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As a Dutch person I am pleasantly surprised by this article, it gets basically everything right. One thing though is that our geography works well with biking.

• the-dude 8y ago
  The cyclist vs motorist dynamic in NL is skewed because practically all motorists are cyclists too.
  • linguistbreaker 8y ago
    I would say the dynamic is skewed in the US because so few motorists are cyclists. Just perspective.
    • the-dude 8y ago
      You are right, I was searching for words and couldn't find the right one.
    • gowld 8y ago
      There is no natural origin to be skewed from. It's relative. both statements are equally correct, and leave out the relative context.
      • Symbiote 8y ago
        The natural origin is a pedestrian, which is much, much more common in the Netherlands than most of the USA.
      • gpvos 8y ago
        The natural origin should be walking (except for motorways, some tunnels, etc., and I guess in most cases also outside city/village limits). But I read that in US suburbs, many streets are not even suitable for that, which boggles my mind.
  • Tijdreiziger 8y ago
    I am not sure that's true. I (a Dutchman) know plenty of motorists who won't touch a bicycle.
    • avocad 8y ago
      No, but most of them used to ride a bicycle at some point in their lives, and know of the dangers that cars pose to them. Also Dutchman here.
• bunderbunder 8y ago
  As an American, whenever I see articles about Dutch cycling culture, the thing that stands out to me is that nobody is wearing helmets. In the US, I wouldn't dream of doing that - it's just too dangerous, because there's too much risk of being involved in a high speed collision. But, after having spent some time in the Netherlands, it's come to feel like a minor injustice every time I put my helmet on. It's a little reminder of how, in the US and much the rest of the world, we have blithely turned our public right-of-way into a space that's fundamentally dangerous for humans to be in.
  • soared 8y ago
    I believe in countries/cities like these its safer to not use a helmet. Drivers see that your being unsafe and give you much more room and are more aware of you. Less accidents and less deaths in total by not wearing a helmet! I couldn't find the study that was posted on hn, but there are lots of articles.
    • gowld 8y ago
      It's complicated. https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-bike-helmet-paradox https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-bike-helmet-paradox The short answer is, "wear a helmet if you have one, and try to get one, but if you don't have one, you should still bike anyway."
      • askmike 8y ago
        Not in the Netherlands, see the article ;)
    • Scarblac 8y ago
      Also making it mandatory to wear a helmet means fewer people use bicycles, so fewer people get the health benefits of cycling.
    • snarfybarfy 8y ago
      I also remember reading this. I think even safer (i.e. drivers keep more distance while overtaking) than no helmet was pretending to be female by wearing a wig with long hair.
• TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > One thing though is that our geography works well with biking. I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. That's not geography, that's urban planning, or a lack of it. America's geographic size meant that we could sprawl, not that we had to. And indeed, especially in the post-WW2 era, we collectively chose to sprawl out far and wide, greatly favoring the automobile at the expense of walking, biking, and transit. > I would feel really unsafe on a bike in the US. That makes sense, since yeah, it's dangerous as hell. Got hit twice the last year before I moved to Munich.
  • davidw 8y ago
    > That's not geography, that's urban planning, or a lack of it. You're basically right, but it's land use regulation. We have plenty of 'planning' in the US, and it mostly keeps in place what's already there. If you look at the places built in the US before zoning codes and 'planning', a lot of them are actually quite nice because they were built more to adapt than things these days, which are "built to a finished state" to borrow a phrase from the folks at Strong Towns.
  • Angostura 8y ago
    I seem to recall from a geography A-level course about 35 years ago in the UK that historically Los Angeles' spread was something to do with the city fathers offering incentives to adjoining communities to become part of Los Angeles - something like 'call yourself Los Angeles and we'll give you access to our water or electrical grid'. Is that right? A bit hazy after all this time.
    • dmurray 8y ago
      That doesn't sound right at all, it's almost the opposite of the current situation. Only a small part of the Los Angeles sprawl is officially in the city of Los Angeles. Another hundred communities aren't officially called Los Angeles, but might as well be.
      • 8y ago
• tnolet 8y ago
  Same here. The two interviewees really did a good job and the whole story conveys Dutch biking lifestyle really well. One note: they did pave over some canals in Utrecht back in the day, but they are being opened up again as we speak.
• tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  Very select cities are pretty good for biking. Boulder CO, for instance is pretty great b/c most people there bike. But yeah for a lot of places it's a nightmare. Also our metro areas tend to spread out quite a bit, so to get from one area to another typically involves biking >5 miles.
