https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3495859,4.8053688,3a,75y,74....
I am from The Netherlands and I only realized since moving to Canada that my home country is such a safe place for cyclists. I find it interesting that no one in The Netherlands wears a helmet when cycling and yet serious cycling injuries don’t seem to be a common thing, whereas here in Canada I know of multiple people that got “doored” or otherwise have been in a bike related accident.
Neurosurgeons in the Netherlands disagree with this, and are begging locals to wear helmets. https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/10/neurologists-launch-ca...
I don't know how rates of injuries compare between countries, but that is irrelevant.
A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing. It's a casual transportation mode, just like walking, not a sport activity. This proposal can only make sense for people who don't live in this reality.
In addition, as mentioned by another commenter, when the dutch traffic rules were written decades ago, it was found that helmet usage correlated to increased accident rates - people take more risks when they feel safer, and that in turn makes pedestrians less safe.
I'm probably a bit of an oddball in this respect, but I do not regard helmets as a means of preventing injury. Reducing the severity of an injury, sure, but even then they are of limited scope (i.e. they are only really useful if there is a direct impact to the head).
Helmets are not an excuse for taking risks. They are a means of reducing the impact of accidents.
I don't really understand this. I keep my helmet clipped to my handlebars, so if I have my bike, I have my helmet. Is it really so much of an inconvenience?
I'm sympathetic to the overall anti-helmet-requirement position, even seemingly trivial concerns like "it messes up my hair" sound legitimate to me. The convenience argument in particular just never made much sense to me though.
Here are some important conclusions:
1) Cycling as a commuter is quite safe, with or without a helmet.
2) Cycling is safer with a helmet.
3) If you found yourself in some binary where your only options were "cycle without a helmet" or "don't cycle at all", the health benefits of "cycle without a helmet" likely outweigh the risk of serious injury due to not wearing a helmet.
4) Because of #3 and other factors, helmet laws for adults aren't generally a net positive.
5) BUT - it's a good idea to wear a helmet whenver you can, and even the Dutch (fore example) would be better off if they kept their usage of cycling high, but culturally embraced wearing helmets as well.
6) Things are very different in higher-risk forms of cycling like BMX, road racing and MTB, where crashes are much more frequent and higher impact, and you'd be an idiot to not wear a helmet.
Neurosurgeons have a very skewed view of the statistical likelihood of head injury. They see such injuries every day, and it can most definitely make them believe that the risks involved are much greater than they actually are.
>Crucially, the Dutch distinguish between everyday cycling (fietsen) and competitive cycling (wielrennen). Fietsers (cyclists) are found everywhere. ... The term wielrennen, on the other hand, is reserved for the sweaty, colourful and seemingly endless cycle races on which the people of Benelux are so keen.
In my experience, at least in my area of the US, mostly kids do fietsen - biking to their friends' houses, or the park, etc. Grown-ups on bikes are typically serious about their wielrennen and wear skin-tight gear and ride fancy road bikes.
I try to drive safely around any cyclists, but I think it's easier to cut folks in the first category a break - they're aware they're slow, they try not to be in the way, etc. Folks in the second category are sometimes frustrating to drive near - at traffic lights they cut to the front, only to advance relatively slowly when the light turns green, or they blow through a stop sign as a car is approaching, etc.
I wonder if we would have better rules, better set expectations, etc, if we similarly had 2 words to talk about cyclists in English.
0: https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/how-do-y...
at traffic lights they cut to the front,
only to advance relatively slowly when the light turns green
they blow through a stop sign as a car is approaching
I also see kids and adults riding their bicycles on the sidewalk, sometimes even the wrong direction. I used to get mad at that, until I realized that our local cycling infrastructure is crap, and _on that street_ I'd not want to cycle on the road either.
Apparently it's a matter of debate/context: https://old.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/b9xklo/at_a_red_li...
Middle-aged men in lycra
Requiring a helmet has apparently been shown to depress the use of bikes for every day activities. Going grocery shopping with a bike is less convenient if you have to juggle a helmet along with a liter of milk.
Less biking means roughly more pollution, more obesity, bigger roads, more car accide ts.
On the other side of this equation is the death and injury that helmets prevent. This is non-zero, but apparently in the Netherlands we have judged this marginal benefit of helmets to be less than the advantages of more cycling.
The calculation might be different in countries with inferior cycling infrastructure.
Don’t really care for requiring one at all really, our bonces inside out are our own business and if people want to take that risk it’s on them.
maximum conformity punk?
Helmets signal the choice for security over freedom which is simply not sexy. Moreover it signals your own inability to ride a bike and to recognise/avoid dangers rapidly. Just compare images of cyclists with and without helmet.
Helmets are for children only.
The reduction of freedom has a cost as well. Not in the very visible form of shattered skulls but more hidden in the form of lives not lived and pills of various colors.
