A View from the Cycle Path

The obsession with helmets in many countries is born of an idea that violence on the roads is inevitable. It's a bit like responding to knife or gun crime by saying everyone should wear kevlar vests, problem solved! Rather than insisting that knives and guns are not used in public spaces. Some people have real problems grasping this. Cars are seen as inherently dangerous, pedestrians and everyone else should (ideally) stay off the roads, and nobody should challenge our "right" to drive where and when we like. But driving is still a choice, albeit coerced since there are so few alternatives, and that choice has profound implications for others. Why should I wear protective clothing because you choose to drive a vehicle which puts me in danger? In the Netherlands, to respond to your point, they have largely eliminated motoring-related danger for cyclists. If anyone is interested in the development of Dutch cycling infrastructure, this is an excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o (How the Dutch got their cycle paths, 6m 29s) David Hembrow has an informative blog about all things cycling in Holland: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/

> Other countries like the Netherlands went through the same car-centric design phase and realized it was too expensive and bad for the country so they reverted. Where did you get the idea that they reverted? Car ownership in Netherlands has continued to rise despite widespread biking culture. https://english.kimnet.nl/publications/publications/2022/02/22/the-wid… https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/08/the-car-free-myth-nether…

Did you know that car ownership in the Netherlands has continued to rise? This is a blog post of a cycling advocate, from 2019 but still relevant - [0] Quote: In 1992, 42% of Dutch households were car-free. By 2016 this had dropped to about a quarter. Car ownership has continued to increase since then. Higher car ownership leads to higher car usage. Almost anyone who can easily afford a car has one and there aren't many people at all who choose to go without if they can afford one: Amongst people of average income, just 12% of households don't have a car and that drops further to just 6% for high income households. In other words, people choose to own a car if they can afford it, even if they cycle frequently at the same time. [0] -https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/08/the-car-free-myth-nether…

In Copenhagen at least there are rules for when you can turn left on your bike: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/07/not-really-so-great-cycle… I don't know how other European cities do it.

You're confusing people because you're talking from a left-hand drive perspective. This is known in the right-hand drive cycling world as a Copenhagen left, and many consider it to be bad infrastructure design. http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/07/not-really-so-great-cycle…

There seems to be no data supporting the article's assertion that roundabouts are being replaced by traffic lights across the UK as a whole. I'll add my own anecdata: many more roundabouts are being built in my area of the UK. There are also roundabouts with traffic lights. As a driver, I much prefer roundabouts. When I'm cycling, I just prefer roads with fewer cars and can't wait for self-driving cars, since at least they won't be driven by idiots. There are safer roundabout designs used in Holland: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/05/the-best-roundabout-desig…

The most straightforward designs of roundabouts don't have a good safety record for cyclists. This post gives some hints based on the Dutch experience http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/05/the-best-roundabout-desig…

I've learned a lot from these two bike blogs: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/ http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/

Something to say? There is no way to disagree with that. http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/Irresistible.pdf, figure 10 shows that fatality rates per 100 million km cycled of 1.1 and 5.8 and injury rates per 10 million km cycled of 1.4 and 37.5. In 2007, it was 5 to 25 times as dangerous to ride bicycle in the USA as in the Netherlands. I doubt that has changed for the better for the USA since. (Found via http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2008/09/three-types-of-safety.htm… a great article on safety on a great site about dutch cycling infrastructure and culture)

Easily my least favourite piece of infrastructure. The one on the video is alright because you have a full car's length between the road and the cycle path, so you are at a full perpendicular with good visibility over the bikes. In plenty of other places, the space is much smaller, which puts the bike traffic almost directly in your blind spot as you cross. For example, here: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3911559,4.6253401,3a,75y,110.46h,69.52… It's really hard to anticipate as you may not have full unobstructed visibility as you drive around, especially since cyclists can come quite fast. https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/05/the-best-roundabout-desi…

For more in-depth reading on Dutch street design, this blog is fascinating: https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/search/label/what%20works

There is safety in numbers and there's little chance that you'll see any significant portion of the population mixing with traffic on main streets. If you can't expect children and families to ride there, it's not safe enough. On side streets with little car traffic it often does make sense not to separate infrastructure, but traffic calming is then particularly important. http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/11/reality-vs-myth-dangers-o… That said: > Every accident I had was one where I was in a designated bike lane, and the car crossed it to turn or enter a parking lot in an opening. A "designated bike lane" that's just a strip of paint is also not enough for exactly that reason, and if the bike lane (even a protected one) is frequently interrupted by curb cuts into parking lots that's likewise not bike-friendly design.

