No helmets, no problem: how the Dutch created a casual biking culture
 

...in case you haven't already seen it.

A chat with the authors of a new book on cycling in the Netherlands.

Haven't you heard? Bicycles are a relict of a bygone age. E-scooters are now all the rage, and soon to bring us all to 'one billion fewer cars' nirvana.

#buildingthescooteringcity

...Natural Selection at work. :)

Actually, it took the Rotterdammers extremely long. They are lagging behind the laggards.

Come get me when any of this has any impact on America. We can go for a ride.

Doubt I will live that long ... because about the only impact the Netherlands' cycling culture has or will have in the U.S. is on cycling websites.

Look around local newspapers from any state and you will see that cities and town around the US are building dutch-inspired cycling infrastructure all across America. Maybe its time for us to go for a ride.

...it's for the children, man. :(

A lot of Dutch are getting killed on bicycles.

US Annual Cycling Fatalities:
800 in 325 Million

Dutch Annual Cycling Fatalities:
200 in 17 Million

Yes, there are a lot more cyclists and bike commuters... but about 1/20th the population. So to account for the population difference, that would be about 5 times the fatalities as the USA, or say 4000 for the equivalent US population.

Helmets weren't always used in the USA, but there has been a growing push for them to be used over the years, and it still is only a small percent of adults that actually use them.

When comparing cycling in the USA to Holland, or other European countries, there are a lot of issues. Population density and compactness, HILLS, or lack thereof, fuel prices, infrastructure, etc.

It has been a long time since I've been in Holland/Amsterdam, so I really don't remember the cycling culture much.

However, I spent time in two Italian cities in the 80's. Parma and Perugia. A lot of similar characteristics, except that Parma was almost entirely flat, while Perugia had a hill. Commuter bikes were everywhere in Parma. Generally 1 and 3 speed bikes at the time. There was hardly a single commuter bike on the hills in Perugia.

I don't remember bike lanes in Parma... just bicycles (and cobble stones that gave my road bike fits). Oh, and of course, mopeds and scooters.

Holland gets a big boost due to the flatness of the country.

States choose, OR, mandatory for under 17, optional 17 & over

but weakly enforced, budgets of PD focused on DUI on roads speeding , etc..

Let's do the world a favor and not warp this into another pointless helmet thread, eh?

if a much higher percentage of Dutch riders are dying ... doesn't that sort of call into question the perception of the Netherlands as a cycling utopia that the U.S. should be emulating?

"The Netherlands---the Best Place in the World to Be Killed on a Bike!"

By the way, if those numbers are right ... the Netherlands I Five Times more deadly than the U.S. .... that puts it on par with Orlando and Tampa/St. Pete, Florida,------

One-twentieth the population, one quarter the bike deaths ...... And that is the example you say the U.S. should follow? Florida has already made the grade then.

Sad day when Florida sets the standard for the rest of the nation.

Right--but nobody is holding up China as the global cycling paragon, either.

If the Netherlands had five times the cycling deaths per capita of the U.S. .... then maybe there is no way to do road cycling safely.

I haven't researched the numbers and no links were provided .. . but if true .... that Drastically changes everything everyone here says about the Netherlands forging the way and building the model for successful integrated transport cycling.

A per capita number for the general population doesn't really provide an accurate comparison as usage rates among the respective general populations vary tremendously. You would need to discount the people who don't ride bicycles at all to get a number that would have any meaning.

It is a complex statistic. Presumably one also has fewer drivers and commuting miles driven... so there should be fewer people to run over the cyclists.

It might be easy for a driver to forget a bicycle lane if they never see anybody in it. But, if it is literally packed with cyclists, it would be pretty hard to forget.

Here are some links to the gross number of fatalities.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ad-fatalities/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclis...n_U.S._by_year

...it is a complex statistic, and I think you have misstated it. Without a sense of the number of passenger miles traveled in relationship to the number of deaths, those statistics are not something you can meaningfully compare simply by quoting overall population figures, And thank you for the point about not turning this into another pointless helment thread. We already have one of those, and it is the best one ever.

Mostly. they did that interview, and I linked it, to point out that at least one country does seem to have taken bicycle transportation seriously enough to integrate it into their overall transportation structure.

In the United States, traffic deaths per year are directly related to how many passenger miles are accomplished using a particular mode of transit, thus:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...21f5ccacc7.gif
https://bicycleuniverse.info/bicycle-safety-almanac/

Note that more people die walking than do bicycling. Which makes sense, because there are a lot of people walking.

I didn't bother to look for a similar chart for the Netherlands, because comparison without passenger miles traveled is meaningless.

Well .... if there are fewer drivers to balance more riders ... but They Do it Better .... then I cannot see how that many people are getting killed and people aren't looking at why.

I understand that there are supposedly more people riding ... but the they here seems to be that because of the increase in riders, accidents and fatalities will drop because drivers will be used to cyclists.

