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Comment by MomoXenosaga | Hacker News Reader

In Holland they learned the hard way that you have to physically cordon off half of every road for bicycles. But you have to remember that just putting some paint on the pavement is a lot cheaper so that's what the government tries first.

The reason why roads were taken back by Dutch cyclists and pedestrians is that they never stopped doing it. At some dark moment in the 1970s the number of children run over by cars was too much for society to ignore. It was a battle won by blood.

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Americans seem really good at ignoring cyclists being run over. Children don't seem to walk/cycle and rely on being driven around by their parents here so they don't die as much (good, obviously people know its not safe) but doesn't promote infrastructure investment for alternative transit (bad).

Reminds me of this. https://twitter.com/darren_cullen/status/1422550369985605637

This is one of my favorite artists! It's so great to see him referenced here!

And there's plenty of space in the US; most roads can be half as wide and still service most cars. Plenty of space to build in a hard shoulder / fencing and a dedicated two-way bike lane.

But that's only part of the problem, the amount of entitled, and selfish drivers that ignore traffic rules, lights and sometimes even roads is crazy.

In suburbia America, where bike lanes are abound and plenty of cyclists to boot, it is the cyclists that are entitled, selfish, arrogant, and ignore the traffic rules. They've recently resorted to riding 4-5 cyclists wide to take up the entire roadway. They ignore stop signs and traffic lights, trying to pass as a pedestrian whenever it is convenient, and have been responsible for many pedestrian related injuries.

For the record, I am a cyclist. I would love to use it more. But the roads are too dangerous, and town hall meetings are always full of the same two sides talking past each other. It's a perception issue, but hardcore cyclists refuse to acknowledge it. So the situation continues to not improve.

"They ignore stop signs and traffic lights, trying to pass as a pedestrian whenever it is convenient, and have been responsible for many pedestrian related injuries"

No doubt, there are ruthless cyclists as well. Still, are you aware of the difference in numbers and quality of "car driver killed cyclist" vs. "cyclist hurt pedestrian"?

Yes. I am aware. This doesn't change the argument, and more importantly, nor does it change the perception of the situation. Cyclists situation in America will not improve so long as the perception of them are they are smug assholes. Everyone already knows there are smug asshole drivers. But we already have roads for cars everywhere. If you want to try and get more tax dollars for segregated bike lanes, the perception and the argument has to change.

"Everyone already knows there are smug asshole drivers. But we already have roads for cars everywhere. If you want to try and get more tax dollars for segregated bike lanes, the perception and the argument has to change."

So you say, it is ok, that there are some asshole drivers but roads still needs to be build and maintained, but not OK, that there are some asshole cyclists and therefore no cyclist deserves more bikelanes? (Or do you want me to dig up numbers on how much is spend yearly on roads vs bikelanes?)

But for real? Arguments for support of cycling by allowing them to do so safe?

How about cycling is way more energy efficient. Does not poison the surrounding with toxic fumes and noise. Increases the health - studies showed it does so even despite the toxic fumes of their fellow car drivers who often overlook and directly kill or criple them and now want more arguments of why the tax dollar is not only for them?

We were able to find a few cyclists who misbehaved so we are going to justify killing them with 1 ton metal machines because we feel threatened by them?

This is the absolute least charitable interpretation of what I am saying.

Death because you are annoyed is not a good look you know. We shouldn't advocate that here.

Yet the worst is you are annoyed, not dead. Bicycles and cars are not the same.

I was very fortunate to raise kids in low density exurbs. My son completely wore out a bike going to school and visiting friends, often miles away. Dozens to hundreds of serious cyclists visit town on weekends to ride here. We also have people on roller skis and longboards on our roads. It seems really shortsighted to exclude these people in favor of cars.

Are there bike paths, or does he ride on the road alongside cars?

No bike paths, just rural roads. Generally without any center line, even. We gave our kids mobile phones early on so they could stay in touch while being independent. It is common for kids in town to go fishing or sailing small boats on their own on a large pond in town. Lots of autonomy.

Were there lots of other children doing the same? Living in eastern Canada I've never really seen what you're describing.

Yes, this was, and still is, normal. Some people do drive their kids to school. But kids are still very independent. It's a small town with spread out houses. The general store, library, after school sports, and the town beach, in warm weather, are the choices of things to do. Things have changed a bit. It's more upscale. Farm dogs don't roam about. Hidden fences are installed most places. That makes life easier for cyclists.

In America you just get social services called on you if you let/make your child walk or cycle anywhere.

Yes! I bike with my kids to school daily and if one of them gets out ahead of me inevitably a car stops to ask if they are alright

> It was a battle won by blood.

This is the current battle in Toronto, Canada.

Last year, there were more people killed by cars than gun violence, but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage.

The city, largely due to strong local advocacy, has started to respond with physically separated lanes, but we're talking double digit KM/year, if we're lucky, when we need 100s of KM to link the city together like this Milan proposal.

> Last year, there were more people killed by cars than gun violence, but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage.

Same thing in the Greater Seattle Anarchist metro area, but we don't get screaming Nextdoor or city subreddit posts every time there's a fatal automotive crash.

but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage.

Yeah, it doesn't help that the media used to almost exclusively refers to car crashes as "accidents", falsely implying there was nothing that could have been done to avoid the situation, putting zero fault on any drivers involved. At least nowadays you see headlines about "car crashes", although you'll still find ledes like "person struck by dies of complications". No need for passive voice, a driver struck and killed that person.

..and on that note, they are doing much of the same with gun violence, too. "A 14-year-old girl has died after she was struck by a stray bullet shot by police while in a North Hollywood department store. [0]" Passive voice, putting the intent on the bullet, not directly saying the girl was shot to death. To read that quote, you'd think the bullet took it upon itself to strike the girl, who died of her own volition.

0 - https://people.com/crime/14-year-old-girl-killed-by-stray-bu...

A driver should certainly be at fault, but also how much blame should be put on the engineers designing our roadways? They have built an environment that is hostile to anyway not in a car. I get that they have "standards" that have to be followed, but when you're implementing a bad design that likely will result in any number of deaths greater than 0, shouldn't those design standards be questioned?

DOTs around the US measure vehicle traffic regularly, but very few measure any kind of other traffic, so they don't even know how many travelers are on roads that are not in a car.

I lived in the NL for a year. Their road ways are a work of art. I can go on and on about their beauty, utility all day long. I mean look at this [1] and this [2] for instance.

[1] https://imgur.com/aEwTSm0

[2] https://imgur.com/4Lreaar

Those are pictures of a Cambridge roundabout, trying to imitate a Dutch roundabout. However except for very light traffic situations all (as far as I am aware) roundabouts newly constructed in the Netherlands are so called turbo-roundabouts [1]. Other than that, I agree that the standard of roads and infrastructure in the Netherlands is a fair bit higher than anywhere else I know of. Of course there are nice roads in every country, but in the Netherlands, there are almost no really bad roads, and every freeway is properly designed and maintained.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Turbo_roundaboutsle... turbo-roundabouts.

> Those are picture of a Cambridge roundabout,

I realised it minutes after posting it when I noticed the driving was on the left (as opposed to right in NL) :-). The architecture is very close to those in the NL though which fooled my lazy eyes. Pedestrian islands, enabling free movement of cyclists with clear markings etc.,

How does right of way with this wide separation work though? In my experience (not Dutch) it always goes like this when a car and a cyclist approach a point where their paths cross and the cyclist has right of way: cyclist slows down to be ready for an emergency stop knowing full well that right of way won't be of any help when bones are crushed, driver takes it as an invitation to "slip" through.

The usual cooperative approach of "I have right of way, I can help my peer by accelerating a bit so they don't have to wait so long" seems to only work with participants in roughly the same weight class.

Car drivers get trained when doing driving lessons. There are so many roundabouts that you have to cooperate as a car driver. Also, it is well-known that when an accident happens, the car driver gets the financial damage, and yes, the insurance will pay, but he/she will lose a big percentage of the no-claim decrease in insurance fee.

Recently, local governments are moving away from the real small roundabouts like this one because in the dark, when it is raining, with cyclists who are without lights, these are still somewhat unsafe: https://www.telegraaf.nl/images/1540x866/filters:format(jpeg...

These are much more modern, and car drivers can more easily see cyclists and mopeds come: https://www.denhaag.nl/upload/0690e94f-f7ac-43a3-8c1e-4fb768...

Oh, and yes, car drivers can sometimes be aggressive. The same counts for cyclists though. I guess both kinds of people are just like normal people. And by the way, a lot of people are one day car drivers, the next day cyclist, there is a lot of sympathy.

