- After dark, head- and taillights are mandatory for cyclists, and you will be fined if you don't have them.
- Cycling on the sidewalk is prohibited. This too is enforced.
- Cyclists in the Netherlands are not generally very respectful of traffic laws - they will run red lights when they can.
- Practically nobody wears helmets.
- 184 cyclist deaths in 2013 (out of +- 10 million active cyclists)
Um, isn't that actually quite a LOT. Do we really want to emulate that?
The annual cyclist death toll in San Francisco looks to be under 10 people a year. Right about the same level as the fatal car crash death toll per year.
Complaining about something that really looks purely accidental from a statistical viewpoint is not going to make people very sympathetic.
Out of how many active cyclists?
The SFMTA estimates that 16% of San Francisco residents are "frequent cyclists", defined as cycling two or more days per week.
That means ~135k frequent cyclists.
184:10,000,000 = .0184 per 1,000 10:135,000 = .0741 per 1,000
SF = 4x higher
For SF to be safer than the Netherlands, bike deaths need to pretty much disappear.
Okay. Kind of makes the ranting of the whole article pointless, though.
But people rarely drive on sidewalks, they don't need to with bicycle paths being really everywhere.
On the other hand you get scooter drivers speeding crazily on the very same bike paths. I've heard it's actually legal but I'm not sure.