Junction design in the Netherlands [video]
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Even as a driver, this is how I want things to be.
My wife cycles to work, and takes our 15 month old to daycare on her bike. Next year I'll be able to cycle too. Can't wait :)
When I was younger, I was regularly biking in between the car lanes( sometimes very risky ), skipping the bicycle paths since they were much slower or simply missing. I would almost always get there before I would with a car or a bus, and parking wasn't a problem. If the lanes were completely separated this could be done safely.
From my experience the roundabouts where the bicycle lane isn't separated, are the least safe for bicyclists, out of any type of intersection. I think the cause is that apart from normal intersections with stop signs or lights, where stopping is the usual procedure, the roundabouts are fluid where drivers stop much less and thus "prefer" not to stop or just think they have the right of way.
This also means that it can be hard to pass a driving exam for foreigners who already have a drivers license in their home country. I know several people who have failed the exam multiple times despite driving for years in their home country.
Let me explain: In Levy's hacker ethics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics) it is formulated as the first point:
"Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!"
Since today's cars are computers on wheels (source: transcript of "The Coming War on General Computation" of Cory Doctorow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg from https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcrip...):
"We don't have cars anymore, we have computers we ride in; we don't have airplanes anymore, we have flying Solaris boxes with a big bucketful of SCADA controllers [laughter]; a 3D printer is not a device, it's a peripheral, and it only works connected to a computer; a radio is no longer a crystal, it's a general-purpose computer with a fast ADC and a fast DAC and some software."
this rule should also apply to cars. Also for point 3 of Levy's hacker ethics
"Mistrust authority—promote decentralization"
it is clear how an mandatory driver's licenses violates it, since there is a central authority which allows/disallows driving.
To state one thing clear: If you want to drive a vehicle, I strongly recommend taking some driving lessons. But making a driver's license madatory is a clear violation of the hacker ethics and any hacker or supporter of the hacking scene should make in no uncertain manner clear that they espouse an abolition of mandatory driver's licenses.
Also, a drivers' license doesn't deny one access to a car, nor does it deny one the ability to drive (except perhaps legally.) So I fail to see how requiring a license to drive limits a hackers' access to the computer in a car in any meaningful way.
You could just as well argue we should all steal anything with a chip in it because stores are limiting access to electronic goods by requiring people to pay for them. Or that every network in existence which employs any privileged access (passwords, sudo, etc) violates that ethic because by definition, they're denying someone access to some part of the code.
The hacker ethic is fine and all, but like anything, once you take it too far it just becomes another form of fascism.
About the video; the thing that sets Netherlands (and Denmark, IIRC) is that bike lanes have right-of-way. Separating bike traffic into a generally slower infrastructure, and then slowing it down further by giving cars right-of-way is contraproductive - if the goal is to increase biking.
The Dutch have built a system that avoids several 9/11s in traffic deaths per year. Their traffic safety policy is evidence based, more so than most places in the world. I wish local politicians here and everywhere else would learn from it more!
I teach my kids that their number one job when driving is to not kill anyone.
He said: "The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there's a problem with a road, they always try to add something. To my mind, it's much better to remove things."
Wikipedia: Hans Monderman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman
Project for Public Places: Hans Monderman http://www.pps.org/reference/hans-monderman
Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Multimedia: Hans Monderman: http://www.urbannous.org.uk/Hans-Monderman-Presentation.htm
Roads Gone Wild: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
Hans Monderman on the Importance of Human Interaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOH9-DgJdTo
His philosophy reminds me of the premise of "Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical User Interface": "I argue that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users’ goals can be better satisfied through other means."
Interactivity is a failure state of user interfaces that could have predicted what the user wanted by context and history, and presented it to them without demanding so much of their time and attention.
Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical User Interface http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/
Some people have real problems grasping this. Cars are seen as inherently dangerous, pedestrians and everyone else should (ideally) stay off the roads, and nobody should challenge our "right" to drive where and when we like. But driving is still a choice, albeit coerced since there are so few alternatives, and that choice has profound implications for others. Why should I wear protective clothing because you choose to drive a vehicle which puts me in danger? In the Netherlands, to respond to your point, they have largely eliminated motoring-related danger for cyclists.
