Not Just Bikes
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2020–2023
6:17 · 1M views · May 18, 2020
Not Just Bikes explains why cars rarely crash into buildings in the Netherlands, attributing it to street design that forgives mistakes and to systematic crash investigation. It contrasts this with North American acceptance of such crashes.
HN cites it for the systems-over-blame view of road safety and for Dutch infrastructure design.
8 comments from Hacker News
This is exactly the problem wit the car culture, almost everywhere outside the netherlands. You give cars so much space, they start behaving like it's the freeway, and then drive into buildings or do other stuff which kills drivers and other users. Of course they are speeding, and they shouldn't do that. But the netherlands thinks ahead, and tries not to give cars the opportunity to speed. So, we make a lot of obstacles and opposing traffic. Somehow drivers still do not like to kill people, slow down, and save themselves in the process. Look at this video's and others from this channel, to see how the netherlands builds infrastructure being more forgiving of mistakes, and find out how our cities turn out more livable: this video (Yes, i'm aware the suburban culture is different, hence the relation with cars)
Maybe this is a cause of the increase. But the root cause itself is the really abysmal way we design our streets that creates unsafe conditions. The Not Just Bikes channel addresses this frequently with examples from The Netherlands where they have a stronger focus on acknowledging humans suck and designing for safety, e.g: this video
See the YouTube video by Not Just Bikes called “Why Cars Rarely Crash into Buildings in the Netherlands” for an interesting six minute talk about speed, road design and cultural expectations. this video
"Why Cars Rarely Crash into Buildings in the Netherlands": this video tl;dw: because they actually do what you suggest, and they incorporate their findings into better road designs.
> see [LINK] And a reply to that comment states: […] it does not appear to actually show a per-mile statistic. Where are you getting that from? And as the tabloid paper itself states: > Since 2011, bicyclists have injured more than 2,250 pedestrians — including at least seven who died — according to stats from the city Department of Transportation and published reports. So 6 / 2250 = 0.002666666667, or 0.3%. What percentage of car-pedestrian incidents lead to death? I'm guessing it is >1%. > Nobody is saying cars are good, but at least cars don't run on sidewalks, they stay on the roads and pedestrians don't walk in the middle of the road "just because they can". First off, they do not "stay on roads". See "Car smashes into Toronto bike shop and the metaphor is lost on no one": * [LINK] * [LINK] Also "Why Cars Rarely Crash into Buildings in the Netherlands": * this video And pedestrians walk/cross the middle of the road all the time, at least where I live. This has been dubbed "jaywalking" as part of a campaign of anti-pedestrian propaganda in the earlier twentieth century: * [LINK]