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>Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars.

Source ? Here's mine: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/15/684-road-traffic-death...

1199 cyclists killed in 4 years, 658 of these being from collisions with various motor vehicles. 262 pedestrians killed in 4 years, 11 of these being from collisions with bicycles. Before any "oh but there's few deaths but more accidents it's still unsafe": no, it is not.

I know your username sets high expectations, but stop bullshitting and look at facts.

If a bicycle hits a pedestrian and the pedestrian was on cycling path in The Netherlands, who's fault is it? If the pedestrian gets a broken arm who pays for medical services?

> If the pedestrian gets a broken arm who pays for medical services?

Well, most European countries have a relatively simple solution for that ;)

If NL laws are anywhere close to the rest of European countries: the bike is responsible. The pedestrian is never responsible, unless they do something absurd like jumping in front of the bike without leaving any way to react to the bike.

>If the pedestrian gets a broken arm who pays for medical services?

The... Insurance of whoever is responsible? I know this concept is weird to the US, but personal insurances in Europe are about covering the damage you inflict on others first, then eventually you. They're also mandatory. In addition, well, a broken arm is not a financial catastrophe in Europe. Should it prevent you from doing your job, the insurance also covers that.

I broadly agree that I'd like standalone separated bike lanes, but I think this is dubious:

> Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars

As far as I'm aware, more or less everywhere, both the frequency & severity of bicycle vs pedestrian crashes is much lower than bicycle vs car crashes. Do you have any statistics that say otherwise?

I only have my personal experience. Biking on the sidewalk lanes in Taipei creates a lot of scary close calls esp with children and dogs. On the road I only rarely have some issues with buses. Everyone is moving in the same direction so it's generally less scary.

I think in terms of deaths, the most dangerous issue is getting t-boned at an intersection by a car going fast through the intersection. I'm not sure how either setup really addresses that. You need to decrease overall traffic speed somehow. Chinese do this with speed cameras everywhere and electric scooters being much slower than gas powered ones (which are illegal most places now)

And also car vs pedestrian is much larger than bike vs pedestrian, and in most places, higher than car vs bike also.

> I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety.

As a cyclist, I also hate them. In my experience, what is even more dangerous than small children is dogs. Even if they are on a leash, there is nothing stopping them from just suddenly jumping a meter to the left, right in front of your bike.

The dreaded multi-use path where pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers, parents with strollers, bike commuters, e-scooters, roadies, kids with training wheels and older folks on 4 wheel scooters are forced to share the same 2.5m strip of asphalt, while cars get 2 lanes to drive and 2 for storage

Not sure if you mean the Dutch style cycle lanes: in that case, it's just tourists that risk impact with bikes, simply because they're conditioned to ignore them (i.e. the brain is trained to consider dangerous only what's beyond the curb).

After a few weeks people just learn to be mindful of bicycles and bicycle lanes as they are normally mindful of roads. In particular, one learns to never change direction suddenly (crossing a bike lane, but also on a shared road) but to stop first and check behind their back for potential cyclists.

I guess this conditioning just doesn't happen in Taipei .. I guess then I don't really understand why the sidewalk and bikelane are on the same level at all. Why not have an actual barrier or curb and places to get on/off?

it's effectively another road - with the same dangers as a car-road. But it's just some painted asphalt

Being used to Dutch bike infrastructure, the bike lanes in Taipei made no sense to me. The ones I've seen mostly are barely distinguishable from the actual sidewalk and at large intersections the "bike lanes" seem to overlap with the logical/natural spot for pedestrians to wait for a green light.

> Why not have an actual barrier or curb and places to get on/off?

There actually commonly is a barrier; a gentle curve between the foot path and bike path, with the bike path being lower. The bike path is also red asphalt making it visually distinct.

A curb is just a sign, at least for pedestrians. If a curb can help you not to cross into a bicycle lane, so can a clearly painted lane.

> Bikes hitting pedestrians is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars.

Do you have any empirical evidence for this? Because every single study I have seen suggest that speed and weight of the participants matters most. And a bike and a person are simply, much less likely to cause serious harm.

A car can kill a biker easy, for a bike to kill anybody, you need to really be incredibly unlucky.

The Dutch are doing a lot of empirical work, and they have not adopted anything like you describe.

I think if you tried them out you'll find these bike paths are not unsafe (and I bet the accident numbers back that up), because it's a whole system. Design like this will have features to force drivers to take slow turns when crossing the bike paths, and they are raised so that it's clear to drivers they don't have right of way.

NL always goes for the transit stops that poke out like you mention as well when possible.

When we visited Amsterdam as pedestrians, we absolutely hated these bike lane / sidewalk combinations. The problem are the often narrow, obstructed sidewalks forcing you to step into the bike lane. I wouldn't call that "incredibly dangerous" though, after all, we didn't witness any accident, but certainly annoying, especially considering that the most common obstruction is parked bikes.

I guess it takes some getting used to, or maybe the Dutch simply avoid walking and take the bike instead.

"Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars."

what? there are many orders of magnitude more injuries and deaths from bikes being hit by cars than there are from pedestrians being hit by bikes. Even when a pedestrian is hit (which is rare- both are highly nimble), it is very rare that it is problematic because a bike carries so little momentum

> Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars.

That's blatantly not true. Have you seen any KSI statistics?

Pedestrians are more likely to be killed by a driver mounting the pavement and hitting them than they are by a cyclist. The facts suggest that in a cyclist/pedestrian collision, it's often the cyclist that gets more injured.