Hey that’s me! I see myself cycling xD
It’s so quiet. 🥹
As NotJustBikes pointed out multiple times, we have the idea that cities are loud, but it’s actually cars that are loud.
i hear people talk and laugh. That is what i want a busy street to be like.
Kind of eerie
There are probably more people moving unhindered through this short video than you see in an average traffic jam photo.
yes, people counted and compared. This plus trams has waaay more throughput than a usual car intersection. Check out not just bikes video on that topic with various combinations and graphs, and get mad at car infrastructure with us!
Oh yeah no I’ve been in that camp for a long while. I’m actively furious that my state had an approved plan for high speed rail like 15 years ago connecting all the major cities in the area, and connecting to the national line. And then some asshole republican came in and scrapped it even though it was already fully funded and ready to go.
It would be active right now if that hadn’t happened. Instead I have to drive 2.5 hrs to see my friend, 2 hours to go to my specialist doctor, and the same 2 hours in the opposite direction to get to the national line. All of those trips were supposed to be under 45 min on the train.
So so fucking salty about it. I fucking hate driving. I hate having to pay to maintain a vehicle. I hate that car infrastructure means walking is almost impossible. I’d love to ride a bike or bus locally, but the infrastructure doesn’t sufficiently exist for either to be practical in my area (I’m not riding my bike on the road. People here would actively try to kill me.)
I am sorry about that. My place isn’t perfect either and we get a couple of deaths every year. Cycling isn’t accepted by all car drivers, but it is a normal concept anyway.
But i am happy not to live in the USA for example.
And many more mildly hindered, but in a way which is easily and safely resolvable while maintaining flow
Can we have this everywhere please
Cyclists are the worst where I live, they have zero respect for pedestrians. The city spent millions on bike lanes and these fucks will zip past you and your toddlers on the sidewalk, they never wear helmets, they don’t know any road laws, anyways this would be a nightmare in my city
this is exactly anti-bicylce-propaganda. There are by far more deadly accidents involving cars and trucks than involving bikes and pedestrians. You are afraid of the wrong thing. Also you are describing the results of car focused infrastructure, that hasn’t been effectively planned for cyclists nor pedestrians. The dutch people are not much different than you or me, they just made the infrastructure right and assimilated it over the years. The close calls you are describing look harmless in the video, when you realize that even if there were an accident, not much would happen. But we still get many car-related deaths. Do you see what i mean?
Which city are you in and what does the car infrastructure look like in the street you are describing?
Thats the thing with biking, at that speed you dont need signals or anything. People will just figure it out.
And accidents are rarely fatal.
As long as you wear a helmet.
Helmets are promoted in North America so that when a car kills a cyclist they can blame it on the cyclist if they aren’t wearing a helmet instead of blaming it on the shitty cycling infrastructure.
These are bikes only, very low speed interactions. The sort where if you do bump into someone, it’s just a foot on the ground at worst.
Landing on your head at low speeds is still very dangerous. A helmet is not a bad idea.
Times are changing though. These days there are loads of annoying kids on fatbikes. Often they go faster than allowed while these kids are even a danger to themselves and others while walking. There’s a step rise in accidents but due to the laws they can’t do much about it as they fall into the category of bike instead of scooter or moped. Now there’s a minimum age (14 I think?) for fatbikes but that barily works preventing accidents. Now with the rise of e-bikes the average cycling speed is also increased which is something everyone needs to adjust to. Drivers too, as cyclists are sooner at an intersection as they used to be. This also causes accidents. This is how I broke my collarbone because a driver thought he had enough time to cross the cycling path but this caused me to crash into him with 25km/h. Without helmets the chance of serious head injuries is greatly increased with speeds of 25km/h. And there are many fatbikes going 45km/h.
Nah im not gonna carry a liter of foam around to cut a 10^-5 chance in third, you do you of course, but this risk is small enough and the inconvenience of carrying around a helmet is large enogh for me to not care for cycling as transportation.
I find the fear mongering around this topic to be supremely annoying. Just let adults ride their bikes however they want. If you try to get your child, employee, or participants in a sporting event to wear a helmet, that’s completely reasonable. But assuming the vast majority of dutch cyclists to be idiots for cycling without a helmet is just asinine.
Everyone seeing cycling as a normal mode of transport is never gonna work if everyone is scared of cycling to the point of never considering it without a helmet. Mandatory helmet laws seem to be one of the most effective measures to discourage cycling, so don’t try to make a bike culture that effectively acts like one.
See what happens when you don’t wear a helmet?
Not really that necessary in NL. Most people are cruising the city at 18-20kph. The fietsers on the ebikes obviously go faster, but in heavy traffic, you’re not gonna go full speed anyhow.
This is just wrong, head injuries are very common in the Netherlands. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/16/the-brain-is-very-vulnerable-dutch-cyclists-urged-to-wear-helmets-as-road-deaths-rise
Just wear a fucking helmet, looking like a dweeb is better than brain damage.
They actually found that both cyclists and drivers tend to take more risks when helmets are abundant, which in turn leads to more serious accidents instead of fewer.
Moreover the Netherlands don’t have comparatively more head injuries each year than more car-centric countries, suggesting that cycling doesn’t contribute that much overall.
And most injuries tend to happen to old people. Drop the 60+ bracket and suddenly head injuries from cycling drops to an inconsequential number.
My experience when wearing a bike helmet in NL is that car drivers seem to take more risks with my safety, they drive closer to me than I normally experience, and I feel less safe than when I’m not wearing a helmet.
But yes, dain bramage would be worse. And yes, an accident hides in small corners, but I’m not sure if wearing a helmet makes me safer, even on our streets.
