The debate about cycle helmets may be ongoing in the Netherlands, but in Overijssel officials are going one step further – and campaigning to encourage school pupils on bikes to wear a high visibility vest in winter.

The proposal, drawn up by the fundamentalist Protestant SGP, aims to encourage all school children to wear a fluorescent vest while cycling from the autumn to spring half term holidays. It was backed by a large majority of provincial councillors.

Councillor Lubbert Talen, who drew up the plan, says the practice is already common at several schools in Staphorst where he lives. It will, he says, make children more visible and reduce accidents.

Jan Kuijpers director of the Koning Willem-Alexanderschool in Staphorst, where vests have been worn for 20 years, told RTL the impact is hard to measure. But among his pupils “there have luckily been no accidents on the way to school over the past few years”.

During the debate D66 councillor Niels van Elk said it would be a “little patronizing” to extend the requirement to secondary school pupils. “I have two daughters at secondary school,” he said. “Do you realise what you are doing to parents?”

Last year, 684 people died in a traffic accident in the Netherlands, 61 down on 2022. But cyclists accounted for the biggest group for the fourth year in a row and in 40% of cases they were using an e-bike, national statistics agency CBS said in April. Some 40% of them were over the age of 75.