  • hathawsh 8y ago
    I'd also like to congratulate Utah for recently completing over 100 miles of commuter-friendly bike trails that connect nearly all of the most populous cities. https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/golden-spoke-trail-network-connects-ogden-and-provo-opens-saturday/article_fe9750c4-a94b-5714-87bc-82381d8ed7c0.html https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/golden-spoke-trail-ne... http://wfrc.org/programs/active-transportation/golden-spoke/ http://wfrc.org/programs/active-transportation/golden-spoke/
  • nathancahill 8y ago
    I no longer live there, but do you know where they ended up on the Folsom bike lane? There was a lot of back and forth, drivers getting really angry at bikers protesting the removal of the bike lane.
    • tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
      Ah, I haven't lived there since 2014. Couldn't tell you.
  • JustMatthew 8y ago
    Portland, Oregon is another great example. It has the best biking infra I've seen in the US mixed with a driving culture that, for the most part, actually affords priority consideration to pedestrians and bikers. While not perfect, a lot of best practices can and probably should be derived from what Portland has done to improve bike infra.
• bluejekyll 8y ago
  > As a dutch person I would absolutely NOT want to ride a bike in the US, it's simply too dangerous. I understand this perspective, but as a counter to this, if no one bikes in the US then this won't change. I ride all over San Francisco. In the last 18 years of me living here things have gotten better and better for the cyclist, but there are still many areas that can be improved. I encourage you to support local organizations, like the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which can pressure local governments to make changes that improve safety for all cyclists. For too long in the US we've designed our roads with the idea that cars have some right to the road that others do not. We're finally starting to rectify that in cities across the country, and it's only getting better.
  • wpietri 8y ago
    Agreed. I don't blame anybody for not wanting to ride in the city. But I've been in SF since 2000 and I'm amazed at the progress that has been made in this direction. (Thanks in no small part to the SFBC.) And these improvements are happening all over the US. I've been pleasantly surprised to re-visit places and see how much progress has been made.
  • jseliger 8y ago
    In the last 18 years of me living here things have gotten better and better for the cyclist, but there are still many areas that can be improved I just visited SF, and it was notable to me how much of the city's infrastructure is given over to cars and parking: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/08/19/what-santa-barbara-says https://jakeseliger.com/2018/08/19/what-santa-barbara-says. The rhetoric on the Internet made me think the reality on the ground would be different.
    • bluejekyll 8y ago
      Knowing what it was like before, and how much improved it is since then, definitely shouldn’t be taken to mean that it’s ideal by any means. The point I was making is how much things like SFBC and Critical Mass over the years improved things because of the community involvement. I’d like to see bicycle boulevards and dedicate roads to bikes, but what we have is better than when I got here, and feels like it’s improveing at a rapid pace now.
• ptaipale 8y ago
  Another thing is that Netherlands (most of it) is flat. Much nicer to ride bike on even ground than where there are even small hills.
  • hathawsh 8y ago
    A lot of the good road bike trails in the US are built next to slow-moving rivers and canals for that very reason. Rivers tend to carve the land or reroute until the slope is gentle and nearly constant. My favorite way to find road bike trails in the US is by looking near large rivers.
    • ptaipale 8y ago
      That is nice if you're riding bike on trails you can pick, for fun (thanks for hint). For those of us commuting to work, to move from place A to place B and back, that is unfortunately not always feasible...
    • narag 8y ago
      For bikes replacing cars, you need flat paths to places you want to go (your home, shopping, work) not to places you go to ride a bike.
  • gameswithgo 8y ago
    The wind there is much worse than small hills!
    • misja111 8y ago
      No it's not. As a Dutch person who moved to Switzerland I can say that it's much easier to bike against the wind than to bike up-hill.
  • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Down south (Limburg etc) is a lot more hilly (like a LOT); how is the cycling culture there? I've only been there on vacation once :p.
• AceyMan 8y ago
  LA resident here for eleven years (coming from ATL which has its own horrible traffic and is worse by miles for bike commuting, fwiw). > I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. My not-so-pedantic comments to these facts are (a) LA is freaking HUGE (if ever fly into LAX at night, pay attention to when the earth becomes a solid carpet of city lights. It's a looong way from the shoreline). We aren't constrained by water on three or four sides like say, NYC/Manhattan or San Francisco. And, (b), at LA's 101/10/405/surface street speeds, thirty minutes may only be three or four miles (or two, if you venture to travel at The Wrong Times), while you can get to one of the major secondary cities (Anaheim, for example) in about fifty minutes if you time it well. So, while technically true, those points aren't representative of How Things Really Are, imho. (me: exclusive transit/bike commuter here for 6+ years)
  • MrFantastic 8y ago
    Atlanta near Midtown has dramatically improved for biking. We also have Bird scooters.
