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How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

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Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#31

Post by merpnderp »

phil248 wrote: post #17

I was amazed at how mellow everyone in Amsterdam seemed while riding their bikes. In US cities, most cyclist act like they're in a race. They must run every stop sign, charge down every hill, graze every pedestrian... in downtown Amsterdam most people were going at a leisurely pace and if you get in their way, they just ding a little bell at you.

I was turning left to park at lunch and a bicyclist blew through two stop signs at ~45mph and almost t-boned me. I had wrongly assumed he'd stop at the two stops signs and I had plenty of time. Luckily he happily pulled into oncoming traffic to swerve around me.

I'm sure in the near future he'll be donating organs to some lucky recipient.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#32

Post by Afton »

sxp62000 wrote: post #21

The Netherlands are (is?) also very flat. If you go up a tower with a viewing area in one of the bigger cities, you'll see what I mean. You can see really far in the horizon! Maybe it's just easier to bike there so more people do it?

E-bikes are flattening terrain. Source: I live in Seattle, am an avid biker, and those Lime e-bikes are everywhere. People who wouldn't dream of biking because of the hills are now out on casual errands with those things.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#33

Post by tlb »

Another way in which biking in (some parts of) the US isn't casual: pretty much every biker you see in Silicon Valley has bike shorts, a jersey advertising a race or energy drink, clip-in shoes and is riding at VO₂ max. I feel out of place tooling around in street clothes.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#34

Post by kazinator »

bunderbunder wrote: post #5
Rainymood wrote: post #2

As a Dutch person I am pleasantly surprised by this article, it gets basically everything right. One thing though is that our geography works well with biking. I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. Everything is just closer and hence more bike-able. As a dutch person I would abs…

As an American, whenever I see articles about Dutch cycling culture, the thing that stands out to me is that nobody is wearing helmets. In the US, I wouldn't dream of doing that - it's just too dangerous, because there's too much risk of being involved in a high speed collision. But, after having spent some time in the Netherlands, it's come to feel like a minor injustice every time I put my helmet on. It's a little…

Note that in the USA, it's possible to see children in a playground wearing helmets.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#35

Post by bunderbunder »

watwut wrote: post #23
bunderbunder wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, whenever I see articles about Dutch cycling culture, the thing that stands out to me is that nobody is wearing helmets. In the US, I wouldn't dream of doing that - it's just too dangerous, because there's too much risk of being involved in a high speed collision. But, after having spent some time in the Netherlands, it's come to feel like a minor injustice every time I put my helmet on. It's a little…

Helmet does not help in high speed crash with car and is not designed for it. It helps in small falls.

I've seen that stated many times. As far as I can tell, it traces back to a news article that did fun things like cherry picking individual observations from a study to support a claim even though the study's overall findings were contradictory.

My own sense is that the science seems pretty clear that, provided you are in a wreck, wearing a helmet greatly reduces your risk of serious injury and death. Helmets aren't perfect, and they may primarily be designed for lower-engery impacts, but even insufficient energy dissipation is better than zero energy dissipation.

There's a secondary claim that not wearing a helmet results in safer behavior than wearing one, and that outweighs any potential benefit. I'm not aware of any quality research to back that claim, and you'd never be able to get a study to pin the question down past an institutional review board, so I'm inclined to say that cuts very close to what we called a fundamentally unanswerable question back in my class on experiment design. (Well, actually we used the acronym most the time. ^_^ ) My personal sense is to think that expecting your garden variety distracted, chronically fatigued, or nonzero BAC driver to notice whether you're wearing a helmet in the first place, let alone modify their behavior accordingly, is giving them more credit than they've earned.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#37

Post by dddw »

cr1895 wrote: post #13

It wasn’t always this way. There’s an interesting clip from a documentary in 1972 about the neighborhood De Pijp in Amsterdam, when it was still very much a car-centric city. At the time children in the area protested how dangerous the streets had become and how they lacked safe areas to play. https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/amsterdam-chil... Compared to the situation now, it’s vastly improved. Fortunat…

Rotterdam is still very car-centric if you ask me.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#39

Post by ptaipale »

Rainymood wrote: post #2

As a Dutch person I am pleasantly surprised by this article, it gets basically everything right. One thing though is that our geography works well with biking. I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. Everything is just closer and hence more bike-able. As a dutch person I would abs…

Another thing is that Netherlands (most of it) is flat. Much nicer to ride bike on even ground than where there are even small hills.

Re: How the Dutch created a casual biking culture

#40

Post by Scott_Sanderson »

bunderbunder wrote: post #35
watwut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helmet does not help in high speed crash with car and is not designed for it. It helps in small falls.

I've seen that stated many times. As far as I can tell, it traces back to a news article that did fun things like cherry picking individual observations from a study to support a claim even though the study's overall findings were contradictory. My own sense is that the science seems pretty clear that, provided you are in a wreck, wearing a helmet greatly reduces your risk of serious injury and death. Helmets aren't…

> provided you are in a wreck, wearing a helmet greatly reduces your risk of serious injury and death

So . . . you wear a helmet when driving? Because people get head injuries all the time in car wrecks.

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