Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes? In most inner cities there often isn't room for bike lanes, or the lane is just a line on the asphalt.
I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...
Bike lines are convenient, but no more than that, and just as much of a red herring as helmets when it comes to safety. Safety in urban traffic is a people problem.
I wouldn't say they're widespread in Europe, but I moved from the SF Bay Area to Copenhagen, and they're certainly a big factor here. The "bicycle highways", completely separated and wide lanes that form major arteries through the city, make it much easier to bike to work from most places, without danger of car interference, or of being "doored" by parked cars opening their doors.
Some other efforts: 1) the traffic lights on several major arteries have been synchronized to typical bike speeds, rather than car speeds, so in good circumstances you can ride their whole length without hitting a red light (they call this a "green wave"), and 2) of the three bridges over the central harbor, one is bicycle/pedestrian-only (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggebroen), with another no-car bridge under construction.
Obviously other aspects also matter, such as a compact and flat city, but I think all these help considerably as well.
Doesn't Copenhagen also structure its traffic protocols around bicycle commuters? For instance, letting cyclists go on a green light several seconds before cars, in order to ensure that nearby drivers can see them?
Copenhagen has done studies [1] indicating that every mile driven accounts for some net economic loss (due to the harmful health effects of sedentary lifestyles, pollution, the cost to the commuter of gas/cars, the cost to society of maintaining automotive infrastructure), where very mile ridden constitutes a net economic gain (decreased healthcare costs due to being more active, lower personal cost of owning a bicycle, etc).
If the US spent more time looking at commuting from an economic and health perspective, we'd probably find that more government action is needed, beyond "Bike to work day"
The government has an economic incentive, since it's financially responsible for the health care costs for all of it's citizens. The US isn't fully responsible.
I'm vacationing in Copenhagen next week, drawn largely because it's one of the few places I've been that has anything approaching sane transportation. I'd love to get together with fellow hackers (I'm speaking at CopenhagenJS) on the 11th). I couldn't find your contact info. If you see this comment plz email me at jchris@couchbase.com thanks!
> I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route
Really? I don't visit Amsterdam that often, but the rest of NL really is full of bike lanes.
I agree with the GP post: in order to safely bike around without helmet, you need infrastructure that takes bikes into account. Also, traffic that expects bikes.
And maybe your particular work-route does not have bike lanes, but the road designs do take them into account, and any motorized vehicle expects to see bikes because they are ubiquitous.
For those who read Dutch, this wikipedia article talks about the bike infrastructure in the Netherlands as well as several other European countries: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fietsverkeer#Infrastructuur . Curiously, it doesn't mention Amsterdam being any exception to this, either (I'd swear seeing plenty of bike lanes there as well, but that could be projection as I expect to see them everywhere in Dutch cities).
> The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...
Was that really necessary? The racial stereotype detracts from your your argument, and frankly, one erratic pedestrian looks the same as another to a fast moving cyclist, much as one erratic cyclist looks the same as another to a driver.
It's not a stereotype, it's a very real an observation. I'm not a particularly "fast moving" cyclist (stereotype much?), I ride at a leisurely pace (Amsterdam, remember?), so I have plenty of time to observe what happens around me.
The accents are unmistakable as they apologize or otherwise verbally react whenever I have to brake hard and/or swerve to avoid them.
Well I bicycle commute to central London, and I can assure you that the clueless tourists are a fixture, and evenly distributed among nationalities and races.
Maybe it's a stereotype and it definitely doesn't apply to everyone but I've never seen so much confusion as on american roads. I'm from Italy and we're routinely made fun of for the mess that is our traffic, the reality though is that in Italy it is way more predictable and correct, blinkers are always used for example, than in SF where I've lived for the past 5 years. Italy has very few miles of bicycle lanes and yet most people don't use an helmet.
As I ride around town on a bike, there are all sorts of people that either just don't look when crossing, or look at the sky when moving sideways on a lane, or simply cross lanes reserved for bikes with the idea that pedestrians always have precedence.
Many cyclists are also guilty of the same types of sins by stopping in the middle of the street without so much as moving on the side or they are simply not capable of riding a bike in a city or they just perform U turns without looking at oncoming traffic. A friend of mine unfortunately died on a bike here in SF, was it because she wasn't wearing an helmet? Nope, it was because she turned left without looking and a food truck ran over her. She was the first and only fatality for bike accident last year.
When I passed my Driving License test here in SF the examiner told me that it's usually the americans that gave her the most troubles while europeans tended to always pass at the first try.
So maybe it's a stereotype but it seems to me that the american government went out of their way to try to protect pedestrians and defend cyclists with the result that they now walk around without their brain sparing the necessary few cycles to keep themselves safe on the street.
EDIT:
A funny thing that I've seen happening only here are cars that go through half of a cross-road and when they see you coming they just stop in the middle occupying the whole lane and forcing you to try to stop in a short space. If they went through instead of stopping there would have been no issues. This happens to me so often that I can't help laughing at it every time I see it.
