Comment by vanderZwan
4 months ago
It also helps that "the car driver is to blame until proven otherwise" is the actual law in the Netherlands, which is motivated precisely because of that power dynamic. Essentially, the responsibility defaults the more dangerous vehicle.
(for some reason this always is controversial with a lot of Americans whenever it is brought up in on-line discussions)
Having recently read "Amerikanen Lopen Niet" (Americans Don't Walk), the power dynamic you describe seems to be entirely real.
Because a car is essential for economic survival in the USA, it's probably difficult for some to accept alternate realities from the status quo.
Americans will never walk.
Where I live, today's high temperature is lower than the low temperature in Amsterdam.
In August the average low temperature is higher than the average high temperature in Amsterdam.
Nobody, not even the hardiest Dutchman is going to walk or cycle when it is 27C at midnight in the summer and 0C at the warmest in the winter with four months of "Amsterdam weather" sprinkled between summer and winter.
Plus there's geography. My house is 21m above sea level, 3m higher than the highest point in Amsterdam, and I live 500m from the sea at the very beginning of the rollercoaster of hills and valleys the glaciers carved into the landscape here.
To walk or cycle to a store would require several Col du Tourmalet-class hill climbs (that's only a slight exaggeration) along the route.
Everywhere south of me is hotter, everywhere north of me is hillier.
https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-8pl51/Amsterdam/
Compare Amsterdam to DC a well-known "swamp" in the US that most people would consider one of its flatter cities.
https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-kfds8/Washington/
Don't be thrown off by the scale: yellow in Amsterdam (of which there is none) is 25m and yellow in DC (of which there is much) is 78m.
In Amsterdam, you usually don't cycle more than ~3km for a "normal destination" (groceries, a generic bar or cafe, stores) and in general, ~7km is the limit for "specific destinations" (going to bar X, ), above that, usually people take transport, though there are some that often cycle >50km
At 3km, anything but the most extreme weather/elevation can be tolerated, I've seen people cycling in what is effectively tornado weather (orange alerts -> 100+ km/h gusts of wind). As distances get larger, the tolerance for these factors diminishes significantly, are you sure it's not the distances that are the problem?
Electric bicycles basically solve the hill issue. Dutch people bike in any weather. We have a ton of terrible weather, both hot and cold but mostly wet. Our summer heat might not be very hot, but the summer heat is very humid, it feels hotter than it is.
Also the Netherlands is not the only region where people bike a lot. There are places in Finland for example, with more hills and more extreme weather that have loads of people biking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
55% of NYC residents do not own a car. But of course everybody knows NYC is not America :)
https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/u-s-cities-with-th...
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27C at night is uncommon, but I can tell you there is no weather that stops Dutch people from walking or biking. It is mind ingrained.
A lot of Americans I know in real life (rightfully) complain that non-Americans treat their culture as if it's a homogeneous monolith, despite its enormous geographical and cultural diversity. So you have to excuse me for chuckling at blanket statements like "Americans will never walk"
DC might not be the best comparison here as far as American cities go. I - and most people I know - walk around the city year round and I live on the top of a pretty steep hill.
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I biked year round for 4 years in Washington DC. Biking by 40ºC and in the snow in the winter wasn't difficult.
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er, every car driver is a carless driver before they enter and after they exit, their vehicle.
everyone in America walks. They simply happen to do most of their walking in parking lots.
The reason: lobbying from auto manufacturers!
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
Except for trams. They never seem to get the blame, however with their braking distance, I suppose it makes sense.
On top of that, I like to think that on some subconscious level the idea of getting mad at trams and buses feels like getting mad at the elderly who depend on it, and just considered Not Done as a result unless very clearly justified. That is probably not true, but I like to think people reason that way nonetheless
It's very hard for a tram to unexpectedly do anything. They accelerate slowly, they decelerate slowly. It's entirely obvious when you can come across a tram and when you can't.
Seeing as a tram (nearly) always has right of way, if you get hit by one you clearly weren't paying attention.
Makes sense to me.