| Our man fromAmsterdam
by Richard Butter
www.TrafficTechnologyToday.com 071
Frequent readers of this
column know that I love
riding my racing bicycle
Traffic Technology International July/August 2019
and that often commute on it. When
entering the city center, it is always wise
to cautious. If you have ever been
to Amsterdam, you know what I mean.
The city is so busy with cyclists passing
each other that it often leads to unsafe
situations – it’s one of the bicycle capitals
of the world.
Cyclists in Amsterdam look like a school
of fish at first sight, most of the time it is
seamless mobility at its best, but I also have
the experience that you continuously need
to anticipate events due to the fact that
cyclists often don’t give a hand signals
when they overtake another cyclist. I must
admit, I am one of them.
So how can we make it safer? From an
ideal, seamless urban mobility point of
view. What do we need to do to improve
the safety for cyclists in an urban
environment?
Education is key and this we all know of
course. We can’t be too confident because
we are experienced commuters used to
cycling in big cities like London or
Amsterdam. On that subject I recently read
an interesting article on sustrans.org.uk. It
made a nice statement: If you follow some
simple road safety advice the roads don’t
have to be a dangerous place to cycle. The
highway code is rule number one and that
means don’t jump red lights and don’t cycle
on the pavement unless it’s a designated
cycle path. But some advice on the same
site was a little too obvious: Drive at your
own pace and be road confident, being two
such examples.
I still have the feeling that I haven’t
found my answer yet. How should we
design our cities and educate cyclists in
the best way we can so that even in
Amsterdam it gets a little bit safer? How can
we encourage cyclists to obey the traffic
rules more, instead of interpreting them in
their own way, because they over confident
and believe they can weave just like a
school of fish. Yes, take a deep breath and
understand what I just have written down.
Because it looks like we’re back at
paragraph two.
But after reading a BBC article How to
get a city cycling, I made up my mind and
came to two conclusions. First, in
developed bike capitals like Amsterdam,
Copenhagen and London cyclists need to
change their overconfidence into good
behavior and better communication with
other cyclists. For example, using signals
when overtaking. It’s not always about
technology, but also being respectful to
each other.
Secondly it has been proven that the
more cycling-friendly infrastructure is, the
less accidents happen, and this fact is even
multiplied if there are more cyclists on the
road. For instance, The Netherlands has
just 1.1 deaths per 100 million kilometres
on the road; compared to the United States
the number of cyclist deaths per 100
million kilometres cycled is 5. It appears
that the more cycling is encouraged and
taken up, the safer it becomes. Our
challenge is to keep the statistics moving
in the right direction.
Richard Butter is director of traffic technology
at RAI Amsterdam and is responsible for Intertraffic
worldwide events, www.intertraffic.com
How can we make
cycling safer, in cities
all around the world?
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