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Comment by isoprophlex | Hacker News Reader

It's the urban planning, but I'll point out that it's the requirements and responibilities put on the drivers as well.

Driving lessons for me consisted for 80% of learning how to ALWAYS ALWAYS track all the cyclists and pedestrians in urban environments, how to approach an intersection and have complete visual on whatever the weaker parties might be doing. A very defensive "assume weird shit can happen any time, and don't assume you can just take your right of way" attitude, and I think our cities are better for it.

In America, it seems that a pedestrian is a second rate cititzen. Conversely, here if you hit the "weaker" party as a driver and it's almost always on you in terms of liability.

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It also helps that "the car driver is to blame until proven otherwise" is the actual law in the Netherlands, which is motivated precisely because of that power dynamic. Essentially, the responsibility defaults the more dangerous vehicle.

(for some reason this always is controversial with a lot of Americans whenever it is brought up in on-line discussions)

Having recently read "Amerikanen Lopen Niet" (Americans Don't Walk), the power dynamic you describe seems to be entirely real.

Because a car is essential for economic survival in the USA, it's probably difficult for some to accept alternate realities from the status quo.

Americans will never walk.

Where I live, today's high temperature is lower than the low temperature in Amsterdam.

In August the average low temperature is higher than the average high temperature in Amsterdam.

Nobody, not even the hardiest Dutchman is going to walk or cycle when it is 27C at midnight in the summer and 0C at the warmest in the winter with four months of "Amsterdam weather" sprinkled between summer and winter.

Plus there's geography. My house is 21m above sea level, 3m higher than the highest point in Amsterdam, and I live 500m from the sea at the very beginning of the rollercoaster of hills and valleys the glaciers carved into the landscape here.

To walk or cycle to a store would require several Col du Tourmalet-class hill climbs (that's only a slight exaggeration) along the route.

Everywhere south of me is hotter, everywhere north of me is hillier.

https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-8pl51/Amsterdam/

Compare Amsterdam to DC a well-known "swamp" in the US that most people would consider one of its flatter cities.

https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-kfds8/Washington/

Don't be thrown off by the scale: yellow in Amsterdam (of which there is none) is 25m and yellow in DC (of which there is much) is 78m.

In Amsterdam, you usually don't cycle more than ~3km for a "normal destination" (groceries, a generic bar or cafe, stores) and in general, ~7km is the limit for "specific destinations" (going to bar X, ), above that, usually people take transport, though there are some that often cycle >50km

At 3km, anything but the most extreme weather/elevation can be tolerated, I've seen people cycling in what is effectively tornado weather (orange alerts -> 100+ km/h gusts of wind). As distances get larger, the tolerance for these factors diminishes significantly, are you sure it's not the distances that are the problem?

Electric bicycles basically solve the hill issue. Dutch people bike in any weather. We have a ton of terrible weather, both hot and cold but mostly wet. Our summer heat might not be very hot, but the summer heat is very humid, it feels hotter than it is.

Also the Netherlands is not the only region where people bike a lot. There are places in Finland for example, with more hills and more extreme weather that have loads of people biking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

55% of NYC residents do not own a car. But of course everybody knows NYC is not America :)

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/u-s-cities-with-th...

New York City and its surrounding combined statistical metropolitan area (which includes semi-rural commuter suburbs where people do not walk) makes up approximately 6% of "America" and was accounted for in the average "royal we" American who does not, statistically, walk.

27C at night is uncommon, but I can tell you there is no weather that stops Dutch people from walking or biking. It is mind ingrained.

A lot of Americans I know in real life (rightfully) complain that non-Americans treat their culture as if it's a homogeneous monolith, despite its enormous geographical and cultural diversity. So you have to excuse me for chuckling at blanket statements like "Americans will never walk"

DC might not be the best comparison here as far as American cities go. I - and most people I know - walk around the city year round and I live on the top of a pretty steep hill.

DC isn't even close to the top of the list of cities where commuters walk.

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2019.B08006?t=Commuting...

In the summer most people do not want to show up to work reeking like the Anacostia. I get it. In the evenings you walk from your apartment to Madam's Organ to pay $20 for a beer.

Walking doesn't mean never driving.

Every trip to a grocery store, restaurant, bar, friend's house, transit station, etc. that can be done by walking or cycling is one car trip off of the roads. That has benefits.

Of course some places are not suited to this. But there are places that could be, and those places combined have a lot of people living in them.

Dismissing the idea in all of America as an absolute is missing a lot of potential, and a lot of what is already happening.

And from my experience looking at real estate prices, houses in areas with good scores for walkability, cycling, and transit are very much in demand and priced higher than those without. There is at least some segment of the market that very much wants these qualities.

I biked year round for 4 years in Washington DC. Biking by 40ºC and in the snow in the winter wasn't difficult.

Congratulations for being in the microscopically-miniscule statistically-irrelevant minority of people.

