I Learned to Cycle Like a Dutchman

There's plenty of us here in the US, especially in the large cities, that are actively trying to make this a reality here too. Join us! Here's the largest NYC group: http://transalt.org/

If you're braking hard enough with the front brake to send you over the handlebars, whatever is going on with the rear brake is irrelevant because your rear wheel is literally lifting off the road and thus cannot possibly contribute meaningfully to braking or traction. In severe emergency braking, it's the front brake alone that matters (and sounds like you used a little too much of it). More info here: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html

And yeah, I've been there done that going over the handlebars in a situation in which I braked too hard and had my weight too far forward, and it's no fun. Gloves definitely help prevent your hands from getting scratched up in a higher velocity bike collision.

This one time a van cut me off turning right across a bike lane while I was cruising at approx. 25mph on 8th St. in SF, probably too fast, and probably poorly positioned in the van's blind spot. I caught the front right wheel of the van and flew across the hood, rolled over it, landed on my back on the street and skidded to a hault on the opposite side just short of the curb. I was not wearing a helmet, but also, I suffered zero injuries–my bike on the other hand had two completely destroyed wheels.

The van driver paid to fix the wheels. I started wearing a helmet after that always while riding (before that I only did while on long distance or competitive rides). I haven't had a crash since, probably because I avoid blind spots and other dangerous positions on the street.

In all the years that I rode and crashed my bike as a kid, I also never suffered any serious head injuries, even this time that I crashed my bike and broke my hand protecting my face when I fell (not wearing a helmet), but today I still wear my helmet and its annoyance. Yet I have zero evidence that it has ever been useful to me. If I lived in a place where I didn't have to worry about cars murdering me all the time, like Holland, I probably would ride like I did as a kid, and not wear a helmet. That being said, I do make my kids wear helmets...

Can I suggest that you learn to brake effectively? You should not be going over the handlebars when you brake hard.

Under hard braking, the front brake is the only one that matters, because the back wheel will lift off. Find a safe bit of tarmac and practice braking progressively harder and harder until you can feel the point just before you start to lose control & hold it there. Practice until it becomes second nature.

I usually adjust my brakes so that my front brake isn't tight enough to throw me over the handlebars in panic. I used to bike a lot (and quite recklessly) in my teens, so I got kinda paranoid about overly sensitive front brakes.

Anyways, and without knowing the details of your accident, if you were biking 30km/h in an area where you can't see if someone comes from around a corner, then you were biking too fast. Still the girl's fault for jumping in front of you without looking.

Try Cycling in the Netherlands at 30 km/h near pedestrians (even when on a bike-lane) and you will get no sympathy for going over the handlebars. Heck, cycling at 30 km/h on any kind of bike lane will be disruptive to other cyclists. The norm here is somewhere between 15 and 20. Anything over 20 is seen as putting in effort.

In an unclear situation (i.e. any busy city), doing 30 km/h is way too fast. The sibling post talks about 25 mph = 40 km/h(!), that's racing speed, pretty dangerous if there is other traffic around.

There's a difference between the cycling the Dutch do at 18-20 km/h -- maybe 25 km/h on a dedicated cycle path with no chance of interaction with other traffic -- and race-cycling at 30+ km/h, which is in no way appropriate in a city with pedestrians and cars. I saw it in London too: very busy streets, and the cyclists are in full racing gear on racing bikes where they're hunched over instead of upright (bad for overview of traffic situations), doing 25-30 km/h, that's asking for trouble and it also gives cyclists a bad name.

It also explains why people complain about getting to work sweaty -- they're going way too fast! If you relax and do 18 km/h, it will take only a little bit longer but you won't be soaked when you arrive.

I haven't seen that many (elderly) people in The Netherlands on e-bikes that used a helmet this year. The only people that wear helmets are the ones that have a speed padelec/mountainbiker or racing bikes.

Meanwhile, in the US, we let elderly people continue driving long past the point where it's safe to do so, and then they kill not just themselves but also others. It's so commonplace the idea of an elderly driver fatally plowing through a farmer's market has become a trope.

