Netherlands

Driving in Netherlands

The Netherlands is easy driving with one genuine adjustment: this is a country built around bicycles, and the assumptions that follow from that catch out visitors more than any written rule does. Cyclists are everywhere, frequently have priority where a driver would not expect it, and often appear in a blind spot at precisely the moment you are turning. At junctions and roundabouts the burden of looking sits with you to a degree that feels unusual if you have come from almost anywhere else. The motorway limit is 100 km/h, not 120 or 130. It was lowered nationwide in 2020, with some stretches allowing more at night under variable signs. Combined with extensive trajectcontrole average-speed enforcement, this is not a network where a habitual 130 goes unnoticed. There are no general road tolls for cars, though a few tunnels such as the Westerschelde charge a fee. Many cities — Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht among them — run low- or zero-emission zones restricting older vehicles, so the thing to check is the city rather than the country. Roundabout priority normally goes to circulating traffic, but some older roundabouts still favour entering traffic, so read the signs rather than assuming. The alcohol limit is 0.5‰, dropping to 0.2 for novice drivers.