• bogomipz 8y ago
  >"One thing though is that our geography works well with biking." And the topography doesn't hurt - its flat as a pancake. Also isn't it possible to basically ride between every city in the Netherlands? I once biked from Rotterdam to Den Hague using only bike paths and protected bike lanes. I got the impression that I could continue riding to Amsterdam in the same fashion if wanted to.
  • YawningAngel 8y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if this were true of continental Europe as a whole. It was actively surprising to me that this wasn't possible in America until I remembered how damn big that place is.
  • vaccarium 8y ago
    > I got the impression that I could continue riding to Amsterdam in the same fashion if wanted to. You definitely could. A couple of years ago I've actually done a trip like that, Rotterdam to The Hague to Amsterdam (then onwards to Amersfoort) — it was about 150 km long, and all of that was on designated bike paths and lanes.
    • bogomipz 8y ago
      That sounds like a nice trip. Yeah the bike paths between Rotterdam and Delft were particularly memorable, you were basically biking through open farm land following a canal. It was like riding through a postcard. Cheers.
• seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I’ve stopped peaking over my shoulders ever since I’ve gotten a car with a bunch of sensors and cameras. Now it seems like it is more dangerous to take the time to look back and instead just rely on the fairly reliable sensor indicator in the side review mirrors. It’s not even like you can do both, unfortunately, since you either look here or there. I wonder how much driving will change with technology before we get full self driving cars? But ya, the USA still sucks for bikes. It’s not just the cars, but that you are in the same road with the cars in the first place. Netherlands is much better in that regard, with bike trails everywhere and intersections heavily engineered with an eye towards cyclist safety. Not to mention the laws are heavily biased toward cyclists.
  • underwater 8y ago
    What car has sensors that can detect bikes or pedestrians? My Subaru has rear radar, which is great at detecting vehicles that I literally can’t see, but I would never trust that to alert me to bikes or people.
    • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Mine detects pedestrians and cyclists easy enough. This is 2016 Acura sense, with both side and rear sensor packages. There is also the backup camera, which works really well, but I’m generally get the pedestrian warning before they enter my camera or mirror range. I still turn my head while backing up, it’s when I’m changing lanes at speed where the sensors really start to change behavior (where there is a cost to looking back and not forward).
    • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      Most parking sensors will detect cyclists, pedestrians, small children etc easily enough, it's just that the range is very limited.
    • magduf 8y ago
      My Mazda's rear radar sensors alert me if there's pedestrians walking towards me when I'm backing up in a parking lot.
• maxerickson 8y ago
  Another factor is the population density. I live in a region that is geographically just a bit larger than the Netherlands and has a population of about 300,000 (The Upper Peninsula of Michigan). Of course that doesn't apply in US areas that do have higher population density, but there's a lot of country over here.
• komali2 8y ago
  It's cultural, as well. One time a car of people in Houston drove me off the road onto the curb. They screamed out of their window "why you biking out here, you trying to die?" I was in the bike lane...
• mkirschner 8y ago
  I'm a long-time bike commuter in the U.S (Portland, OR suburbs). Your comment reminds me of a Dutch colleague I once worked with. He was adamant that cycling conditions were too dangerous here. As a relative statement compared to the Netherlands, I'm sure that's true. For me personally, the health benefits and general enjoyment make it worthwhile. Also, it's important to know what you're doing when cycling in traffic, even in a "bike friendly" city. Unfortunately, there's no formal education in the USA around that topic, like there is for driving an automobile.
• prestonh 8y ago
  Ive nearly been hit by cars twice as a law abiding pedestrian in the 6 months I have been in Seattle,so theres no way I am cycling here. And as a city on the West Coast, I am sure it is more bike friendly than most in the states. Fortunately, I work and live near downtown, so I can walk my daily commute.
• analog31 8y ago
  >>> As a dutch person I would absolutely NOT want to ride a bike in the US, it's simply too dangerous. A lot of Americans also think it's too dangerous. It's an obstacle to getting more people on bikes. When people at my workplace see me with my bike, or find out that I'm a cyclist, they beg me to be careful, promise to wear a helmet, and so forth. I have friends who are avid cyclists, but who limit their riding to dedicated bike paths or off-road trails, because they don't feel safe riding on the roads. Just looking at pictures and videos, it's apparent to me that cyclists in the US and Netherlands have very different riding habits due to the differences in conditions. The Dutch seem so carefree. Americans seem to have a much more wary, defensive, and sometimes aggressive style, and may prefer more maneuverable bikes for a reason. You'd probably get used to it, as lots of us do. We also probably have to pay more attention to planning our routes to avoid the worst of traffic. I know all of the dedicated bike paths and side roads in my town. Google Maps gives different routes for bikes and cars. Residential streets have lots of cars but not a lot of traffic volume. I actually encounter relatively few cars on my rides. Much as I defend cycling in the US, I'd still prefer the Dutch environment.
