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0 pointsrobomartin4y ago0 comments

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/09/cycling-injuries-three...

From the article:

"VeiligheidNL estimates that there were actually some 80,000 injuries of which 50,000 were serious."

And, of course, the idea of biking and the reality of it are quite different things:

https://www.bikelaw.com/2019/05/amsterdam-not-cycling-paradi...

I love how people tend to have this impulse to reduce reality to a single variable: Bikes = human power = exercise = good.

Reality is a complex multivariate problem. When you look at more variables you often discover something quite different than the assumption borne out of that single variable fantasy.

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Tade04y ago

FTA:

> Often a faster biker would pass within millimeters to get by me as I pedaled in an already narrow bike lane.

This is the number one thing I hate about mixing sidewalks with bike paths, but it appears it's also an issue on the latter.

Anyway this figure representing the fraction of trips done by bike in the Netherlands is interesting in context:

https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/focus/future-of-mob...

Looking at the modal split for Amsterdam and Rotterdam, people still drive cars as much as in other European cities, it's just that cycling has replaced walking and public transport.

Frankly I don't see the benefit here.

sandermvanvliet4y ago

I live in Rotterdam and don’t drive my car in the city anymore, only to go out of the city. We’ve had quite a few changes with reduction in lanes (2 to 1) to allow less traffic in to reduce the air pollution and by doing that bike lanes got bigger which I think is a good thing. It makes driving a car in the city less attractive and while I have no idea if more people ride bikes now, from my limited perspective it does seem to be the case

jseban4y ago

Same where I live, and now we have 1 empty bike lane and traffic jam in the remaining with sirens all the time because emergency vehicles can't pass anymore. It seems completely useless, convert a fully functional lane of a road, to an empty lane that's not used, why? And that reasoning is also really strange, just remove roads to force people to drive less? Well you also just removed mobility? Remove busses, subways, remove everything so nobody ever travels anymore, best solution?

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bserge4y ago

Greener, cheaper, healthier. All by a lot.

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