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9th most populated country in Europe is by no means a good thing
Please explain this. So you're saying that the Netherlands should be a smaller country?
I disagree, I don't see how less cycling or more cars would be better?
> ...ALSO have the highest road density in Europe for cars
It is the densest non-micro state in the world, would that not explain the road density?
You cannot protect a cyclist in a car collision using a helmet, the solution is separate infra?
Other than that you have positive outcomes of increased general health.
Not all car and cyclist collisions are high speed, big impacts, in fact, statistically speaking, most of them in the netherlands are slow speed knocks, cyclist, get bumped, when a car tries to squeeze by, and the cyclist falls and hits their head on the concrete or whatever else is close by.
And then there are all the cyclist against cyclist collisions, someone gets knocked off, and smacks their head against the curb.
But I guess the dutch way of saying "we are dutch and are born on a bicycle and know how to cycle", (and they really actually don't), is easier to say than, looking at the actual stats, and seeing they are wrong.
[1]: https://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2015/02/...
They also have decently good numbers for traffic fatalities in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
I don't actually know how strong the evidence is for that.
It's not the lack of helmets by itself that's a problem; it's the combination with high-speed electric bicycles, and their primarily being used by the elderly, that is causing deaths.
Yes, old people falling and sustaining heavy injuries that they wouldn't have had with a helmet is a problem, but not one that (I think) can be solved by street design.
If you see that in 2018, the Netherlands had 4.7 deaths per billion vehicle kms, vs. the US's 6.9, and then consider that it's a very densely populated country where lots of traffic intersects, then I would count that as a big success.