Have either of you been to Amsterdam to experience this first-hand? Oh... no, you haven't yet.

I've been twice in the past 10 years. I wasn't impressed the first time, and I was much less so the second time. It is almost as impossible to move around efficiently in the middle of Amsterdam as it is in gridlocked motor traffic.

The discussion about bike deaths illustrates the point that in a country regarded on the outside as being the safest for cyclists in the world, that this is illusionary. And in that bit quoted by gerv, the critical commentary was that since 2010, there has been an increase in cycling deaths from 28 to 200 -- a 10-fold increase.

And the ignorance about other countries is quite remarkable, especially when talking about the Netherlands as being the size of an American dinner plate.

I know this goes against the "living car free" ethos, that everyone should be forced to ride bicycles for the good of the world. But like everything else, there comes a point when too much is a bad thing, too.