If you neglect your own health or safety in the Netherlands, you might not be able to sue anybody for it.
Holland is safe — it's civilized. But the ethic about personal safety that is different than in any Anglophone country. You have to watch out for yourself.
Low cast-iron fences bordering a sidewalk may be topped with decorative spikes.
Public works are often unprotected by even a strip of tape — never mind a barrier. If there's a hole in the sidewalk, you just have to know not to step into it.
Overhead work? You have to decide whether or not you'd like to walk underneath it.
I met a Dutch girl in Ireland once. She laughed that there are so many warning signs in that country. These signs are invisible to me — I'm from America. Very little goes without warning in America. If a potential civic legal responsibility is involved — and there usually is, in a litigious culture — there's a sign warning of it.
Warning this, danger that. This kind of posting is rare in The Netherlands — as is much of the protective apparati that many people would expect in the case of urban dangers.
The Netherlands is a safe country. But the legal atmosphere does not require anybody to warn everybody about every danger. It is not customary to do so.
