Teenagers under the age of 18 will be required to wear a helmet when riding e-bikes and fatbikes from 2027, caretaker infrastructure minister Robert Tieman has told MPs in a briefing.

The outgoing cabinet is preparing legislation that will be sent to MPs in autumn 2026, Tiemen said.

MPs had called for a distinction to be made between fatbikes and other e-bikes, but the infrastructure ministry said this is legally unworkable.  Setting a minimum age for fatbike riders would also be more complex and take years longer than introducing compulsory helmets.

“We all know the stories, and many of us have been startled ourselves by a fatbike rider tearing along the pavement or speeding illegally on the cycle path,” Tieman said.

The helmet requirement, he said, may also be extended to other “light electric vehicles” such as electric scooters which have recently been cleared for use on Dutch roads.

Research by safety institute VeiligheidNL, commissioned by the ministry, shows the number of e-bike riders treated at hospital emergency departments doubled between 2020 and 2024.

Among 12 to 18-year-olds, the number of cases involving brain injuries was six times higher, while fatbike-related accidents increased from none in 2020 to 301 in 2024.

Hospitals have been warning for years about the higher risk of brain injury in e-bike accidents. Earlier this week doctors in Leeuwarden published research showing the chance of serious injury is twice as high compared with a normal bicycle.

Support for government action to limit the fatbike menace is growing, with most people calling for compulsory helmets, licences or a minimum age, according to a survey of 19,000 RTL news readers last year.

Fatbikes are electric bikes with wide tyres but are more similar to old-fashioned mopeds and are often souped up to go faster than the maximum 25 kph. More than half of fatbikes checked by police in Amsterdam in the first five months of 2024 had been tinkered with to reach higher speeds.