Comment by ninkendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ninkendo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently

Or come to where I live in the midwestern united states and you see the same thing. I see kids as young as 7 years old riding bikes together on a bike path that has a very generous distance to the nearby road, and parents let them roam free.

Always remember: If you see a statistic about the US and think "wow, that sucks, the US must suck", remember, it's a very, very, very big country. The corollary to this is that if you see some small country with a really nice looking statistic, remember that the US probably has many, many, many places within it that also just as nice and share a similar statistic. If we were to lump the NL with all of Europe, I'm sure we could find some ugly looking statistics, and you would probably resent the idea of NL being lumped in with it.

Regression to the mean is a real phenomenon and I wish more people would understand it.

If you live anywhere like Houten[1] anywhere in the US, please tell me ASAP because I'll move there tomorrow.

From my area of the Midwest around Iowa City, there are decent paths that connect the local towns, but intra-town cycling is far less supported. We have bike lanes (good), on some streets (bad), they're unprotected (bad) and they close on Sunday (bad, also what?). The car-free bike path along the river is shared with pedestrians, and some spandex-festooned idiots don't understand that it's not the place to go fast.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFEfr7Amn6U (5 minute overview of Houten)

I didn't say I live in a place just like Houten, I said I live in a place where you regularly see kids under 10 years old riding bikes together without adults (and like GP said, often with a fishing pole or soccer ball in tow.)

You don't need a place that's the literal "best place for cycling in the world" for this, you just need to (1) build a bike path that's not adjacent to the road (ours is typically 10-20ft away from the road) and (2) have it be along a main thoroughfare where everyone lives a short distance from it.

Where is this? It sounds nice.

I see that in poor areas of the midwest. You need enough single working moms with no time to supervise their kids that it saturates the area with enough independent kids that a Karen can't damn all of them no matter how fast they call CPS. The other kids get jealous too so the whole dynamic changes.

If it's a rich area with stay at home moms (#1 Karens) or enough retired boomers sitting around with nothing to do but enjoy the power of calling modern CPS, forget it.

I lived in the US for thirty years. I’m American. I would be ECSTATIC if the US had one place like this. Best I can think of are maybe accidentally low car areas like Catalina island.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island

(Not where I live, but it's in my state.)

Ah, good example. It would be nice to see more places built like this intentionally rather than accidentally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com