There are a couple of problem with mandatory helmets, including:
* It discourages a healthy activity.
* It shifts the responsibility from the person causing to danger (drivers) to the potential victims.
* It creates a false sense of safety (e.g. biking slower reduces risk of injuries far more then a helmet).
So it's relevant information, but the direct effect of "wearing a helmet cuts the risk of serious head injury by 60% and a deadly brain injury by 71%" is more important information.
There have been some studies that correlate higher levels of head injuries with mandatory helmet laws. The thesis was that wearing a helmet induces more reckless cycling (higher speeds, etc) due to feeling safer. I don't remember seeing any good follow-ups studies either way and don't necessarily agree with the study.
Personally my wife can't find a helmet that fits, Asians have rounder heads and north American helmet manufacturers are oblivious. As a result we never cycle.
Once you learn about the https://www.dutchreach.org it's hard to forget it. It helps to avoid the not-looking-for-cyclists problem :)
(It might even have been here on HN where I learned about it.)
[1] https://www.anwb.nl/juridisch-advies/aanrijding-en-dan/aansp...
Yeah, like riding a bike in the first place. Only thing worse is riding a motorcycle.
"The car is always wrong" has got to be the stupidest traffic law ever written. Every single day cyclists and motorcyclists do straight up illegal stuff near me and I have to accomodate them because of stupid laws like that. They do absolutely insane stuff. I get anxious every time I see one on my mirrors.
In most countries, the car lane is lower than the sidewalk, and when they have to turn, the lane doesn't change - no bumps, or elevation. A pedestrian / cyclist going from their space into the car lane has to usually face a down slope, so it's very clear the person is entering another area.
In at least this Netherlands city or video I watched, Not Just Bikes talked about how over there the car goes into ascent, as in, the car is entering the bicycle space. So it's not as smooth, or convenient, or the same mental model as the other way.
edit: found the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OfBpQgLXUc
that's how I felt in Munich. Bikes were everywhere and drivers were used to them. In the US in most places bikes are rare so drivers (including me) stop looking for them.
From an American perspective Munich certainly is good, but Amsterdam is still a different league. If you got the chance go there for a while.
The great thing about the Dutch bicycle structure is that it spans the entire country. It's not just the big cities. Every city, town and village has high quality bicycle lanes. You can easily bike around the country on dedicated bicycle routes in The Netherlands.
If anyone has recommendations for stealth theft detection/tracking devices I’m all ears.
Your wheels and components might still get stolen, but not much is really going to stop that. You can add a cable lock if you really want to but they're easy to cut through.
Bike registration (https://bikeindex.org/) might help in some circumstances.
But really, insurance is the thing that will cover you. Many renters'/homeowners' insurances will cover theft of bikes too, even when you're away from home, so you don't necessarily need supplemental bike insurance.
The thing about the trackers is that they're for after-the-fact recovery, not deterrent (especially if they're stealth). It's just going to get parted out, so if you're lucky you might recover the frame and not much else.
Vehicle registration works, but takes a bit of effort:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el1Xznv5ge4
Vancouver had a 42% drop in theft after joining this program:
* https://project529.com/garage
Created by X-box co-founder:
Often I don’t think the bike theives check if the bike is “good”. My cousins bike was just over $150 new and was stolen. He had a cheap lock because he thought who would steal this.
I’ve been riding 10 years a moderately decent bike. No issues but I use a U lock which is decent.
Please lock through the frame. I’ve seen like 6 front wheels locked to bike racks with the rest of the bike gone..
The new bikes had GPS attached, but they limited the numbers, due the theft. Those slowly disappeared, too. Last I saw, there were just a few bikes at each bike rack, compared to maybe 50 at each.
A big waste imo, though newer models have trackers inside the battery - smart considering it's quickly becoming the most valuable part.
Is it? Or were your cops right and doing their job?
At least in the US, road bikes are pretty much immune to being stolen because they're seen as terminally uncool by the lay population. Would I leave a $5000 road bike locked up at a subway station? Not likely, but I'm not fast enough to justify owning one anyways. $2000, yeah probably, as long as I'm not leaving it there daily.
Anecdotally, police won't do shit to recover a stolen bike in the US. Having some kind of tracker is only going to help you once it's already been stolen. I'd focus my efforts on preventing the theft in the first place.
Right, in The Netherlands, where there are a lot of bikes, this is the basic rule: just make sure that there are other bikes that are more attractive to steal, even if it's a new bike. The second basic rule is: use a chain lock to attach your bike frame to an unmovable object, so that a thief cannot just throw your bike in a van and remove the locks elsewhere.
What I do:
- Use a ring lock for the back wheel. Makes it unattractive to steal just the wheel. The lock needs to be unscrewed from the frame to remove the wheel.
