Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
Perhaps most important though is that it doesn't have to be this dangerous. We've seen in The Netherlands and to a slightly lessor extent in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and elsewhere that it bicycling can be quite safe. That if roads and bikeways are designed properly about 90% fewer people will be killed.
Biking in the Netherlands and the other countries you mentioned would be safer than in the U.S. even if their bike infrastructure was exactly the same as in the U.S. People are different in Western Europe. Penalties for harming or killing vulnerable road users are different. In the EU you cannot overtake a cyclist except by first slowing to 19mph or less first. In the US you can blast by at the posted limit if you allow 3'... that only kind of works. Slowing down is MUCH better. Separated bikeways are NEVER going to be as extensive as the street-grid already developed over CENTURIES for motorized traffic. Please, stop pining for that biking utopia of a separate, but equal, system of barricaded bike lanes. it isn't going to happen. What needs to happen is that drivers (and cyclists) are given clear instructions on how to share what roads exist and this be enforced by strict penalties for lapses.