Mobile phone anathema for Dutch cyclists

THE HAGUE: The steer of cyclists hurtling along while glued to their smartphones is a common one in a bike-mad Netherlands, though it will shortly be illegal.

With a flourishing series of accidents involving phones and bikes, a supervision is to anathema a use of all though hands-free inclination while cycling.

“It is criminialized to use a mobile electronic device while pushing any automobile (including a bicycle),” says a breeze law announced by Transport Minister Cora outpost Nieuwenhuizen late Tuesday.

The bike law will take outcome from Jul subsequent year.

Car and lorry drivers are already criminialized from regulating mobiles during a circle unless they are in hands-free mode, with a limit excellent of 230 euros ($260), though a new law privately mentions bikes.

The excellent is expected to be a same for cyclists though a supervision is available a outcome of a open consultation, Nieuwenhuizen said.

“It’s only as dangerous on a bike and on all forms of vehicles as it is in a car,” she said. “The fact is that when we are on a highway we have to compensate full courtesy and not send messages or do other things on a phone.”

Michael Kulkens, who has campaigned for a anathema given his 13-year-old son Tommy-Boy was killed in a bike collision while looking during a phone in 2015, welcomed a change in a law.

“I had to stop my automobile during a side of a highway and a tears welled adult in my eyes when we listened on a radio that a anathema on a bike is coming,” De Telegraaf journal quoted him as saying.

“In my mind, we said: ‘We did it Tommy-Boy. We did it ‘.”

Cycling is a approach of life in a Netherlands, where bikes outnumber people, with an estimated scarcely 23 million cycles for some 17 million people.

But while it boasts superb infrastructure for cyclists opposite a prosaic landscape, a use of mobile phones is a flourishing hazard, with a smartphone concerned in one in 5 bike accidents involving immature people, according to a Dutch Road Safety organisation.

Nelly Vollebregt, boss of a Dutch highway collision victims association, who is herself in a wheelchair after a bike collision caused by a engineer who was looking during a phone, pronounced that 25 percent of a 613 people who died on Dutch roads final year were killed by distractions.

Last year a Dutch city of Bodegraven launched a hearing of foot-level trade lights for pedestrians to forestall them deviate into roads or cycle lanes while glued to their mobile screens. —AFP

Article source: http://aaj.tv/2018/09/mobile-phone-ban-for-dutch-cyclists/