Basically, the ration of driver to riders and miles ridden all have to work out to be Much better than the U.S. numbers ... or the whole premise that more cycling is better takes a big hit.

I am not really concerned which way this falls out. I ride regardless ... and I did 15 years in Greater Orlando when it was the death capital of the nation for cyclists. So whatever the Netherlands has going on,I just want the solid numbers. i don't gain or lose depending on the comparative statistics. I just want the good info.

Random or imaginary alternative facts about cycling

Risk of death from cycling compared to driving—https://bicycleuniverse.info/bicycle-safety-almanac/

These folks admit from the start: “This is difficult to calculate accurately because we don’t know the number of bicycle miles travelled in the U.S. annually, because the sources disagree so strongly:”
They use two sources:
6 to 21 billion miles per year U.S. Dept. of Trans. / Fed. Hwy Admin. “The Environmental Benefits of Bicycling and Walking“, 1993
6.2 billion miles per year Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Household Travel Survey, 2001

784 cyclists died in 2005. That would make the death rate 0.37 to 1.26 deaths per 10 million miles.

33,041 motorists/passengers died from 3 trillion miles travelled, making their death rate 0.11 per 10 million miles travelled.

So cyclists are either 3.4x or 11.5x as likely to die as motorists, per passenger mile. Neither conclusion is very happy.

Regarding dem Nederlanders: The Always Reliable Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclin...he_Netherlands

"By 2012 cycling had grown tremendously in popularity. In Amsterdam alone, 490,000 cyclists took to the road to cycle 2 million kilometres every day, according to its city council statistics." (No idea how any of this was calculated.)

Research in 2013 showed that 60% of fatal cycling accidents took place at junctions and in two out of five of those accidents, cyclists were not given priority by the driver. From 2007 to 2012, the number of fatal accidents decreased in the Netherlands from 850 to 600, while the number of cycling fatalities remained roughly constant. In 2015, cycling deaths made up 30% of road deaths in the Netherlands, 185 out of 621.

Then there is this:
https://www.cbs.nl/NR/rdonlyres/9F9F...tsland_ENG.pdf
240,000 dutch cyclists
2,000 km average distance cycled per teenager per year
1,000 km average distance cycled per person per year

Can’t calculate miles per year because they seem not to know how many cyclists in each age range. So … how did they get the numbers?

558,000 Dutch victims of bike theft—apparently everyone steals everyone else’s bike twice a year.

Only to the lethargic. Is the human body still make up of muscles, bones, and tendons? If the answer is yes, the the e-scooter defeats the purpose.

LOL.

"Hi, my name is Krane and I am clueless."

The "purpose:" of an e-scooter is ...to NOT pedal. The "purpose" is to get where the user wants to be---and for the user to have maximum energy when he/she gets there, rather than having spent a bunch of energy just getting there.

A bicycle is not an exercise device---it is a transportation device. people didn't ride horses to get fit---they rode horses to get where they were going a little bit faster while carrying more gear and not wearing themselves out.

Primitive man was abler to figure out all this stuff .... but supposedly more developed 'modern" man is confused. Hmmmm .......

Maybe you haven't figured it out but people don't want to work hard to get to work. They save energy they would use not getting there, being there.

You are catching tandemp0w3r syndrome. I hope you can recover.

Now ... . what did Any of all your post have to do with biking in the Netherlands?

Actually, it is you that can't keep up. If you see my post as wanting then you're most likely suffering from a lack of perception. Next time try asking for clarity and I'll try and put it in simpler terms for you.

One more thing, a bike is always an exercise device whether you intended for it to be or not.

The stats ARE tricky.
What's the most "true" reference"? Casualties-per-mile, casualties-per-journey?Casualties-per-person/year?
BIcycles are generally used for shorter journeys than cars, so maybe casualties-per-journey is " better" than CPM.
Also, the number of unreported accidents Crumple a fender on a car, and it's likely to show in the stats somewhere, due to cost even if there are no human injuries.
What if a car driver "gently" nudge a bikes rider over? Bruises, dirty clothes etc. Odds arem the rider will simply get up and go. Nothing to report. Yet, it did happen.

In some states its required to report it serious injury or not.

That estimate is very far from the truth. You went wrong somewhere, probably underestimated how often the Dutch cycle, even with their usually short commutes and errands they bike a lot of miles.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c5226b3ff5.jpg


Old numbers, but the Dutch numbers continued to get better after 2009. It doesn't make a strong case for helmet advocacy.
Cities can be too hilly to make cycling a practical form of transportation, but a lot of cities worldwide are build on a flat spot. The Netherlands isn't entirely flat either, in the south it can get quite hilly and the people there cycle a lot too. In the Hollands and the North the inclines are usually very short, but it's very windy there, all year round. And it's very rainy and often cold, I don't believe the natural circumstances are an explanation. There's always density in cities everywhere, density is what makes cities cities.

A bunch of interesting info .... still, i wonder how all the info is gathered.

Accident data I discount entirely. fatalities are a lot harder to hide/ignore.