All vehicles which use public roads and can travel faster than six kilometres an hour will have to be officially registered before January 1st or their owners must pay a hefty sum to have them inspected, news website Nu.nl reported on Monday.

Over half a million motorised vehicles, from tractors to quads to golf carts and lawn mowers more than 1.3 metres wide, will have to have to be registered by January 1 2022.

Tractors which exceed a speed of 23 kilometres an hour willl have to carry a licence plate but the rest of what vehicle licencing organisation RWD calls ‘toys for the boys’ will only be required to have a licence plate from January 2025, under a European-wide directive.

Some 85% of the vehicles have been registered, an RWD spokesman told Nu.nl. but half of people who own quads, golf carts and big lawn mowers still have to do so.

That is partly down to people not realising, for instance, that a public road includes private land which is accessible to others, officials said..

The aim of the registrations is to contribute to traffic safety but will also makes it easier to check speed and loading restrictions.

It costs €18 to register a slow vehicle up to January 1. ‘After that it will have to be inspected at one of our 16 locations, and that will cost a minimum of  €140. And very often much more,’ the spokesman warned.