Municipal, provincial, and regional officials in Belgium will soon be allowed to fine motorists alongside the police if they overtake a cyclist in a bicycle zone. The council of ministers has decided this.

A car driver who overtakes cyclists there risks a municipal administrative sanction, known as a GAS fine for short, of 58 euros.

Bicycle zones

Bike streets, indicated by a traffic sign (F111) and a pictogram on the road, have popped up in more and more places in Belgium in recent years. Last year in August, for example, 198 out of 300 Flemish towns and municipalities had at least one bicycle street.

The concept, through which local authorities give extra visibility and space to cyclists, was made legal eleven years ago. Since 1 April, we no longer speak of bicycle streets but bicycle zones. However, the principle remained the same.

Car is guest

They are zones where cyclists come first. They are allowed to use the entire street width there, for example, if it is a one-way street. If traffic travels in both directions, cyclists must use half the width on the right-hand side. The maximum speed is limited to 30 km/hour, and cars and motorbikes are not allowed to overtake cyclists, even if the road is wide.

Today, police are authorized to fine motorists if they overtake cyclists there. The new rule will take effect ten days after the publication of the amendment to the law in the Bulletin of Acts.

This is not known when precisely this will happen, but according to the cabinet of Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld), it will still occur this year.

‘Too many bicycle zones’

For that matter, traffic institute Visa believes that local councils set up too many bicycle zones. “In streets where there are many cyclists, this is good. Where there are few cyclists, it is much better to set up a 30 kph zone,” says spokesperson Stef Willems in the newspaper Het Belang van Limburg.

“In a bicycle zone, cyclists sometimes feel threatened when a car comes too close to their wheel,” Willems says. “Cyclists then pull over because they don’t want to act as living traffic brakes. In a 30 zone, you have less potential danger.”

Rule little respected

A journalist from the same newspaper also conducted a test in Limburg, where 24 km of cycling zones were added in one year. Of the 94 times he cycled in a cycling zone, he was overtaken 63 times. That’s almost 69% or more than two out of three trips made.

Last year, 102 cyclists were killed in traffic in Belgium (+7% vs. 2019). In 2022, 11 950 cyclists were slightly injured in road accidents, almost a quarter more than in 2019. The number of seriously injured cyclists rose by the same amount to 1 186.