Live data from Hacker News

A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

bicycledutch.wordpress.com

101–110 of 339 posts

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain this, the italicized part below, in more detail? >> When you approach from the side street, as a driver, the order of dealing with other traffic is different, but the priority is similar. First you will notice a speed bump. The complete intersection is on a raised table. Pedestrians would not have priority if the street was level, but now that it isn’t the “exit construction” rule could apply and…

https://www.theorieexamen.nl/theory-exam/what-is-a-entrance-... An entrance or exit construction is a place on a road where you aren't just turning onto the road but exiting the road entirely. The most common example from any country would be a private driveway. Pedestrians, cyclists and cars going along the sidewalk, bike path or road have priority against anyone turning into the driveway or turning onto the road fr…

And yet the photo in the article shows piano teeth markings before the shark teeth, which indicates a level change for the car. In that case I would assume that cars are required to yield to pedestrians crossing the side street even though the sidewalk surface is not continuous.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#102

I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety. Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars. Taipei uses the sidewalk model and I recommend never using them I find the Chinese model of bike/scooter lanes w/ barriers integrated into the main road a superior model. The ot…

Not sure if you mean the Dutch style cycle lanes: in that case, it's just tourists that risk impact with bikes, simply because they're conditioned to ignore them (i.e. the brain is trained to consider dangerous only what's beyond the curb).

After a few weeks people just learn to be mindful of bicycles and bicycle lanes as they are normally mindful of roads. In particular, one learns to never change direction suddenly (crossing a bike lane, but also on a shared road) but to stop first and check behind their back for potential cyclists.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#104

Despite the cycling infrastructure being second to none, I hated my time cycling in Amsterdam earlier this year. The drivers (taxis in particular) are just terrible, very violent, at least in the city center. Having a lot of cycling paths that don't intersect or run along motorways (the ones through parks are especially nice) improves the situation and I did enjoy that part, but I can't shake the first impression of…

That's probably an Amsterdam thing, smaller Dutch cities are lovely and awesome to cycle in. Rotterdam was also not enjoyable to cycle due to aggressive drivers when I visited.

Hilversum is pretty bad

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#105

I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety. Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars. Taipei uses the sidewalk model and I recommend never using them I find the Chinese model of bike/scooter lanes w/ barriers integrated into the main road a superior model. The ot…

I think if you tried them out you'll find these bike paths are not unsafe (and I bet the accident numbers back that up), because it's a whole system. Design like this will have features to force drivers to take slow turns when crossing the bike paths, and they are raised so that it's clear to drivers they don't have right of way.

NL always goes for the transit stops that poke out like you mention as well when possible.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#106

Although this was in the '80s I remember that I (Dutch) walked to school at the age of 5, in a town (technically a city (Enkhuizen)), mostly through a pedestrian area but I had to cross one busy street. My parents told me later that they secretly followed me the first few times (I never noticed). Just try to image that you live in a country that is so safe you can let small kids walk to school. Try to imagine what a…

it was the 80s, I used to walk to school at 6, passing through an hospital, in a town, quite a big one, named Rome. It's just that parents nowadays forgot that kids are functioning humans, can learn stuff and can do stuff on their own. edit: for the downvoters, look at what Japan does or how women in Denmark do with their kids, instead of thinking "this man must be crazy, how in the hell I can leave my kids alone in…

You won’t kidnap them, you’ll drive over them and then blame the kid for being in your way

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#107

I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety. Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars. Taipei uses the sidewalk model and I recommend never using them I find the Chinese model of bike/scooter lanes w/ barriers integrated into the main road a superior model. The ot…

I broadly agree that I'd like standalone separated bike lanes, but I think this is dubious:

> Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars

As far as I'm aware, more or less everywhere, both the frequency & severity of bicycle vs pedestrian crashes is much lower than bicycle vs car crashes. Do you have any statistics that say otherwise?

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#108

This design highlights a major failing with UK cycle "infrastructure". Here, we often have shared use pavements with sometimes a bit of white paint to designate the pedestrian and cycle lanes, but they cede priority at every single side road. The problem is that it makes cycling using them really awkward as it takes significant energy for cyclists to slow down and then speed up multiple times. The irony is that if yo…

In Ireland, Dublin City Council has mostly gone with lanes which are either on the side of the road (with or without bollards), or entirely separate, whereas South Dublin County Council prefers shared use pavements. The two local authorities are contiguous, so it's all a bit jarring when you go between them.

Separately, a national project, Busconnects, is putting in its own bike lanes. Some of these are... interesting: https://irishcycle.com/2023/03/23/busconnects-approach-to-cy...

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#109

I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety. Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars. Taipei uses the sidewalk model and I recommend never using them I find the Chinese model of bike/scooter lanes w/ barriers integrated into the main road a superior model. The ot…

> Bikes hitting pedestrians is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars.

Do you have any empirical evidence for this? Because every single study I have seen suggest that speed and weight of the participants matters most. And a bike and a person are simply, much less likely to cause serious harm.

A car can kill a biker easy, for a bike to kill anybody, you need to really be incredibly unlucky.

The Dutch are doing a lot of empirical work, and they have not adopted anything like you describe.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#110
Driving in towns and cities in the Netherlands is frightening as a foreigner not used to it as you're constantly afraid about hitting a cyclist. I drive like a grandma there.

And that's how it should be.

I always regret not taking the very advice I gave yesterday about European cities and parking on the outskirts!

Post reply on HN