Old 04-23-17 | 12:52 PM
  #39  
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Stadjer
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From: Groningen

Bikes: Gazelle rod brakes, Batavus compact, Peugeot hybrid

Originally Posted by Daniel4
Yes, I was curious one day and Googled annual fatalities reports in the days of the horse and buggy before motor vehicles came along. All I found were isolated collision reports on news paper articles. Non conclusive. Maybe that speaks in itself how raid fatality reports became significant with the use of the automobile.

That being said, road rules do exist today. I keep getting replies how I am wrong and then in the same posts justifications why they need to break the law.
Yes, but generally good rules that make sense hardly need any enforcement to be followed. I'm living in a mass cycling environment, and allthough a lot of rules have already been changed or dicarded because cyclists kept breaking them with success, still almost everybody breaks the rules in way that works. And because it works, government adapts to cyclist behaviour instead of the other way around. These days at a lot of locations without motorized traffic government refuses to make any rules, just figure it out yourselves and negotiate, and it works. A lot of locations had become like that before government officially standing off because it's just human nature and without enforcement people will avoid trouble in their own way.

But that's the formal rules, there are a lot of unwritten rules. It's the cyclists who obey the formal rules and can't handle the unwritten rules that get in the trouble all the time. The most important rule is predictability. For example officially I have to stop for a pedestrian crossing if someone wants to cross, I just stop pedalling for a second, the pedestrians knows I've seen him and starts crossing and I pedal around the back. But if the pedestrian stops walking because I didn't stop, a German shopper ror example who isn't used to cyclists and people not obeying rules in general, I can't go round the back and have to brake hard.
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