  • Vinnl 8y ago
    > A lot of Americans also think it's too dangerous. It's an obstacle to getting more people on bikes. Well, in the Netherlands it was supposedly the reason for demands for safer infrastructure, which in turn led to people starting to cycle more. > Google Maps gives different routes for bikes and cars. It does the same in the Netherlands, but I guess that's for a different reason: often roads are one-way only for cars, and bidirectional for cyclists.
    • mcv 8y ago
      Google Maps for bikes is notoriously bad around Amsterdam, though. Open Streetmap is generally better. Google tends to avoid bike-only routes and prefers to send you along car routes. (It's not as bad as it once was, but it still has the annoying tendency to avoid the Sarphatistraat, for example.)
  • BlackFly 8y ago
    > The Dutch seem so carefree. I think the helmets are a big part of this. If you go around telling people, "Body armor required," then they are not going to feel laissez-faire. The other side is the presumed liability on the part of the car. Cars have almost all the responsibility to ensure they do not collide with a bike in the Netherlands. That makes cycling more pedestrian, you can just go and overall not worry about things around you.
• siruncledrew 8y ago
  It feels dangerously unsafe to even ride a motorcycle with a helmet and skid gear in car-heavy, “share the road” areas. Biking with a 20lbs road bike and just a helmet when 3000+lbs pickups are zooming past you feels like Russian roulette.
  • pedrosorio 8y ago
    > when 3000lbs pickups are zooming past you Apparently a Honda Accord 2018 weighs more than 3,000 lbs (up to 3,428). Also, and somewhat surprising given the above, you can buy a Ford F-150 that weighs just 4,000 lbs
    • TylerE 8y ago
      This isn't really surprising to anyone that pays attention to cars. The safety innovations of the 90s (crumble zones, etc) added a lot of weight, and cars have just gotten a LOT bigger. The Accord, for instance, gained almost 2 feet in length and 6 inches in width between the late 80s and today. Of course, the trucks were smaller back then too - The Ford Ranger (1989) model weighed only 2800lbs.
• megaremote 8y ago
  > I visited the US recently and you can drive for 30 minutes in a car and you are still in LA, if you drive for 30 minutes in the Netherlands you're in a completely different city. But what difference does that make? Why would I be more likely to visit a different city rather than another part of a bigger city?
• kwhitefoot 8y ago
  > As a dutch person I would absolutely NOT want to ride a bike in the US, It depends where you are. I used to spend a lot of time in Raleigh and Cary, North Carolina and often borrowed a bike to cycle from Cary to Raleigh and around both places, I was told by many Americans that it was dangerous but in fact I only had one slightly difficult moment in hundreds of kilometres of cycling and that was a low speed bus that came within ten centimetres of me.
• sAbakumoff 8y ago
  > As a dutch person I would absolutely NOT want to ride a bike in the US, it's simply too dangerous. well, while it's very safe to ride a bike here in Netherlands, sh*t still happens regularly and crazy drivers are there. Past year I had this accident : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUY7psClcbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUY7psClcbQ
  • sharpercoder 8y ago
    In which the cyclist is at fault, as the minivan is on the intersection before the cyclist and thus has right of way. Right of way only counts when arriving at the same time, often neglected in analysis.
    • sAbakumoff 8y ago
      Nope, it was the fault of the driver, he has to let the cyclist go. It is how it works here.
    • thirdsun 8y ago
      I‘m pretty sure this is wrong. If the van can‘t make the turn safely before the cyclist arrives/collides he has to let him pass. The question of who arrives first at an intersection is irrelevant in europe.
    • eythian 8y ago
      No, going straight has priority over turning traffic, a bike has priority over a minivan, and it's the responsibility of everyone to not cause a collision. The cyclist is right three times over.
• jiri 8y ago
  > One thing though is that our geography works well with biking. Yeah, that one. Your country is ridiculously flat with highest peak of around 300m above see level. On the other hand, there are a lot of raining days in Netherlands! I was very surprised that Dutch don't care too much about weather, they ride on sunny days same as on rainy days.
