Originally Posted by
John Forester
CrankyOne states: "John has this view that massive skills are necessary for riding a bicycle, which is the case for riding with traffic in the U.S., but is not the case for riding on well-designed infrastructure." This is plain false, certainly at the U.S. end, probably at the Dutch end. Operating according to the rules of the road for drivers of vehicle does not require "massive skills". This can be taught to grade-school children in about 1.5 instructor hours; I have done so, and I have supervised other teachers doing so, and the results were demonstrated by actual riding on actual roads in actual traffic. As I understand it, according to those who praise the Dutch system, the Dutch system includes at least as much instruction as I provided in the U.S.
The bicycle network in The Netherlands is both safe and intuitive. Even children visiting from the U.S. can quickly figure it out and ride safely, without more than a few minutes instruction. More importantly, parents are comfortable with their children doing so.
In the U.S. with vehicular cycling it is highly recommended, by John and most vehicular cycling advocates, that even adults with considerable driving experience take at least traffic skills 101. Ideally the advanced traffic skills class as well. Further, these are only recommended for people 14 years and older. What about 13-year-olds? or 8-year-olds? Worse though is that few parents are even remotely comfortable, training or no training, sending their child off to ride on the same road as a 4000 lb Ford F-350 hemi driven by some guy talking on a cell phone.
So, 40 years of John's vehicular cycling has given us a society where nearly every kid rides to school on a bus while 40 years of building a good bicycling network in The Netherlands has resulted in about
79% of children throughout the country walking or riding bicycles to school. BTW, I have never seen a school bus in The Netherlands.