You are the one saying no-one would do it. I was explaining that wasn't a fact. I live now in Toronto and people are fine cycling in the summer (40º) and winter (-5º) all year long because of better infrastructure. Which is the point of the article.

Some additional anecdata (and actual data) is that Chicago has the highest cyclist increase out of any city in the US as a result of better infrastructure being installed [0]

The anecedata is I see far more people biking year round in Chicago (even in the pretty brutal subzero January/February temps) than I ever can recall.

Granted it's a very flat city without much elevation changes, but there's definitely the spectrum of extreme heat in the summer and extreme cold in winter that doesn't seem to stop anybody

[0] https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/05/28/cdot-built-it-they-ca...

er, every car driver is a carless driver before they enter and after they exit, their vehicle.

everyone in America walks. They simply happen to do most of their walking in parking lots.

The reason: lobbying from auto manufacturers!

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

Except for trams. They never seem to get the blame, however with their braking distance, I suppose it makes sense.

On top of that, I like to think that on some subconscious level the idea of getting mad at trams and buses feels like getting mad at the elderly who depend on it, and just considered Not Done as a result unless very clearly justified. That is probably not true, but I like to think people reason that way nonetheless

It's very hard for a tram to unexpectedly do anything. They accelerate slowly, they decelerate slowly. It's entirely obvious when you can come across a tram and when you can't.

Seeing as a tram (nearly) always has right of way, if you get hit by one you clearly weren't paying attention.

Makes sense to me.

In the greater united states, the first people to get cars were also those who had various forms of power. Those people (moneyed european americans who believed in the myth of industrialization, supremacists) used power to shape the legal regime of cities to claim more space for themselves.

"Jaywalking" is a pejorative slur popularized by some people in the USA to justify their road supremacy.

I've lost friendships with my american friends (and a canadian, living in america) because of how evident their dangerous driving is, with regard to non-drivers is.

I can stomach approximately one mean thing to be said about someone walking on a street before I am unable to be in friendship with the person who says that mean thing.

Pedestrians in america are not "second rate citizens", they are seen as _not having dignity or humanity_. the kinds of people in america likely to be walking around certain roads have generally been of the groups of people some Americans have pointed ethnic cleansing energies at, which obviously requires lots of dehumanization already.

I have such beef with the various powers and authorities that influence american mobility networks.

American traffic planners are functional flat-earthers. not great.

As a Dutch person living in the US, a big difference is also that almost every driver in the Netherlands is also a cyclist themselves. In the US there is this almost cultural divide between drivers and cyclists where it becomes part of people's identity. In the Netherlands most people will just choose their mode of transportation depending on the specifics of the trip.

In practice this means drivers tend to do a much better job anticipating cyclists, e.g. by checking for cyclists before making a turn.

Driving lessons in NL also teach you to open your door with your _right_ hand (left is right side drive), that way you turn your shoulder a bit and get in perfect position for controlling blind spot and mirror for eventual bike incoming (or whatever vehicle you missed).

Ive heard this repeated on the BBC before, but it isn't true, at least not for my driving lessons 2 decades ago. I just got told everytime to look over my shoulder for cyclists before opening the door. But never have I heard of anyone being taught to specifically open their door with their right hand

I had driving lessons last year and I was taught this. My teacher said the CBR examinator will watch how you open your door when after you drive back to the CBR location. It's not just for checking your blindspot, but also to have more control over the door when there are strong winds.

To be fair, the BBC is institutionally anti-cyclist, so they may have mis-represented the "Dutch Reach".

I can't see why it's not taught and used everywhere as it encourages and facilitates the checking behind you when opening a car door. Rather than focussing on "left" or "right" hand, I find it more useful to just always use the furthest hand from the door so the same idea applies if you're driving or a passenger.

I think it depends on the teacher, but mine didn't teach it either. However, I have been taught from a young age to watch out before I open the door, which is still very relevant even if you're not in the driver's seat.

Having taken my driving lessons and test more recently, a couple years ago: I've been told by my instructor that not doing the dutch reach is one of the few items that can result in an instant fail. I think opening the door that way only got formalized somewhat recently.

Driver's ed in the US in any state with much urbanization to speak of is like that too (there's 50 states with 50 different curriculums with differing levels of specificity so generalizing is ill advised unless you're looking to intentionally mislead) unless perhaps one took it long ago or in somewhere so rural that other traffic wasn't relevant.

I took my driving test in Palo Alto in 2008. It was a total joke. We drove around the block; drove onto the freeway; took the first exit and immediately back to the DMV and that was it. Took ~5 minutes. My driving test in Germany was 45 minutes. We drove all over town through all kind of street types. I had to perform several different parking maneuvers, stop and start on a steep hill.

The CA DMV test is 20 minutes. Whatever it was in 2008 I sincerely doubt it was five minutes.

I live in NL close to a border. Guess where tourists tend to stop their car, when coming in from the left in situation of the fine article?

People have little situational awareness anyway, but perhaps a bit moreso when they are Dutch.

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