Nice driving
More and more people have a driver’s license. At the beginning of this year, 11.7 million people had a Dutch car driver’s license. That is almost 10 percent more than ten years earlier. Especially among the over-65s, there are more people with the figurative pink piece of paper in their wallet. This is evident from figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBR).
According to CBR, at the beginning of 2024, no fewer than 9 percent more people than 10 years ago (10.66 million) had a Dutch car driver’s license. At the beginning of this year, there were 11.66 million people with a Dutch car driver’s license. Eight in ten adults had a driving license. That ratio has not changed compared to ten years ago.
| Period | 17 to 30 years (x million) | 30 to 40 years (x million) | 40 to 50 years (x million) | 50 to 65 years (x million) | 65 years or older (x million) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 1.76 | 1.73 | 2.26 | 3.01 | 1.90 |
| 2015 | 1.78 | 1.73 | 2.21 | 3.05 | 2.00 |
| 2016 | 1.80 | 1.73 | 2.16 | 3.11 | 2.10 |
| 2017 | 1.81 | 1.74 | 2.11 | 3.14 | 2.19 |
| 2018 | 1.83 | 1.75 | 2.05 | 3.16 | 2.27 |
| 2019 | 1.85 | 1.77 | 2.00 | 3.20 | 2.35 |
| 2020 | 1.88 | 1.80 | 1.95 | 3.25 | 2.43 |
| 2021 | 1.85 | 1.82 | 1.91 | 3.30 | 2.56 |
| 2022 | 1.82 | 1.84 | 1.87 | 3.31 | 2.60 |
| 2023 | 1.84 | 1.87 | 1.84 | 3.32 | 2.67 |
| 2024 | 1.86 | 1.91 | 1.83 | 3.31 | 2.75 |
Car ownership
At the beginning of 2024, there were 6.9 million people in the Netherlands with one or more cars in their name. At the beginning of this year, private individuals owned more than 7.9 passenger cars. Not everyone with a driver’s license actually has a car. Young people in particular are more likely to have a driver’s license than a car. At the beginning of this year, 1.9 million people under the age of 30 had a driver’s license, while 730,000 actually owned a car. Among people over 75, the number of driving license holders (1.1 million) and the number of car owners (796,000) are closest to each other. The more urban an area, the lower the driving license ownership generally is. According to the CBR, this was 68 percent in ‘very urban municipalities’. In non-urban municipalities that percentage is on average 85 percent. Driving license ownership is highest in the Gelderland municipality of Rozendaal (near Arnhem). At the beginning of this year, 92 percent of residents aged 17 or older had a driver’s license. Driving license ownership is lowest in Amsterdam at 61 percent.
| Age | Driver’s license holders (x million) | Car owners (x million) |
|---|---|---|
| Under 30 years old | 1.86 | 0.73 |
| 30 to 40 years | 1.91 | 1.11 |
| 40 to 50 years | 1.83 | 1.12 |
| 50 to 60 years | 2.24 | 1.43 |
| 60 to 75 years | 2.76 | 1.75 |
| 75 years or older | 1.06 | 0.80 |
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl