We live with 1 child and no car and it's been working fine thus far. You have to be careful about where you live and work though, but I'd say the added quality of life of living car-free (in a car-free city) is all worth it.
- Planning routes that avoid particularly risky roads or junctions and take advantage of separated bike lanes where possible. This is trivial in a city as there's hundreds of possible routes between two places.
- A cargo bike itself is a much larger and more visible presence on the road than a regular bike. That combined with the visible children on board usually means motorists do a better job of staying clear than they do when I'm on a regular bike.
- Staying well clear of HGVs in ALL circumstances. Once you start cycling in a way where you treat any HGV as imminent death on wheels, you notice how many potentially dangerous situations you avoid.
More generally, I find cycling in London feels quite safe. This is because drivers in London are mostly used to cyclists and generally act appropriately around them. Also traffic speeds are generally 20mph or less.
This is solved by better bike infrastructure, and by holding drivers accountable for the accidents. The more people cycle, the safer it becomes.
They display two very distinct and easy to notice behaviour:
1. They deny bike presence on the road: They refuse to yield, don’t check their mirror, and run them over as if the bike is not there. When you point out the discrepancy, they just affirm that cyclists have to yield to more important traffic no matter what the condition.
Another symptom of that is drivers thinking that bikes should not be on the road and harassing them with honks, and revving their engine. When they pass them, or on-line, they loudly claim that bikes are not allowed on the road or have a (non-existent) obligation to move away of a far more important car drivers threatens them. In that process, they speed (which is illegal), pass dangerously (also illegal) and threaten people with bodily harm (again, illegal). Retraining, license ban and jail sentences are easy ways to get dangerous people like that to not put people’s lives in danger.
A third symptom is that they claim that “no one” is using bike infrastructure (in spite of evidence like what we see in London) because they refuse to see it. They see no issue with routinely parking on bike lanes or blocking bike-only passages. This complete denial of another humanity is hard to imagine if you haven’t witnessed it, but it’s very common.
2. They have a cop-out of thinking that bikes are “dangerous” because they project their own dangerous and unhealthy driving habits as “normal” and impossible to modify——denying that those habits mean they break the law in several ways. Crash don’t just happen: drivers choose to not pay attention. Actually supportive drivers are not pretending they care: they are enthusiastic about cycling because when they are around bikes, drivers don’t honk, threaten or put cyclists’ lives in danger. And they can’t imagine that anyone would.
It’s very simple for cyclists to be safe: drivers should look at them and thing “This is a human, going from somewhere to somewhere else, like me. I should not kill them.” If they don’t, the cyclist is not the one in danger: the driver is.
What exactly are you interested in, about life such cities? I live in Amsterdam, haven't owned a car for over a decade (which doesn't mean that I never drive one), and haven't really missed it (even with a primary school aged child).
As a resident you get a 90% discount on the congestion charge, so driving it will cost you £1.50 per day. I'm not quite sure whether that applies to parked cars as well.
This system discourages schemes that could reduce car ownership, like car sharing, car rentals, etc, because residential parking permits must be linked to a particular plate number.
[1] It's true that some newer housing developments have been approved on a "no parking" basis, which means if you live in that building you can't apply for a parking permit. But these developments are still the exception, not the rule.
Somewhat more serious: Especially here in Germany there is a strong incentive to give cars as a job benefit instead of a pay rises as there is less social insurance to be paid. Thus there is a strong motivation for anybody in a well paying job to get a car. This directly leads to that class divide.
The cats have servants.
It depends pretty heavily on family situations and all