Originally Posted by
Cute Boy Horse
It is rather simple. Dutch people got very tired of their country being built around the car, because people were getting ran over all the time, particularly children. They engaged in a militant political struggle, which was at times quite violent, in order to change this. The name of this movement was simply it's slogan - "stop murdering children". The politicians were scared out of their minds by this anti-car movement and began granting more and more radical concessions.
I don't believe the 'stop child murder' movement was violent, no doubt there were a few ruffles when they blocked roads so the kids could play. But there was also the rise of the squatters, which was a more radical anarchist movement that protested the demolition of old neighbourhoods and demanded housing instead of real estate speculation, so they just occupied empty buildings to live there. They were prepared to and did face tear gas, batons and even tanks.
I think what made the matter tip towards cycling was the general climate in the Netherlands in the 70's. Besides the hippies and the radicals there was this large majority of 'respectable citizens' with still pretty conservative family lives and normal careers and normal cars who might have been skeptical, but weren't hostile towards new ideas and were prepared to listen, and didn't mind a bit of civil disobedience in case they were convinced. The Dutch have always embraced any new kind of transport, a lot of the respectable citizens just didn't want to trade one form of transport for another, but wanted all of them and keep what they already had. Also they wanted to keep the street as a playground and the luxury of kids cycling to school themselves. They won't have helmetless cycling taken away from them either.
Whatever articles you've read are written by ignorant people who should, to be honest, shut up.
Appearently it's often a bit too difficult for journalists to get it right when it's about a foreign country with it's history in a different language. I'm not impressed with the article in crank addict's link either. Clearly the writer(s) mean well but want to make it about government and politics, cycle lanes especially, but it doesn't and didn't work like that.