is limited to 25 kilometers per hour, but they can quite easily be boosted to reach speeds of over 45 km/h. Bakker, therefore, worries that the fatbike injuries trend may be even worse than for e-bikes.
“If you are talking about these kinds of speeds, you should set the age limit at least 16. Children of that age are allowed to ride a scooter, then you also have a little more risk awareness and perception and you can better assess what you are doing,” Bakker said.
The Fietsersbond, the association for cyclists, thinks an age limit of 12 years is more appropriate. The union believes that fatbike dealers and parents should take more responsibility. “It would be good if parents realized that their children are not insured in the event of an accident,” said Esther van Garderen of the Fietsersbond. “So apart from the human suffering, it could cost you a lot of money if the insurance does not pay out in the event of personal injury.”
David Baden of the Dutch Association of Emergency Physicians advocates for better information provision and encouraging people to wear helmets. “If you look at the fact that only 8 percent of people on an e-bike use a helmet, then we first need enormous information campaigns about the importance of a helmet.” Making helmets mandatory is more complicated, he added. “The difficult thing about this is often that you also have to enforce it. We know what the Dutch are like: we immediately start resisting. While you actually want to see it more as a habit that you use a helmet when you get on a motorized vehicle.”