I've been to Florence for 6 months and traffic there is much more chaotic that what I'm used to at home (Poland). But it's also much safer. People rarely use turn signals (except buses and taxis) but that just makes everybody really observe what the other drivers are doing. Generally divers seem to really pay attention more to what's around them and adjust their behavior.
Another amazing things are bicycles and scooters navigating through narrow streets filled with pedestrians apparently totally safely and without being cursed at.
See, here you seem to be generalizing from "my experience with traffic in SF" to "drivers in the US".
For what it's worth, I found drivers in the Bay Area to be more timid and hesitant (and therefore more unpredictable) than anywhere else I've driven in North America.
It's definitely a culture! In america although, the concept of race still persists everywhere, including government forums which split people's choices into appearance strains and not ethnicities or cultures.
America has no single government and is a huge mixture of cultures, from Canadians to Argentinians. I hate the fact that the USA has no proper demonym in English.
> America has no single government and is a huge mixture of cultures, from Canadians to Argentinians. I hate the fact that the USA has no proper demonym in English.
Hi, I am an Argentinian. While in Spanish the word "americano" means that you were born somewhere in The Americas, in the English language the word "american" means that you were born in the USA (AKA: America).
It happens a lot that words which are quite similar mean different things in different languages. Let's just embrace and understand these differences.
In the English language the word American has more than one meaning. The most prevalent is of course the gentilic, but one of the other meanings is indeed "being native or inhabitant of the American continent."
The big problem with this word is that, being USA as influential in the western culture as it is, it helps corrupting the corresponding word in the languages that do have a proper gentilic like French and Spanish. Also, it promotes ignorance among the ignorants (I've met US people thinking America is just and only the country) without a tangible benefit.
The longer I ride my bike in the city, I fear cars much less because I've learned to avoid putting myself (and them) in dangerous situations.
What I do fear is other cyclists (on cruisers) and pedestrians.
The only two accidents I've had in the last two years was from getting hit by two different people on giant heavy cruisers/hybrid bicycles. They never seem to have control of those bikes and can't keep a straight line.
This is my experience exactly. Cars are generally predictable and most drivers are really careful. In my experience most dangerous situations arise from pedestrians walking on te cycle lane abruptly or from other cyclists that don't obey the traffic laws. In the end, I think it's much safer to ride on the road than on cycle lanes (where in addition one is hard to track for drivers).
Oh, and a helmet once saved me from serious head injury. I don't know if it should be compulsory, but I recommend wearing one.
>Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes?
Because as a tourists only stick to the main roads which often have bike lanes.
Anyway, in my experience the situation in Europe is much better than in the US.
My datapoints: Munich, Kopenhagen, Zurich
Bay, Boston, Portland
I now live in Amsterdam but also used a bike when I lived in the US and the difference is night and day. Sure, the inner part of Amsterdam doesn't have as many bike lanes, mainly because it was designed 500 years ago, but there are always biking lanes around on roads with higher speeds.
Even so, I agree that the main difference is that every car takes bikers into account. In the US either people simply don't check their mirrors for bikes or even if they do you can't count on them to give you the right of way. And I've had to swerve into traffic several times when a parked car opened the door and nearly hit me, people are simply not trained to look in their mirror before opening their door.
Which is something I've never understood, personally.
Granted I'm a bit more concerned with another car flying through and ripping my door off; but you bet I'm worried about traffic when I open my door.
No matter how you assess the situation, there is no excuse for such carelessness.
Why would anyone risk human lives [possibly your own] and personal property in such a fashion?
---
Based on your time in Amsterdam, would you say drivers there are more _patient_ with cyclists?
I've often held the sentiment that a large number of US accidents are simply a result of impatience. The way people handle switching lanes, controlled intersections, merging, etc. in the US has always seemed rather "selfish" to me.
As an example: it always seems that drivers here in the states, when switching lanes, would rather overtake than undertake, even when undertaking is clearly the safer option (e.g: less traffic behind the car in question, little or no traffic behind you but considerable traffic in front of you).
Here here. I'm from Dublin, which this article points out as an example of a successful bike hire city (which is accurate, it's massively successful). However the idea that Dublin has fantastic cycle infrastructure and lots of bike lanes (esp. in the area covered by Dublin Bikes) is crazy talk.
When I visited Amsterdam I had to take few days to adjust to the fact that as a pedestrian you have to be pretty much aware what's happening at nearly 360 deg around you when you try to cross any sort of curb.
In my home country it's usually sufficient to make sure nothing is coming from the left to not be in any immediate danger.
After those few days of adjustment I found Amsterdam to be amazing place.
There was no other place in the world where I felt that the city treats me like a real adult perfectly capable of taking care of my own safety.
The biggest single factor that makes biking safe is a legislative one. If you adopt the model where hitting a bike with a car automatically puts the car in the wrong you can lose the helmet.
I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...
Bike lines are convenient, but no more than that, and just as much of a red herring as helmets when it comes to safety. Safety in urban traffic is a people problem.