6 ms·

In other words, the road to a healthy utopia of happy people on bikes is not to compromise, but to accept all of the cyclists' demands while completely ignoring

by Camillo 13y ago

In other words, the road to a healthy utopia of happy people on bikes is not to compromise, but to accept all of the cyclists' demands while completely ignoring the motorists' complaints.

iskander 13y ago
From my experience in Amsterdam (lived there for two summers), there aren't two disjoint sets: cyclists and motorists. Everyone has a bike and many people have a car. It's usually more pleasant to bike somewhere.
arrrg 13y ago
Those are often not two groups of people. They are one and the same. That’s at least my experience here in Germany (where people bike less but still quite often). And that creates lots of empathy. Also, it’s you – the motorist – who is moving around the several ton metal monster so of course you have the responsibility to make sure not to hurt any of the squishy meatbags around you. That just always seemed obvious to me. Keep a good car’s width distance to bikes when overtaking them (and not overtaking them if there is no space for that) and so on. (Also, I don’t know how the laws are in the Netherlands, but at least in Germany it isn’t so dramatic. Yeah, you are always responsible for keeping pedestrians and bikers safe but your liability is limited in certain ways.)
- Camillo 13y ago
  I'm not a motorist.
morsch 13y ago
After half a century of designing cities around the demands of motorists, that seems to be a pretty sensible plan, yes.
mseebach 13y ago
> cyclists' demands My personal experience from living and biking in both Copenhagen and London is that that word - demands - sets a very adversarial tone that is not at all helpful in London. No-one talks about cyclist's "demands" in Copenhagen, but they are well accommodated in city planning because there are a lot of them (of course, there's a chicken-and-egg thing here). In London, the organised cyclists come off as extremely militant and righteous and I have no difficulty believing that's a turnoff for plenty of people, ultimately hurting the cause.
- 5teev 13y ago
  This also applies to some Critical Mass riders in the Bay Area.

by Camillo 13y ago

In other words, the road to a healthy utopia of happy people on bikes is not to compromise, but to accept all of the cyclists' demands while completely ignoring the motorists' complaints.

iskander 13y ago

From my experience in Amsterdam (lived there for two summers), there aren't two disjoint sets: cyclists and motorists. Everyone has a bike and many people have a car. It's usually more pleasant to bike somewhere.

arrrg 13y ago

Those are often not two groups of people. They are one and the same. That’s at least my experience here in Germany (where people bike less but still quite often). And that creates lots of empathy. Also, it’s you – the motorist – who is moving around the several ton metal monster so of course you have the responsibility to make sure not to hurt any of the squishy meatbags around you. That just always seemed obvious to me. Keep a good car’s width distance to bikes when overtaking them (and not overtaking them if there is no space for that) and so on. (Also, I don’t know how the laws are in the Netherlands, but at least in Germany it isn’t so dramatic. Yeah, you are always responsible for keeping pedestrians and bikers safe but your liability is limited in certain ways.)

Camillo 13y ago
I'm not a motorist.

morsch 13y ago

After half a century of designing cities around the demands of motorists, that seems to be a pretty sensible plan, yes.

mseebach 13y ago

> cyclists' demands My personal experience from living and biking in both Copenhagen and London is that that word - demands - sets a very adversarial tone that is not at all helpful in London. No-one talks about cyclist's "demands" in Copenhagen, but they are well accommodated in city planning because there are a lot of them (of course, there's a chicken-and-egg thing here). In London, the organised cyclists come off as extremely militant and righteous and I have no difficulty believing that's a turnoff for plenty of people, ultimately hurting the cause.

5teev 13y ago
This also applies to some Critical Mass riders in the Bay Area.