Like the commenter you’re up against, most Dutch people are very feral when wearing a helmet on a bike is concerned. Everyone confused themselves a master of biking and therefore impervious to damage.
Opinions claiming otherwise are very toxicly brushed aside. Even though numbers increase, specially with electric bikes becoming more common.
It’s the darker side of our bike prowess.
FTA:
Even the Fietsersbond cyclist association is changing its tone, while stressing that there is no excuse for reckless drivers or poor infrastructure. “We have the position that helmets don’t prevent accidents but it can be a wise decision to wear one on a voluntary basis,” said its director, Esther van Garderen. “Emphasising too much that you should wear a helmet would discourage people from cycling sometimes, though, and has the air of victim-blaming. I think it’s coming slowly, although there’s no such thing as a society with zero danger and we value our culture where you can cycle safe and free.”
Seems like a soft position from Fiestersbond and for good reason. I read your article and then followed the sources and looked up the actual numbers. And you need to STFU with your helmet opinion and actually think about the articles you read/link and their sources. According to the same links sourced in the article(!), the CBS says in 2023, people here in NL over the age of six (roughly 15-16m people) traveled over 1000km each by bike in the year. So just shy of 3km a day by bike. Millions upon millions of trips per fucking year. How many of those millions of trips resulted in a crash? 120k. Wow, that seems like a lot doesn’t it? How many people cycle on any given day? According to wikipedia, which cites a EU travel report, 36%. So 5.4m-ish people, making at least one trip per day makes it almost 2 billion trips over an entire fuckin year (5.4m * 365 == 1.97b). So, of those 2 billion trips, we have 120k crashes. Which is… hold on, let me paste it from the calculator because it has so many fucking zeros: 0.000060882800609.
Now, let’s do some math. How likely is it that you will be in a crash in a given year?
No-crash probability per trip:
1−0.00006=0.99994.Annual no-crash probability (365 trips):
(0.99994)^365≈0.9783.Annual crash probability:
1−0.9783=0.0217 or 2.17%.So a 1 in 46 chance of being in a crash in a given year from cycling one trip every day and of those crashes, less than half are serious. Over my 1000km I cycle. Get the fuck outta here with “very common” from your shit article.
Firstly your numbers are wrong, you need double the number of trips (it’s at least 2 just for commuting). So let’s say 5% chance over your lifetime. And that number is increasing because of the reasons mentioned in the article.
Secondly just cause it’s more likely than not you’ll never get a crash doesn’t mean you have to be a dumbass and not wear a helmet. Is it really that difficult to take a little bit of precaution for something with a 5% chance of happening sometime in your lifetime? Seems like a no brainer to me.
So you get out of here with your self-destructive attitude. Wearing helmets saves lives.
I don’t live there, but I’ve often heard that the common rationale for not wearing a helmet is that bike-bike or bike-human accidents usually don’t result in head injuries. Usually, it is a bike-car accident that can result in head injuries, and if you get hit by a car at speed then you have other issues.
You are correct either way, but the problem wouldn’t be as bad if bike lanes are completely separated from cars. I do not have a source, but I’d assume that places like 's-Hertogenbosch, Houten and Utrecht have less head injuries due to the better (completely separated from cars) bike infrastructure compared to Amsterdam or Rotterdam.
At least my hair will look good while I have brain damage
This looks hilarious but its real. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. By the way, you see a red colored sidewalk, you get off of that thing unless you want to get run over by bikes.
What’s hilarious about it?
To an outsider like me. Its hilarious because you’ve never seen so many people trying to get somewhere on a bike. Specially when its winter and they get icicles on their face. But also when many are dressed like executives at some large corp while riding comfort bikes in the sitting up straight position.
Here in the us people ride bikes to exercise and have absolutely no heading or reason other than that. In Mexico people side their bikes from work if their old or poor or both. They ride slowly for pleasure, just to not have to walk after a long day. Whistling, looking at women walking because women don’t ride bikes, machismo. Its traditional. The bikes are old and are quickly becoming replaced by 2cycle mopeds, which women do ride a lot. Tons and tons of mopeds along with tons of moped accidents. So a bunch of people riding bikes, not wearing spandex or helmets, or wearing helmets and a suit, on special roads to get somewhere useful that’s on the hilarious end of things. Because its weird and different.
To me, an european but not Dutch it’s uncommon to see so many people on bikes, but other than that it’s perfectly ordinary. I’m just a bit jealous of the fact that there’s no snow on their bike paths
Or nails…bikes remove nails.
Are ebikes not a thing in the Netherlands?
You can see some people riding ebikes on the video.
Edit: originally stated that lots of people riding ebikes, but on closer inspection they’re less than I originally thought.
They are a thing. But most people are gonna ride a beater that if it gets stolen, no big deal. ebikes in particular are a big target for theft, especially the shitty fat tire ones. In fact, ebikes are becoming a bit of a nuisance because of the speed difference between them and regular bikes. In Amsterdam, we already force the mopeds (ICE or electric) to be on the street with the cars. And the city will vote soon to ban the fat tire ebikes from Vondelpark because of the nuisance they cause among heavy mixed traffic. There have been complaints to the city that older people don’t feel safe on the fietspad any more because of the big speed difference and I agree with them. The fietspad should be for everyone, not only the fastest.
That makes sense. I never understood the popularity of fat tire ebikes. They are much heavier than regular bikes and therefore don’t hold a charge as long.
The people who ride them don’t want to ride a bicycle. They want to ride a motorcycle that can bypass jammed roads, without license or registration.
Ebikes are less important when you don’t have hills to deal with.