If anyone is interested in the development of Dutch cycling infrastructure, this is an excellent video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o (How the Dutch got their cycle paths, 6m 29s)
David Hembrow has an informative blog about all things cycling in Holland:
I've personally also never known anybody who experienced a traffic accident where a helmet would have helped them - it's usually broken legs, scrapes on knees, etc.
almost 17 milion people. 200 deaths a year. 65000 accidents required doctor treatment (maybe we are not zo great at cycling as we think). 15000 end up in a hospital. Especially old people tend to get killed.
http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-en-publicaties/public...
Still, overall 570 traffic deaths (including cars and pedestrians etc) for 2013 is quite good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...
If you've decided that the risk of head injury when you walk somewhere is so little that you'll take the risk and not wear the helmet, you've made the exact same decision as the cyclists. In the Netherlands, because they have a sensible traffic system, the risk has been reduced so far that many, many people make that same decision that you do when you walk without wearing a helmet.
And I've experienced that a cycling helmet is good to wear. There was this child that appeared from a bush to the bike path. I hit the brakes and went over the bar. A slight bumb in the head but no injury there; broke a radix bone though.
Other people made the decision that they're happy with the risk of not wearing a helmet when cycling.
What is so special about you? Are you some kind of super-powered genius, and your assessment of personal risk is some kind of magically "absolutely correct" answer? Why should your personal choice about acceptable risk be made law? (Trick question; it shouldn't)
Please do not be offended, and by all means keep on wearing a helmet if you want (after all it is safer, no denying that) but maybe there is room for improvement in your cycling? Those two things I quoted seem to indicate you haven't completely mastered cycling, or your bike isn't properly setup, or a combination of both. I see them for instance as well with foreigners who never owned a bycicle and then come to a country and are given one. For an experienced byciclist riding is usually a second nature, like walking, and falls don't happen more often then they do with walking. Note I'm talking 'normal' cycling here, not for instance downhill or bmx where not ever falling sometimes means you're not pushing yourself hard enough :]
And since bikes don't have ABS, I either have brakes that are not powerful enough, or I have brakes that throw me over the bar if I a mistake in a surprising situation (such as in the case I mentioned). Most falls I have are due to ice. Every winter morning is a decision: do I take the bike with studded tyres, or the one that is much lighter to ride? Sometimes I make the wrong assessment.
Of course safety is important. Not having lights on your bike in winter is very dangerous (drivers can't see you in their mirrors) and the police do frequent random stops and issue fines.
Anecdotally a friend of mine was in a very bad cycling accident (hit by a bus). She had no helmet and it wouldn't have helped. After months of rehab for her broken leg she is cycling again without a helmet. Of course she could have fallen differently and a helmet would have helped, but most of the damage was caused by the collision and not the fall.
This happens in two ways: car drivers drive more dangerously when they see a helmet; less people ride a bycicle and so there is more pollution and more deaths or more lack-of-exercise related death.
In the U.S. and U.K.. sadly this is true. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/5334208.... )
"Dr Walker thinks the reason drivers give less room to cyclists wearing helmets is because they see them as 'Lycra-clad street warriors' and believe they are more predictable than those without."
"To test another theory, Dr Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a female cyclist.
"While wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14cm more space when passing."
However, allowing this to remain true is victim blaming. A driver should be forced to respect a cyclist and give them room.
In California, (yeah California) there is now a 3 foot minimum passing distance ( https://calbike.org/advocacy/giveme3/give-me-3-faq/ )
"The law is invaluable when a bicyclist is injured in a collision. It establishes a clear basis for citing motorists for unsafe passing."
"How do motorists give three feet on narrow roads?
"State law has never guaranteed motorists a right to pass whenever or wherever they want. Motorists may only pass when it’s safe to do so. This doesn’t change with the Three Feet for Safety Act.
"The new law requires motorists to slow down and wait to pass only when it is safe to do so. Motorists have to be prepared to demonstrate that three feet were NOT available and the slower, closer pass was done according to the law. This is a higher burden of proof for drivers than we have under the current law, which places no conditions on how to pass at a “safe distance.”
So hopefully, the police will aggressively ticket motorists acting in a way that is unsafe for cyclists.