The country’s transport minister Andreas Scheuer said the campaign was intended to be shocking in order to grab people’s attention, and insisted it “conveys the message pretty well”.

Amid growing protests over the gratuitous nature of the ads, he posted an image of himself on Instagram printing the billboards.

Maria Noichl, the chairperson of the Working Group of Social Democratic Women, is one of the politicians calling for the posters to come down.

“It is embarrassing, stupid and sexist for the transport minister to be selling his policies using naked skin,” she told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

Katja Mast, the deputy leader of her party’s parliamentary group for women, also dismissed the campaign “embarrassing, stale and sexist”.

Posting to Facebook, Germany’s family minister, Franziska Giffey, offered her own fully dressed version of the advert, noting that helmets also go well when you’re not semi-naked:

"Stale and sexist" cycling safety campaign shows models posing in underwear