5 ms·

> Or parents with young children. Works in NL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ

obelos 7y ago
Works in Portland, too. My family with two young children frequently commutes by bike.
- jquery 7y ago
  Try pulling two kids up an SF hill.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    I don't have any children but I live in Glen Park and I see parents with those bike trailers for their kids all the time. Not something I ever personally considered but those people usually look really fit. Pretty neat, honestly.
  - lorenzhs 7y ago
    Easy if you have an electric bike. Cargo bikes often have benches for the kids. They also have plenty of space for groceries. Very common in the Netherlands, and they come in electric versions as well for hillier areas or longer distances.
  - jogjayr 7y ago
    Electric bikes are the shit! Every single person who can ride a bike should own one. They can eliminate up to 75% of car trips[1] (those under 10 miles). You hardly notice hills, never get sweaty, and never have to worry about parking. The only downside is for apartment dwellers. If you're not on the ground floor you really want a building with an elevator, or secure bike storage on the ground floor. Those suckers are heavy and most people will not want to carry them up and down stairs. 1. https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html
jquery 7y ago
Where are the helmets? Do NL babies come with extra thick skulls?
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  No. NL bike culture is different from the one in the US. They have this bizarre idea that if you go at a reasonable speed and have both bike-friendly infrastructure and bike-friendly culture, you don't need a helmet because you won't get your brains splattered everywhere and requiring helmets curtails bike use. Freakishly, everything I've read seems to suggest it works for them.
  - jquery 7y ago
    You don't need to be moving at all for a fall off a bike to cause severe head injury or death. Their 120 deaths and 3400 serious injuries per year, on a population of 17M, demonstrate that it is about as unsafe you would expect, even with bike-friendly infrastructure. This is exactly what common sense suggested and it's borne out in the data[1]. You sarcasm, condescension, and arrogance were uncalled for, whether or not I was incorrect. You can argue the benefits are worth the costs, but that's a different discussion. [1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/03/top-hat-bike-helmets-would-save-85-cycling-fatalities-a-year-says-report/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/03/top-hat-bike-helmets-w...
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I wasn't intending to be condescending. More like tongue in cheek. I'm American. I'm aware that Americans look at how the Netherlands does it and we go "That doesn't make sense! That is terrible! etc." I'm not saying they never get hurt. I don't have studies and articles at my fingertips, but from what I have read, the decision to not require a helmet is part of what makes cycling popular in the Netherlands. From what I understand, studies show that requiring a helmet reduces the adoption of bicycles as a mode of transit. My recollection is that they decided they wanted bike-friendly cities in part because too many children were being hit by cars. There is a concept called "lying with statistics." When you cherry pick a single data point to support your conclusion and how you think things should be done, sure, you can make it sound like you are clearly right and this is crazy. You can do that on just about any subject. There are other ways to look at this problem, such as: 1. How many more serious injuries and deaths are prevented by having a bike culture instead of a car culture? If the answer is you have fewer injuries overall and they are less serious, then accepting the injuries from bicycling makes sense. My understanding is this is what the Dutch found to be true. 2. How much measurable benefit does society get by creating a society where women, poor people, children, etc can still get around? In some parts of the US, it's nigh impossible to get a job at all if you don't have a car. No one wants to hire you. Public transit is too bad, so they assume you can't get to work reliably. This becomes a poverty trap. You can't buy a car because you don't have a job. You can't get a job because you don't have a car. Poverty traps foment crime, cause minor health problems to balloon up into expensive major health problems, etc. There are myriad ways that preventing people from getting around unless it is some optimal means to get around can negatively impact society more than just letting them take a few risks on their own recognizance. I'm not going to look up the articles, studies and data. I'm an American who has lived without a car for more than a decade. I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. Reading stuff about how to get people to walk and bike more is something of a hobby of mine and the Netherlands is generally held up as a gold standard. I was just trying to give you the nutshell version of what I know while feeling like it was probably pointless because it probably doesn't matter how well I say it or how much evidence there is, American prejudice looks at those pictures of both adults and children riding around without a helmet and goes "Nope!!!!!! That's wrong and bad and terrible and evil!" The same Americans who say that about bicycle culture in the Netherlands will be all "Meh. Accidents happen." if you try to argue that car culture is maiming and murdering people on a daily basis here in the US and we desperately need to do something about it. (Yes, I'm aware you may not actually be American.)

