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This. Though it doesn’t stop at road design. You also have to change the regulations so that car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents, even

This. Though it doesn’t stop at road design. You also have to change the regulations so that car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents, even when a cyclist or pedestrian made the error. Pedestrians and cyclists are orders of magnitude more vulnerable. Putting much more of the legal burden on car drivers makes them more careful. The hard part is that you also need to build a cycling culture. Most car drivers in NL are more mindful of cyclists, because they are cyclists themselves as well. Circling back to road design. In our mid-sized Dutch city, it’s often faster to go from A to B than by bike than by car because of the excellent biking infrastructure and car-free city center. Everything is designed around cycling, some traffic lights will even give bikes a green light more often when it’s raining.

richardw 2y ago
I wonder if the flatness of the country plays a part? I live on a hill and am surrounded by hills. A 3km ride in any direction and back is hard work. Lots of e-bikes here, and lots of mountain biking. But when I suggested getting a bike to my SO for her to get to the closest bus stop faster, the hills were the reason why she’d rather walk.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  I rode a bike in Lausanne, which was a primarily 3D city. T was a bit of a struggle to get up the hill in the morning though, you could coast back down at night. Before that I lived in Seattle which wasn’t as extreme, but if you lived on say Queen Anne hill instead of Ballard, I could see where that wouldn’t work out. Maybe that’s why Minneapolis has better cycling infrastructure than Seattle.
  - loa_in_ 2y ago
    The best part of biking uphill is that you can just walk alongside your bike if you want to take a break and you lose nothing
  - Reason077 2y ago
    e-bikes are getting pretty popular. Solves the hill problem.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Yes, super-recent developments may obviate hills, but 40 years of city design have already happened. The Netherlands case was easy mode, and they leaned into it while extending their cities. That's not useful for almost any other country. Also e-bikes are expensive and heavy, of course, so they're a good gentrification measure, if you're into that sort of thing, but they aren't for everyone.
      - GateCrasher 2y ago
        Alot cheaper and less heavy then a car.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        And cheaper and less heavy than a space shuttle. But neither will seem that relevant when it comes to parking and securing your electric bike when you live 5 floors up.
        Reason077 2y ago
        Lack of parking can be a barrier to adoption with any type of bike. Nobody wants to lug any bike up stairs. But it's a solvable problem. Newer apartment buildings in London must provide secure cycle parking for residents and visitors. For older buildings that lack such provisions, London councils often provide secure (covered, lockable) on-street cycle storage facilities. 1 or 2 car parking spaces can be converted into parking for many bikes! [1] [1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/cycle-parking https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/cycle-parking
- tfourb 2y ago
  This is almost completely solved by e-bikes. You can convert practically any bike to an e-bike and while it does cost money, it is cheaper than the costs associated with driving a car or the bus by orders of magnitude over the life time of the bike. Walking is fine as well, though. No real reason to play off walking and cycling against each other.
  - richardw 2y ago
    > Walking is fine as well, though. No real reason to play off walking and cycling against each other. Reason 1: a 6 year old who would like more time with an overworked mother who can’t move from her job (yet) due to visa reasons.
  - dncornholio 2y ago
    E-bikes are at least 5 times more expensive. Not everyone can afford one.
    - Filligree 2y ago
      Far cheaper than cars though. But compared to walking, yeah.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  A local nurse told me they had a lot of victims of "Lime Disease" in the hospitals, i.e. people who rode those Lime bicycles without a helmet.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure like the Dutch do. Not just designing but redesigning roads when accidents happen. A city like Seattle attempts to put the burden on drivers in theory, but crappy road designs (including lots of occluding on street parking) with little to no change when accidents occur often move incident sentiment firmly into the “not much the driver could have done” accident category.
- consp 2y ago
  Which is why bad road design is a mitigating factor. You can technically get away with speeding in the Netherlands if the road design is very inadequate. This happened a a few times when most cities were simply spamming "30kph" signs everywhere and did not put road furniture in place to limit the speed. They quickly learned that was not enough as drivers fought their tickets. It's not as black and white as a mentioned but you get the jist of it. You thus always need incentive for the municipality to fix the road design.
- USiBqidmOOkAqRb 2y ago
  >You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure With the insane amount of investment put towards appeasing cars [sic] I think it's just a matter of prioritizing.
- Reason077 2y ago
  > "You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure" Building cycle paths/cycle lanes is very cheap compared to building motor vehicle lanes.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Not building good ones. You have right aways to consider also, often your best option is to build on an existing road, but if you don’t get rid of onstreet parking on that road it’s a huge hot mess.
  - consteval 2y ago
magicalhippo 2y ago