In the Netherlands, that is mostly the opposite: see https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/strict-liabili...

Funny. In the Netherlands, there is a law that makes cyclists a protected class. In particular, while cyclist may cause an accident, the one with airbags, cage construction, bumpers and crumple zones has the responsibility to avoid accidents.

This is not "its always the fault of the car driver". But: it is always the responsibility of the car driver to avoid an accident.

> I was given a ticket in Seattle for being hit by a car while in a dedicated bike lane.

Could you be more specific about what law you violated according to the ticket? That is, what ordinance/law was listed on the ticket itself?

Well, unlike a seat-belt, a helmet is easily stolen and needs to be kept track of by itself. This means that if the net effect of having to keep track of it is to cost you sufficiently that you choose a car or other sedentary mode of transit over a bike you may well lose more quality-adjusted life years. We shouldn't over-weight rare catastrophic events compared to common continuous damage events.

In practice this means that I wear a helmet all the time in SF. But most of the time, I wouldn't wear one in Cambridge.

Except that the evidence is not clear that cycle helmets actually improve safety for adults (it is clear that it improves it for children), and cyclists will avoid cycling altogether if helmets are mandatory.

Perhaps more importantly, cars carry safety risks for everyone. If I walk or cycle I am at risk of being run over by your car, my lungs get damaged due to the exhaust, the climate suffers.

Yet, bicycle helmets aren't designed to protect one's head in anything other than a simple fall. In fact, the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) impact test standard only tests for a guided free fall from a height of about 6.5 feet. That's not sufficient to protect one in a crash with a motor vehicle.

If seatbelts were only designed to protect in a frontal collision speed of 15 mph, then they won't provide any protection in a 45 mph crash.

I think this shows a difference between ways of thinking.

A helmet helps to mitigate your injuries during a serious accident, but tacitly accepts that such serious accidents still happen.

The Dutch government feels that serious accidents are not acceptable in the first place, and seeks to eliminate them (almost) entirely.

There is more to it than merely safety rules. It's making separate roads for bicycles, making different intersections, taking care of tiny little details like the exact shape of the curb (to minimize damage and injury if hit).

It's a systematic, integrated, systems thinking approach; backed by (in total) billions of Euros of infrastructure investment and research over several decades.

It's not that a helmet doesn't give more protection (it does), it's just that for normal A-to-B cycling, one should make things so the helmet is no longer needed.

You have to keep in mind the weather there too.

But I will say that cycling is surprisingly sweat-free for me (someone who typically sweats a lot). The amount of wind you're generating has a significant evaporative cooling effect that helps a lot even in hot weather. I find that when I'm biking to work, even on hot summer days, I only get noticeably sweaty when I'm sitting in the sun not moving at all waiting for a light to turn, and then when I get into a stuffy elevator at work.

This is actually pretty important. I did a 50 miles ride once and after about 30 miles the only way I could continue was by removing my helmet. My head was overheating otherwise, and every mile I continued with the helmet on, I was getting dizzier and dizzier. Only after I removed my helmet was I able to continue the ride without any negative effects.

I still advocate for bicyclists wearing a helmet, but inside that recommendation is the reality that the standard American helmet I was wearing was causing me to overheat and suffer negative side effects. The only way I made it to my destination was from removing the helmet and taking the risk of crashing and suffering a major head injury.

In that way, helmets are very different from automobile seat belts.

I agree that the hypotheekrenteaftrek should be (and is being) phased out, but it seems to me that the monetary policy of the ECB is a big factor in the current housing bubble as well -- for years they've been lowering the interest rates in the name of stimulating inflation, which also drove up housing prices.

Do you walk at up to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) in roadways right next to cars going much faster?

That’s the Dutch reasoning... if I need one during cycling, might as well walk eat and sleep with helmet

Of course not, and since I ride my bike at 15 km/h in a bicycle-friendly city, on safe paths, I don't wear one on my bike either.

I wouldn't wear a helmet in the U.S. since I'd rather not risk getting on a bike at all over there.