  • stevesimmons 8y ago
    They also ride in the snow! The Dutch rain typically comes in 15 minute blocks as bands of clouds cross the country. So most Dutch cyclists would check the Buienradar rain radar app on their phones and adjust their departure time accordingly. Coincidentally to this discussion, last weekend I fell off my bike in Amsterdam: Cycling too fast, in the rain, hurrying to an appointment, and misjudged a turning, braked too hard, skidded, and hit the gutter. That was my second bike crash in Amsterdam. The first was 8 years ago, when I was cycling, carrying a TV. Also in the rain.
• psergeant 8y ago
  > One thing though is that our geography works well with biking Right, 100%. I wonder if the cheap electric-assist bikes will make more countries / cities essentially “flat”
  • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Electric assist bicycles are basically a smaller / lightweight alternative to scooters; I don't see (but I could be wrong) how e-bikes would be more prevalent if scooters already aren't.
    • ginko 8y ago
      You can use e-bikes on bike lanes. That makes a huge difference.
    • gpvos 8y ago
      Scooters have become quite a bit more prevalent in recent years. Actually there was a link to this article at the bottom of TFA: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17676670/electric-scooter-rental-bird-lime-skip-spin-cities https://www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17676670/electric-scooter-rent... . Edit: Huh, I hadn't read the article yet; it appears not to be about moped-/motorcycle-like scooters as I expected (because there has been an increase in such scooters in the Netherlands in the last five to ten years or so), but about electrified kick scooters. (Dutch uses different words for each (scooter and step), so I had no idea about the double meaning.)
    • stevesimmons 8y ago
      Ebikes have become very popular in the Netherlands among the elderly. They're used to cycling but find the effort of a conventional bike harder as they get older. Incidentally the one age group in the Netherlands with an increase in road deaths in recent years has been 65+. That's largely attributed to them using Ebikes to travel much faster, while having comparatively slow reaction times and less resilience to injuries sustained in the higher speed crashes.
• skrebbel 8y ago
  > it gets basically everything right. Almost everything :) It says that there needs to be a separated, protected bike lane on every road that has a maximum speed over 30 km/h. This is not true (and pretty infeasible, too). The vast majority of average boring roads in residential areas have a 50 km/h maximum speed and no separated bike lanes (and often, if the road is small/quiet enough, not a marked bike lane at all). Most countryside roads have a 80 km/h maximum speed and no bike lanes. I bet some details were left out that accidentally made it incorrect. I can imagine that there's some law/guideline going on that if a road is particularly busy, then it needs to be either max 30 kph or have separated bike lanes. But most suburban roads or countryside aren't particularly busy.
  • Freak_NL 8y ago
    > The vast majority of average boring roads in residential areas have a 50 km/h maximum speed […] Look closely though, a lot has changed in the last decade. Most of the residential streets are now 30 km/h, with only the larger arterial thoroughfares (which do have tend to have separate cycling lanes) and roads in industrial areas left at 50 km/h. > Most countryside roads have a 80 km/h maximum speed and no bike lanes. A lot of those remaining roads that don't have a separate cycling lane have been turned into 60 km/h roads. Wherever in our country do you live that this is not the case?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• rahkiin 8y ago
  It got only one thing wrong: there are roads that allow 50km/h and 60km/h without dedicated cycling roads (or with curbs). The former sometimes has no cycling indication, the latter is seen with a 1.5 width car lane with two smaller res bicycle lanes around it. These are rarely seen in cities though but are very common in rural areas (the Dutch rural, which would probably be 'suburban' in the US).
  • mcv 8y ago
    Yeah, I assumed that was a goal for the future, rather than a description of the current situation.
• tremon 8y ago
  Basically everything, except one thing: the speed threshold where physically separate bike lanes are mandatory is 50km/h, not 30. That happily coincides with the in-city speed limit for cars. You will still find many physically separated bike lanes even on 50-kph roads if they carry heavy traffic, but it's not mandated by law. It just happens that sharing a road with cyclists also slows down cars, and that decreases traffic throughput.
  • bigato 8y ago
    > It just happens that sharing a road with cyclists also slows down cars, and that decreases traffic throughput. The equation is not so simple if you consider that one person in a bicycle is one less car on the road, thus occupying a lot less space for the overall traffic.
• CalRobert 8y ago
  The geography is fine, really. LA is flat and has decent-ish weather (too hot at times though) The buildings and motorways are an absolutely hellscape of trash design, though. Whole damn city is an asphalt desert with a building sprinkled here and there. Why? Because laws force businesses and homes to have parking that often takes up more space than the building itself.
• culiuniversal 8y ago
  Well part of the reason everything is so spread out and part of the reason cars drive like that IS because it is such a car-centric infrastructure. More bikers and a political push to change zoning laws and city planning would help alleviate all of the issues you mentioned