> car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents, even when a cyclist or pedestrian made the error Here in Norway the traffic law states[1] that everyone should be considerate, heedful and careful to avoid harm, and this stands above everything else. So you can indeed get (partial) blame even if the rest of the rules and regulations say you did nothing wrong. For example you can't just ram a cyclist or a pedestrian if you have the right of way, but you saw them, or should have seen them, in time to take avoiding action. Having a quick look at the NYS traffic rules[2] as a semi-random point of comparison, I'm assuming most states have something similar, it does say at the start that "no person shall operate a vehicle in a manner that will endanger any person or property". This seems to be similar in spirit but not quite the same. I guess I could see the NY courts could find in favor of the driver where the Norwegian courts would not, depending on how they draw the line of endangering. [1]: https://lovdata.no/lov/1965-06-18-4/§3 https://lovdata.no/lov/1965-06-18-4/§3 [2]: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/trafrule.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/trafrule.pdf
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  What the law says is one thing. What actually gets enforced is another. There is almost 0 probability of any consequences for a driver in NY who kills a cyclist, regardless of whose fault the incident was, as long as the driver doesn’t flee from the scene. The US is not really a developed country with stable rule of law in the same way most countries in Western Europe are.
  - Cockbrand 2y ago
    It’s similar in Germany, where truck drivers regularly kill cyclists on right turns and get away with a four figure fine and (if the judge has a bad day) a few months of license suspension.
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      That is not similar at all. In the US they would not get the four-figure fine nor the license suspension.
short_sells_poo 2y ago
This also requires said vulnerable participants to stop having a deathwish. I'm scared to hell from cyclists in London, because they are inconsiderate and extremely unpredictable. Try rolling up to a major 4 lane intersection, and you are going to have cyclists materializing out of thin air on both sides. Furthermore, visibility on UK roads is very poor. You often have very tall hedges lining streets, which means you can't see more than a few meters until the very last moment. You'd need to basically rip up the entire city and rebuild it from scratch, and then replace all the inhabitants with rational actors. It's simply not going to happen otherwise.
- vfclists 2y ago
  > and you are going to have cyclists materializing out of thin air on both sides. It is called filtering and it is totally legal in the UK. It should be no problem if you are patient and allow the cyclists to ride off first when the lights go green. In a properly designed system the green light should come on for the cyclists first, then the larger vehicles can follow on after that.
  - short_sells_poo 2y ago
    Ah yes, thanks for mansplaining that to me. I was totally unaware that the concept of filtering exists - particularly as a motorbike rider of 20 years... With that out of the way, like all things, filtering works when all participants are careful. Motorbikes are actually quite a bit easier to deal with (as a car driver), because a) they can be heard and b) they are quite a bit bulkier. Even as a motorbike rider, it's not cars that I'm most afraid of, but cyclists. Again, this is not about arguing against being careful - on the contrary. I'd like the cyclists to exercise just as much care as they are asking others to exercise. It's basic self preservation. What good is it to a dead cyclist that it was the truck driver's fault?
hansvm 2y ago
> even when a cyclist or a pedestrian made the error Surely this depends on how bad the error is? Suppose you have a cyclist and driver traveling opposite (180 degrees) directions on the same road toward a 4-way stop. The driver stops, looks all ways, notes the cyclist approaching the intersection soon, and enters the intersection. The cyclist then does not stop, does not signal, and turns left (from their perspective) in front of the car which was already in the intersection. Most of the time, you'd probably need one more failure for that to result in a collision (manufacturer's defect in the accelerator, cyclist slips and falls, ...), but suppose the car did hit the cyclist and none of those other failures were the driver's fault either. In your model, how much legal blame should the driver have?
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I think the big issue here is that drivers are tested (poorly) and licensed. Cyclists aren't, which is good because it includes kids. Are we going to hold 8 year olds legally liable? They're allowed to bike on the public streets and roads, after all.
- dncornholio 2y ago
  > Surely this depends on how bad the error is? Not really. If you cross the road on a bike and you get hit by a car, they will have to pay at least 50% of costs, even if the car didn't speed. Another example is a car crossing the green light but a cyclist crosses when it's red and gets hit. Again the car has to pay up. This seems out of this world but with how protected the cylists are on the road from infrastructure, these events happen way less than you think.
  - tyre 2y ago
    and the incentives already exist for cyclists to avoid accidents!
- lenlorijn 2y ago
  I briefly studied law in the Netherlands and it was used as an example. Our lecturer told us that if "A person on a bike would jump out of an airplane on a bike, land with a parachute on a highway and get hit by a car, just maybe would the car have a case." The reasons for this are varied. Cars are insured, bikes are not. But most importantly, in basically all traffic situations with cars and bikes the car introduces the danger and should thus bear the responsibility of any accidents. If I go out in public swinging a katana, and someone walks in to it. I'm still the person swinging a katana in public. Driving around in 1.5 metric tonnes of steel and glass comes with certain responsibilities.
dncornholio 2y ago
> The hard part is that you also need to build a cycling culture. > You also have to change the regulations so that car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents This is all easy to create. It all starts with infrastructure. If you have infrastructure that is safe for bikes, you will create culture. You will also open up extra legal safeguards, but it has to start with infrastructure.

