Dutch Road Obstacles

The Dutch do some odd things, from my point of view, and one of the strangest is to purposely install road obstacles. Their idea is that by making the roads more difficult to drive on and more dangerous, that people will slow down and the roads will be safer. That is a very illogical train of thought if you ask me.

In the United States, we generally try to make our roads as efficient and safe as possible. Our goal is to move the most number of cars from point A to point B as possible while still maintaining a margin of safety. In parts of Europe, to include The Netherlands, it seems they do everything they can to impede the smooth flow of traffic. 

In The Netherlands you can park almost anywhere on the street and I have come around blind corners or bends in the road only to find a car, truck, or combi van parked in my driving lane. A quick swerve to avoid a collision and I continue on my way. This by itself is so unsafe it is hard to believe it is allowed.

Many roads, when you are off the highways, are too narrow for two vehicles to pass at normal driving speeds. One of the vehicles must slow down and pull to to far edge of the road to allow the other vehicle to pass. In my area of south Limburg, there are many roads that I drive on every week where two cars cannot pass each other at all unless one goes off the edge of the road. Last summer one of these heavily used roads was closed for several weeks for construction and I figured they were finally going to widen it to two full lanes. Wishful thinking. All they did was resurface the narrow road as it was and now it is even harder to pull off and then back onto the road because it is now 3-4 inches higher than the shoulder.

But the most unbelievable safety hazards are the ones the Dutch intentionally place on the road. On the five mile drive from my house to USAG Schinnen, for example, I must navigate around no less than twelve obstacles blocking or restricting traffic flow. Below are some examples.

One of the first things you have to learn is who has the priority to go through one of these traffic restrictions. You'll learn this when you study for your Driver's License.  In this case the oncoming traffic, shown by the black arrow, has priority. The reddish lane is a Bike Lane. You are not allowed to block the bike lane. If you come to this obstacle at the same time as an oncoming vehicle, you must stop and let them pass. And this makes the road safer how?

In this example there is no priority sign so you have to either be bold and just take the priority or stop and let the oncoming car go through. As you can see the bike lane also disappears so now bikes are also trying to get through the obstacle and they will generally stop for no one. At night this is a difficult road hazard to see until you are right on it. All it has to mark it is a small strip of shiny metal on the short pole.

In some places the Dutch weren't satisfied with only one hazard, they installed two or three. At this obstacle you have a post and curb stones in the middle of you lane and then what looks like a way to go around to the right. But that is also blocked by two dark grey posts (difficult to see at night) and a parked car in what looks like part of the road but is not. I had to stop so the car with priority could come through.

Dremples, we call them speed bumps and the British call them "Lazy Policemen". You will find these going into and out of every village. In most cases they are not too bad but I have come across several in the area that I have to creep over so I don't bottom out my car. After this Dremple you see two "Fake" bike lanes. They are fake because while they are marked they are not protected lanes like the reddish colored ones are.

Some Dremples are integrated into other traffic hazards. This one going into my village is especially hazardous because of an adjoining road that comes into the main road just ahead of this. I have sat here burning gas for over a minute or two as cars came out of the village. This one, at least, is well marked because of several accidents in the past.

Split Dremples rock your boat. I hate these. Only one side of your car goes over the bump and so even at a very slow speed it rocks you back and forth. This is where my groceries usually get scattered in the trunk of my car and I have to go over two of these going home from Schinnen. There is also a blind curve just ahead at a bridge so you cannot see what is coming the other way. There is also no bike lane even though this is the road to the Spaubeek Train Station just behind me.

Constricted Dremples give you two things to worry about but at least there is a bike lane here so you aren't also dodging fietsers (bikers).

Then for reasons unknown the Dutch will throw traffic islands into the center of the road. They are not meant to split the road, which is a way to increase road safety, but are just temporary obstacles like this one. If you are about to make a left turn, like I am in this photo, this is a real pain to navigate.

The most fun obstacles are the slaloms they set up so you can weave through them. They emplaced posts on the right and left because people got confused and went around the road hazard to the right. In this case my lane has priority because of the white arrow on my lane. But you will still have to dodge bicyclists here because they only have a fake bike lane and therefore there isn't enough road width for you car and a biker in your lane.

Where fake bike lanes turn into real bike lanes there will often be some sort of an obstacle to mark this transition like what is shown here. Not including the various bike lanes this is a six-road intersection including two highway on/off ramps. There are no priority traffic signs so you have to be very careful moving through here.

If the man-made obstacles were no bad enough, the lenient parking laws will get you. You have to zig zag back and forth around parked vehicles and oncoming traffic without forgetting about the bikers also sharing the road.

There are many other types of man-made road hazards but these are just the ones between my house and Schinnen. Drive carefully. As a foreigner you will always be at fault if there is an accident.