A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

It's 18th(ish) century rural England, without all the stuff that made 18th century rural England a relatively comfortable place, which is to say colonies, the slave trade, the early industrial revolution and so on.

While not going into details: 1. This only concerns liability for damages. 2. It is not necessarily the case that the cyclist is exempt from (fully) compensating the motorized driver for their damages, even if the cyclist is reimbursed for (a portion of) their own damages.

Also note that most cyclists are insured!

disallowing something doesn't make it non existent.

In the neighborhood where that picture was taken live approximately 15 thousand people and many more come every night to hang out.

I know it's bad, I do not approve people going everywhere with their cars even when it's obviously wrong, but it is what it is, and it doesn't make the problem go away.

Street space is premium space in cities.

I wish we could simply stop this car madness by wishful thinking, but we can't.

[1]: "Cycling UK wants to keep helmets an optional choice. Forcing - or strongly encouraging - people to wear helmets deters people from cycling and undermines the public health benefits of cycling. This campaign seeks to educate policy makers and block misguided attempts at legislation."

[2]: "Even if helmets are 85% effective (and assuming q = 0.5 as above), the number of cyclists’ lives saved will still be outnumbered by deaths to non-cyclists if there is a reduction in cycle use of more than 2%"

[3]: "Enforced helmet laws and helmet promotion have consistently caused substantial reductions in cycle use (30-40% in Perth, Western Australia). Although they have also increased the proportion of the remaining cyclists who wear helmets, the safety of these cyclists has not improved relative to other road user groups (for example, in New Zealand).

The resulting loss of cycling’s health benefits alone (that is, before taking account of its environmental, economic and societal benefits) is very much greater than any possible injury prevention benefit."

[...]

"Evidence also suggests that even the voluntary promotion of helmet wearing may reduce cycle use."

[...]

"Even with very optimistic assumptions as to the efficacy of helmets, relatively minor reductions in cycling on account of a helmet law are sufficient to cancel out, in population average terms, all head injury health benefits."

[4]: "With 290 cyclist fatalities in 2022, cyclists were the largest group of road casualties. Of these, most were killed by collision with a vehicle (206 bicycle deaths)."

[5]: "Cycling levels in the Netherlands have substantial population-level health benefits: about 6500 deaths are prevented annually, and Dutch people have half-a-year-longer life expectancy. These large population-level health benefits translate into economic benefits of €19 billion per year, which represents more than 3% of the Dutch gross domestic product between 2010 and 2013.3.

The 6500 deaths that are prevented annually as a result of cycling becomes even more impressive when compared with the population health effects of other preventive measures. In an overview, Mackenbach et al.11 showed that the 22 new preventive interventions that have been introduced in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2010 (e.g., tobacco control, population-based screening for cancer, and road safety measures) altogether prevent about 16 000 deaths per year.

Still, our results are likely to be an underestimation of the true total health and economic benefits."

[6]: "Riding a bicycle to work every day reduces the risk of premature death by 41% (risk of dying from heart disease: -52%; risk of dying from cancer: -40%)."

[...]

"Regular cycling boosts physical fitness and compares to 1 to 2 weekly gym sessions."

[...]

"Bicycle use not only improves physical health, but also has a positive impact on mental health and subjective well-being."

[1]: https://www.cyclinguk.org/campaign/cycle-helmets-evidence

[2]: https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1249.html

[3]: https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/why-should-highway-codes-a...

[4]: https://english.kimnet.nl/publications/publications/2023/11/...

[5]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504332/

[6]: https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/documenten/rep...

There are costs and benefits to everything. In London you can walk ten minutes, jump on the train, get where you want, have a walkable (ish) town centre, go home drunk, and it's accessible to the poor (if we assume away rents which are theoretically solvable).

But then in various American cities you can drive 20 minutes in your own bubble from your suburban house to a parking lot around the corner from the bar/restaurant/whatever. You're shielded from weather and don't have to socialise with undesirables.

Neither of those systems feel inherently "wrong" or "right" to me, they feel like different opinions. I've enjoyed both at different stages of my life for different reasons.

If anything I feel that the "worst case" is when you try to mix both because then you either have hilarious congestion (because cars are too big to fit on medieval streets) or huge walking distances / public transport dead spots (because trains can't cover large areas with low population density).