I simply don't understand why roundabouts aren't just shared. Do separation as much as you like 10m away from them, but in the roundabout, there's exactly zero excuse for a speed difference between motor vehicles and bikes. When drivers are expected to let segregated cyclists pass on leaving the roundabout, they actually have to go slower than they would merged behind even the laziest cyclist. I really don't get it.

(yes, the answer will be "but children!", but I'm a believer in "treat cyclists like children and only children will ride bikes!" and I'd be a firm believer if the Netherlands didn't have this annoying habit of proving me wrong ;))

Blind spots. The driver turning right doesn't see the cyclist planning to take the next exit if the bike lane is right next to the car lane.

With a segregated bike lane the driver turbing right has the bike lane in front of them.

Basically, the bike always has right of way and cyclist act like it as well, cyclist don't slow down and assume the any cars will stop, on the other hand, car drivers are drilled to always be on the look out for cyclists and give them all the space required, you get drilled on this and don't get a license untill you fully understand how to keep cyclists safe, that in practise means you need about 40 hours of driving lessons before you have any change of getting a driver's license. On the liabity side of things, the law basically assumes the driver of the car (more generally a motorised vehicle) is always at fault. Aside from some extremely reckless behaviour bordering on intentially throwing yourself in front of a car, any damages to your own vehicle as well as the cyclist you hit, is coming out of the motorists insurance.

Cyclists have unilateral priority over everything else. I suppose first few years a few cyclists' bones did get crushed. However through training, stringent laws etc., it's drilled into everyone to make way for cyclists. At the roundabouts there's no negotiation etc., Motor vehicles dare not slip through. They patiently wait lest they invite the wrath of authorities.

I suppose there's a better way. However, as a society, Dutch have decided to go whole nine yards to being a cycling friendly nation. And it shows and has its benefits.

Have the roads been taken back though? Segregated trickle-lanes have been taken, but in the process the roads themselves have become effectively limited access down to tertiary level. I'm not saying that the Dutch method is bad, the results speak a very different language, but "taken back" is not what happened.

Uhm, don't the Dutch separate cyclists and motorists only where the speed limit is >30km/h? At ≤30km/h there's no separation at all IIRC.

Good news about Milan, though. That'll be such an improvement.

30km/h is very low speed. Majority or roads are faster.

Majority by road count, road length, road surface area, number of trips travelled or what? The answer varies. And BTW, 30km/h isn't very low speed in a country where bicycles are common.

30km/h is not an uncommon speed in European urban areas. For example, in France within towns 50km/h is the default speed limit for main arteries, but it is 30km/h for areas where pedestrians are expected. Most of Paris has made the switch, so has Brussels. I would go as far as saying they are a majority of streets, while yes, roads are always faster, but that would be playing semantic games.

All streets are roads, no? While not all roads are streets.

I'm going off of Strong Town's differentiation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ1HhLq-Huo, also tackled by Not Just Bikes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM.

But apparently your Danish counterparts to the north are doing just fine without?

In the US far more people have died of COVID-19 than we’ve ever seen of dead bike riders. The bar for the US to change policies because of a “dark moment” is going to be in the millions of deaths, which just isn’t going to happen when bike riding has such a small mode share here.

9/11 was an anomaly and the aftermath was that we are now comfortable with constant surveillance and a region that hasn't known peace in decades.

9/11 policy changes had barely any long-term impact on civilian Americans. Taxes didn’t have to go up. Airports already had security lines, TSA was largely a management change. And the constant surveillance is largely transparent (unless you lived near a government or military installation).

I’m talking about policy changes that require a massive change in daily life. Wearing masks. Street redesigns that reduce parking or slow down cars. European-style gas taxes.

Road safety measures would benefit all road users, not just cyclists. Around 40,000 Americans are killed each year on the roads, and 1% of the population are injured seriously enough to require medical attention. Those are scary large numbers, and the fact that the country has gotten accustomed to this is really unbelievable.

Vulnerable road users have a disproportionate share of crash fatalities. And the commonly accepted safety improvements might reduce crash frequencies for drivers, but it doesn’t do it enough (and have enough impact on major injuries death) to overcome their complaints of slower traffic and less parking. If it did, America’s traffic safety numbers would look more like Western European countries.

For example pedestrian bulb outs and daylighting reducing on-street parking while making pedestrians more visible. Bike lanes remove travel lanes or parking, making traffic slower. Lower speed limits make crashes more survivable, but slow down traffic. When used for safety (and not cash) speed and red light cameras increase safety, but make driving costlier.

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