obelos 7y ago

Works in Portland, too. My family with two young children frequently commutes by bike.

jquery 7y ago
Try pulling two kids up an SF hill.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  I don't have any children but I live in Glen Park and I see parents with those bike trailers for their kids all the time. Not something I ever personally considered but those people usually look really fit. Pretty neat, honestly.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  Easy if you have an electric bike. Cargo bikes often have benches for the kids. They also have plenty of space for groceries. Very common in the Netherlands, and they come in electric versions as well for hillier areas or longer distances.
- jogjayr 7y ago
  Electric bikes are the shit! Every single person who can ride a bike should own one. They can eliminate up to 75% of car trips[1] (those under 10 miles). You hardly notice hills, never get sweaty, and never have to worry about parking. The only downside is for apartment dwellers. If you're not on the ground floor you really want a building with an elevator, or secure bike storage on the ground floor. Those suckers are heavy and most people will not want to carry them up and down stairs. 1. https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html

jquery 7y ago

Where are the helmets? Do NL babies come with extra thick skulls?

DoreenMichele 7y ago
No. NL bike culture is different from the one in the US. They have this bizarre idea that if you go at a reasonable speed and have both bike-friendly infrastructure and bike-friendly culture, you don't need a helmet because you won't get your brains splattered everywhere and requiring helmets curtails bike use. Freakishly, everything I've read seems to suggest it works for them.
- jquery 7y ago
  You don't need to be moving at all for a fall off a bike to cause severe head injury or death. Their 120 deaths and 3400 serious injuries per year, on a population of 17M, demonstrate that it is about as unsafe you would expect, even with bike-friendly infrastructure. This is exactly what common sense suggested and it's borne out in the data[1]. You sarcasm, condescension, and arrogance were uncalled for, whether or not I was incorrect. You can argue the benefits are worth the costs, but that's a different discussion. [1] https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/03/top-hat-bike-helmets-would-save-85-cycling-fatalities-a-year-says-report/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/03/top-hat-bike-helmets-w...
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I wasn't intending to be condescending. More like tongue in cheek. I'm American. I'm aware that Americans look at how the Netherlands does it and we go "That doesn't make sense! That is terrible! etc." I'm not saying they never get hurt. I don't have studies and articles at my fingertips, but from what I have read, the decision to not require a helmet is part of what makes cycling popular in the Netherlands. From what I understand, studies show that requiring a helmet reduces the adoption of bicycles as a mode of transit. My recollection is that they decided they wanted bike-friendly cities in part because too many children were being hit by cars. There is a concept called "lying with statistics." When you cherry pick a single data point to support your conclusion and how you think things should be done, sure, you can make it sound like you are clearly right and this is crazy. You can do that on just about any subject. There are other ways to look at this problem, such as: 1. How many more serious injuries and deaths are prevented by having a bike culture instead of a car culture? If the answer is you have fewer injuries overall and they are less serious, then accepting the injuries from bicycling makes sense. My understanding is this is what the Dutch found to be true. 2. How much measurable benefit does society get by creating a society where women, poor people, children, etc can still get around? In some parts of the US, it's nigh impossible to get a job at all if you don't have a car. No one wants to hire you. Public transit is too bad, so they assume you can't get to work reliably. This becomes a poverty trap. You can't buy a car because you don't have a job. You can't get a job because you don't have a car. Poverty traps foment crime, cause minor health problems to balloon up into expensive major health problems, etc. There are myriad ways that preventing people from getting around unless it is some optimal means to get around can negatively impact society more than just letting them take a few risks on their own recognizance. I'm not going to look up the articles, studies and data. I'm an American who has lived without a car for more than a decade. I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way. Reading stuff about how to get people to walk and bike more is something of a hobby of mine and the Netherlands is generally held up as a gold standard. I was just trying to give you the nutshell version of what I know while feeling like it was probably pointless because it probably doesn't matter how well I say it or how much evidence there is, American prejudice looks at those pictures of both adults and children riding around without a helmet and goes "Nope!!!!!! That's wrong and bad and terrible and evil!" The same Americans who say that about bicycle culture in the Netherlands will be all "Meh. Accidents happen." if you try to argue that car culture is maiming and murdering people on a daily basis here in the US and we desperately need to do something about it. (Yes, I'm aware you may not actually be American.)