Babyboomers in the Netherlands: What the statistics say - Cbs

means of transport and the most striking element of
style of 1960s Dutch youth culture. The moped’s
model and make also reflected the sub-culture to
which you belonged. You were either a kikker or a bul.
Kikkers were educated and artsy, wore suede shoes
and rode Puch mopeds with high handlebars. Buls
greased their hair, wore drainpipe jeans and checked
shirts under a leather jacket. Their mopeds were
more robust models: DKW, Eysink, Kreidler or
Zundapp. Both groups were called nozems.
Nearly two million mopeds
According to the motor vehicle tax declarations, there
were fewer than 5 thousand mopeds in the Netherlands
before 1950. One year later this number had risen more
than tenfold to 55 thousand. Another five years later it
had increased to over half a million. In 1967, 1.7 million
mopeds were registered in the Netherlands, and in
1970 the number peaked at 1.9 million.
The fall, to 650 thousand in 1980, the same number as
in 1956, was at least as spectacular as the increase in
the 1950s and 1960s. The 1975 law requiring a helmet to
be worn on mopeds and the allure of alternative means
of transport such as cars and motorcycles certainly
contributed to the decrease in the moped’s popularity.
When the youth movement became more political
after 1970 and – in the words of Hans Righart –
‘rebelliousness and non-conformism made way for
political commitment’, the noisy symbol of their
attitudes disappeared from the streets.
Mopeds
1950
1970
2010
= x 100,000
18 Statistics Netherlands