The oldest age I've found is 75, and they still rode 2x per week in 2011. http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/who-cycles-in-netherlands…

>totally separate pathways. Relevant links: https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/dictionary/unravelling http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/search/label/unravelling

> Not everyone is a young single person that can just go to a food co-op every few days, throw some organic produce in their backpack and ride home. In places with good bicycle infrastructure like the Netherlands pretty much everyone cycles (93% cycle at least once per week). In fact the mode share for bicycles is lowest in the 30-40 age range with the 2nd highest being 65 and up - highest is under 18. The biggest use for cycling is shopping (22%). http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/who-cycles-in-netherlands…

this is a summary for a more detailed article here: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/08/why-tunnels-are-better-th…

I think the Dutch bike experience is the result of a conscious decision to make cycling feel safe and convenient which was partly motivated by the 1970's fuel crisis. The real puzzle is why is this the only country make that decision. See also http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2009/10/effect-of-hills-on-cyclin…

The safest answer is separate bike infrastructure. Full Netherlands style. http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/11/first-cycle-superhighway-…

I like that they are trying to consider different possibilities, although I'm not personally fond of what they came up with. For example, one picture looked like ramps for bikes to go over cars, but in practice it works better for cyclists to go under (even though from an engineering standpoint it is more work to put the heavy traffic on top). I also don't want bikes to be indoors (and I primarily bike for transportation). I like David Hembrow's blog about cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands. Here is a good post on myths and excuses about cycling infrastructure: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/all-those-myths-and-excus…

Bike lanes are often more dangerous, but that is generally due to poorly designed bike lanes . There's lots of informative explanation on this blog http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/search/label/subjective%20safety

A quick search turned up a paper on Netherlands (population 16.77 mil): ... 9,200 sustain serious injury in a bicycle crash. A third of these seriously injured bicycle casualties are diagnosed with head or brain injuries (32%) http://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheets/UK/FS_Bicycle_helmets.pdf Showing 211 cyclists have a serious head injury per billion km cycled... Discussion: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/08/brain-injuries-and-dutch-… Edit: accounting

More info: [1][2] [1] - http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/10/how-dutch-got-their-cycli… [2] - http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/09/how-the-dutch-got-th…

Congrats! You are one in 90 lifetimes! From http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/08/brain-injuries-and-dutch-… > Rather than reacting emotionally we have to look at the numbers to make sense of this. The overall risk to Dutch cyclists (it's on page two of the document) of a "head/brain injury" is 153 per billion kilometres ridden. That means that one such injury is one per 6.5 million kilometres ridden. > On average, every Dutch person makes a trip by bicycle 5.6 times per week. This works out as an average across the whole population of 2.5 km cycled every day. That's the highest figure for any population in the world. If we assume that people cycle every day of their lives to the age of 80, and that they cycle that 2.5 km every day of their life, they will ride a bike for a total of 73000 km during their lifetime. Divide it into 6.5 million and you find a figure that a typical Dutch cyclist can expect a "head/brain injury" once every 90 lifetimes.

True story: I moved from southern California to Holland in no small part because of how amenable the country is to cycling. People like to think that cycling is popular here naturally because the country is flat and densely populated. However, it's easy to forget that during the postwar boom years, a major shift toward cars happened and it took a concerted effort of willful resistance and politically non-expedient measures to bring back the bike paths (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o). Clearly, 1897 was not the last chance the Dutch had to fix their transit system, and with the groundwork they've laid over the years, it now costs only €30 per person in funding annually! (http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/05/487-million-euros-for-cyc… Yet I see very little chance of this happening in California, not because cyclists lack a voice, but because we need to create more disincentives to driving. This obviously is a political no-go considering that motorists are by far the majority demographic. It's saddening, though, that there is so much willful ignorance (or apathy) with regard to how we've externalized the true cost of driving, whether it's in the form of: - damage to the environment - subsidy to cheap gas prices by the DoD budget (and body count) for controlling the world's oil flow - casualties from motor vehicle accidents - health problems resulting from sedentary lifestyles - zoning rules that require abundant free parking to be…