richardw 2y ago

I wonder if the flatness of the country plays a part? I live on a hill and am surrounded by hills. A 3km ride in any direction and back is hard work. Lots of e-bikes here, and lots of mountain biking. But when I suggested getting a bike to my SO for her to get to the closest bus stop faster, the hills were the reason why she’d rather walk.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
I rode a bike in Lausanne, which was a primarily 3D city. T was a bit of a struggle to get up the hill in the morning though, you could coast back down at night. Before that I lived in Seattle which wasn’t as extreme, but if you lived on say Queen Anne hill instead of Ballard, I could see where that wouldn’t work out. Maybe that’s why Minneapolis has better cycling infrastructure than Seattle.
- loa_in_ 2y ago
  The best part of biking uphill is that you can just walk alongside your bike if you want to take a break and you lose nothing
- Reason077 2y ago
  e-bikes are getting pretty popular. Solves the hill problem.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Yes, super-recent developments may obviate hills, but 40 years of city design have already happened. The Netherlands case was easy mode, and they leaned into it while extending their cities. That's not useful for almost any other country. Also e-bikes are expensive and heavy, of course, so they're a good gentrification measure, if you're into that sort of thing, but they aren't for everyone.
    - GateCrasher 2y ago
      Alot cheaper and less heavy then a car.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        And cheaper and less heavy than a space shuttle. But neither will seem that relevant when it comes to parking and securing your electric bike when you live 5 floors up.
        Reason077 2y ago
        Lack of parking can be a barrier to adoption with any type of bike. Nobody wants to lug any bike up stairs. But it's a solvable problem. Newer apartment buildings in London must provide secure cycle parking for residents and visitors. For older buildings that lack such provisions, London councils often provide secure (covered, lockable) on-street cycle storage facilities. 1 or 2 car parking spaces can be converted into parking for many bikes! [1] [1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/cycle-parking https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/cycle-parking
tfourb 2y ago
This is almost completely solved by e-bikes. You can convert practically any bike to an e-bike and while it does cost money, it is cheaper than the costs associated with driving a car or the bus by orders of magnitude over the life time of the bike. Walking is fine as well, though. No real reason to play off walking and cycling against each other.
- richardw 2y ago
  > Walking is fine as well, though. No real reason to play off walking and cycling against each other. Reason 1: a 6 year old who would like more time with an overworked mother who can’t move from her job (yet) due to visa reasons.
- dncornholio 2y ago
  E-bikes are at least 5 times more expensive. Not everyone can afford one.
  - Filligree 2y ago
    Far cheaper than cars though. But compared to walking, yeah.
WalterBright 2y ago
A local nurse told me they had a lot of victims of "Lime Disease" in the hospitals, i.e. people who rode those Lime bicycles without a helmet.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure like the Dutch do. Not just designing but redesigning roads when accidents happen. A city like Seattle attempts to put the burden on drivers in theory, but crappy road designs (including lots of occluding on street parking) with little to no change when accidents occur often move incident sentiment firmly into the “not much the driver could have done” accident category.

consp 2y ago
Which is why bad road design is a mitigating factor. You can technically get away with speeding in the Netherlands if the road design is very inadequate. This happened a a few times when most cities were simply spamming "30kph" signs everywhere and did not put road furniture in place to limit the speed. They quickly learned that was not enough as drivers fought their tickets. It's not as black and white as a mentioned but you get the jist of it. You thus always need incentive for the municipality to fix the road design.
USiBqidmOOkAqRb 2y ago
>You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure With the insane amount of investment put towards appeasing cars [sic] I think it's just a matter of prioritizing.
Reason077 2y ago
> "You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure" Building cycle paths/cycle lanes is very cheap compared to building motor vehicle lanes.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Not building good ones. You have right aways to consider also, often your best option is to build on an existing road, but if you don’t get rid of onstreet parking on that road it’s a huge hot mess.
- consteval 2y ago

magicalhippo 2y ago

> car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents, even when a cyclist or pedestrian made the error Here in Norway the traffic law states[1] that everyone should be considerate, heedful and careful to avoid harm, and this stands above everything else. So you can indeed get (partial) blame even if the rest of the rules and regulations say you did nothing wrong. For example you can't just ram a cyclist or a pedestrian if you have the right of way, but you saw them, or should have seen them, in time to take avoiding action. Having a quick look at the NYS traffic rules[2] as a semi-random point of comparison, I'm assuming most states have something similar, it does say at the start that "no person shall operate a vehicle in a manner that will endanger any person or property". This seems to be similar in spirit but not quite the same. I guess I could see the NY courts could find in favor of the driver where the Norwegian courts would not, depending on how they draw the line of endangering. [1]: https://lovdata.no/lov/1965-06-18-4/§3 https://lovdata.no/lov/1965-06-18-4/§3 [2]: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/trafrule.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/trafrule.pdf

