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I pretty regularly biked ~10km to school starting around age 12 in middle America. It was dangerous including a 4 lane highway with no bike lanes. Given how f

I pretty regularly biked ~10km to school starting around age 12 in middle America. It was dangerous including a 4 lane highway with no bike lanes. Given how fat the town is I grew up in I imagine it was safer in the long run than being inactive. I kind of wonder whether the fatalities would be worth the tradeoff if America encouraged biking to improve health at the cost of road carnage, but my inclination is to say yes even in the case of children.

itronitron 4y ago
It doesn't have to be that way. A four lane highway should have enough buffer to allow for a two way hike and bike path some distance from the cars. From what I have seen of the Netherlands, the bike paths are physically separated from the driving lanes (except side residential streets) so there is much less risk of a cyclist getting run over, side swiped, or cut off by a vehicle. Funding these would be easy, just drop the speed limit by 5mph and then automate the issuing of tickets to drivers exceeding the speed limit. Tell voters what the enforcement action is funding and that once the bike paths are finished the speed enforcement will ease off a bit (but not completely.)
- kazen44 4y ago
  > From what I have seen of the Netherlands, the bike paths are physically separated from the driving lanes (except side residential streets) so there is much less risk of a cyclist getting run over, side swiped, or cut off by a vehicle. another very important factor in road safety in the netherlands is that bicycle users and car users are only mixed in low speed situation (less then 30km/h if i remember correctly) and that car drivers are always at fault for an accident with a bike with the exception of some very specific, hard to prove cases. Drivers education stresses this dearly, and because everyone in the netherlands grows up riding a bike, the social contract to keep bikers safe is very highly lived after.

itronitron 4y ago

It doesn't have to be that way. A four lane highway should have enough buffer to allow for a two way hike and bike path some distance from the cars. From what I have seen of the Netherlands, the bike paths are physically separated from the driving lanes (except side residential streets) so there is much less risk of a cyclist getting run over, side swiped, or cut off by a vehicle. Funding these would be easy, just drop the speed limit by 5mph and then automate the issuing of tickets to drivers exceeding the speed limit. Tell voters what the enforcement action is funding and that once the bike paths are finished the speed enforcement will ease off a bit (but not completely.)

kazen44 4y ago
> From what I have seen of the Netherlands, the bike paths are physically separated from the driving lanes (except side residential streets) so there is much less risk of a cyclist getting run over, side swiped, or cut off by a vehicle. another very important factor in road safety in the netherlands is that bicycle users and car users are only mixed in low speed situation (less then 30km/h if i remember correctly) and that car drivers are always at fault for an accident with a bike with the exception of some very specific, hard to prove cases. Drivers education stresses this dearly, and because everyone in the netherlands grows up riding a bike, the social contract to keep bikers safe is very highly lived after.