School-Cotton 2y ago
What the law says is one thing. What actually gets enforced is another. There is almost 0 probability of any consequences for a driver in NY who kills a cyclist, regardless of whose fault the incident was, as long as the driver doesn’t flee from the scene. The US is not really a developed country with stable rule of law in the same way most countries in Western Europe are.
- Cockbrand 2y ago
  It’s similar in Germany, where truck drivers regularly kill cyclists on right turns and get away with a four figure fine and (if the judge has a bad day) a few months of license suspension.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    That is not similar at all. In the US they would not get the four-figure fine nor the license suspension.

short_sells_poo 2y ago

This also requires said vulnerable participants to stop having a deathwish. I'm scared to hell from cyclists in London, because they are inconsiderate and extremely unpredictable. Try rolling up to a major 4 lane intersection, and you are going to have cyclists materializing out of thin air on both sides. Furthermore, visibility on UK roads is very poor. You often have very tall hedges lining streets, which means you can't see more than a few meters until the very last moment. You'd need to basically rip up the entire city and rebuild it from scratch, and then replace all the inhabitants with rational actors. It's simply not going to happen otherwise.

vfclists 2y ago
> and you are going to have cyclists materializing out of thin air on both sides. It is called filtering and it is totally legal in the UK. It should be no problem if you are patient and allow the cyclists to ride off first when the lights go green. In a properly designed system the green light should come on for the cyclists first, then the larger vehicles can follow on after that.
- short_sells_poo 2y ago
  Ah yes, thanks for mansplaining that to me. I was totally unaware that the concept of filtering exists - particularly as a motorbike rider of 20 years... With that out of the way, like all things, filtering works when all participants are careful. Motorbikes are actually quite a bit easier to deal with (as a car driver), because a) they can be heard and b) they are quite a bit bulkier. Even as a motorbike rider, it's not cars that I'm most afraid of, but cyclists. Again, this is not about arguing against being careful - on the contrary. I'd like the cyclists to exercise just as much care as they are asking others to exercise. It's basic self preservation. What good is it to a dead cyclist that it was the truck driver's fault?

hansvm 2y ago

> even when a cyclist or a pedestrian made the error Surely this depends on how bad the error is? Suppose you have a cyclist and driver traveling opposite (180 degrees) directions on the same road toward a 4-way stop. The driver stops, looks all ways, notes the cyclist approaching the intersection soon, and enters the intersection. The cyclist then does not stop, does not signal, and turns left (from their perspective) in front of the car which was already in the intersection. Most of the time, you'd probably need one more failure for that to result in a collision (manufacturer's defect in the accelerator, cyclist slips and falls, ...), but suppose the car did hit the cyclist and none of those other failures were the driver's fault either. In your model, how much legal blame should the driver have?

CalRobert 2y ago
I think the big issue here is that drivers are tested (poorly) and licensed. Cyclists aren't, which is good because it includes kids. Are we going to hold 8 year olds legally liable? They're allowed to bike on the public streets and roads, after all.
dncornholio 2y ago
> Surely this depends on how bad the error is? Not really. If you cross the road on a bike and you get hit by a car, they will have to pay at least 50% of costs, even if the car didn't speed. Another example is a car crossing the green light but a cyclist crosses when it's red and gets hit. Again the car has to pay up. This seems out of this world but with how protected the cylists are on the road from infrastructure, these events happen way less than you think.
- tyre 2y ago
  and the incentives already exist for cyclists to avoid accidents!
lenlorijn 2y ago
I briefly studied law in the Netherlands and it was used as an example. Our lecturer told us that if "A person on a bike would jump out of an airplane on a bike, land with a parachute on a highway and get hit by a car, just maybe would the car have a case." The reasons for this are varied. Cars are insured, bikes are not. But most importantly, in basically all traffic situations with cars and bikes the car introduces the danger and should thus bear the responsibility of any accidents. If I go out in public swinging a katana, and someone walks in to it. I'm still the person swinging a katana in public. Driving around in 1.5 metric tonnes of steel and glass comes with certain responsibilities.

dncornholio 2y ago

> The hard part is that you also need to build a cycling culture. > You also have to change the regulations so that car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents This is all easy to create. It all starts with infrastructure. If you have infrastructure that is safe for bikes, you will create culture. You will also open up extra legal safeguards, but it has to start with infrastructure.