- Use a chain lock and make it go through the frame, front wheel, and attach it to an unmovable object. In order to steal the frame, the thief would have to saw through the chain in plain sight.
- If there is no supervised parking, park the bike in an area where there are enough people where someone will notice a thief trying to break the locks.
- Get bike insurance. It's usually only 10 Euro per month and if your bike gets stolen, you get back the bike's value.
- Some insurers also install a tracker. This has double value: bikes with a tracker are less attractive to steal. Secondly, bikes with a tracker are usually moved to a 'cool-off' location first. This is usually just some place removed a few streets from where the bike was stolen. If it's still there after a few days, the thieves know that nobody is actively tracking the bike and they can take it somewhere to comfortably break the lock. So, it's likely that the insurer will find the bike at the cool-off location without much damage.
I think this is mainly an enforcement issue. The police could easily track these people down if they were willing to put any energy into it.
That's a bit of a myopic view - in many of these cities, the DA will refuse to prosecute someone for thefts like this, so it does no good to arrest someone. Police in many cities are underfunded and understaffed, and if they're getting no support from the DA they have to prioritize.
It's a really frustrating problem, and has changed the way I feel about this city a lot. Being able to just casually ride around with friends socializing in summer evenings was really great. Now it's everyone taking ubers.
I mean thief can steal one for their own purpose, but then what? He steal another one every weeks?
I dont get it.
It can often take less that 5/10 minutes to steal a bike which is a pretty good RoR.
How could we stop it? Probably the best way would be stronger regulations on community marketplaces/pawn shops/ebay/etc. ATM, they don't GAF about selling stolen goods.
Even if they had a dedicated bike recovery task force, the most they could do is visit local pawn shops and browse community marketplaces for a bike matching the description (assuming it wasn't broken down for parts).
Now, before a bike is stolen, I'd expect police to actually patrol places where bikes are being commonly stolen from (or for that matter, places where cars are commonly broken into). That part is something I do blame them for. The fact that SF is basically synonymous with "don't leave anything in the car" is an indictment on local police.
But from the air of the police taking reports, absolutely nothing will happen. One time a cop asked me why I was bothering, did I need it for insurance or something? No, I told him, it was a crime and I figured that being police, they'd want to know. That seemed novel to him.
But I don't just want them to do something for me after my bicycle is stolen. I'd like them to be energetic enough in running down organized bike theft operations that those criminals find some other line of work. And a good way way to do that is taking individual bike thefts seriously.
Naturally we took videos and called the cops. Naturally the cops didn't show up (the store manager we left the videos and pictures with said they did show up like 7 hours later). In the subsequent 10 minutes the thief came back and stole two more bikes, while we continued to watch and video (and not physically intervene, because fighting a guy with a power tool is a really stupid idea).
If the cops showed up promptly at the very least they could have prevented two bikes from being stolen. There's a good chance they would have managed to arrest the thief too.
Even if you’ve locked it overnight for multiple days at the main train station (tested in Düsseldorf and Kiel), it’s going to be fine.
If the lock is a cable lock, it's worthless. If the lock is solid metal over 5mm, it can only be cut by angle grinder. Once you are in angle grinder territory, whether it's 5mm or 15mm doesn't seem to matter. So i think there is no point spending over $100 on a lock.
Additionaly, you can use a hydrawlick jack to break d-locks, but that doesnt work on chains and is very dependant on how exactly you locked up
If you have a bike lock/chain that can resist bolt cutters, you're probably fine for everything other than leaving it overnight. Casual bike thieves are looking for easy money and likely aren't going to bust out an angle grinder in the middle of the day unless your bike is obviously worth a grand+.
I have a hefty Abus “sold secure” (requirement of insurance) D lock that I lock through the frame, but I’ve watched enough lock picking lawyer to know this won’t stop thieves with angle grinders (most thieves now) or ones handy with a disc detainer pick.
But the exception is always high-value bikes. That's why I called out bikes that aren't "obviously worth a grand+". If you leave out a nice eBike or a superlight road bike, the thieves have solid financial motivation to risk breaking out the cordless grinder and making a ruckus to steal it. Hell, sometimes thieves would straight up wait for people to come back to their bikes after brunch or whatever and mug them for it after they unlocked it in Albuquerque. No tools needed other than a knife.
I used white engineering reflective tape. They'd have to be very dedicated thief to notice to the Deore XT components.
Plus, the reflective tape is very visible at night.
The thing is people aren't stealing them to always sell them. Sometimes it's just easier to quickly grab a bike when the thief needs to get across town for some other reason. When they get to where they want to go, they just ditch the bike. Sometimes I think some people just want to steal a bike for no real reason.
In Seattle, I've seen gigantic piles with hundred of bikes in them just sitting in a homeless camp. They clearly aren't selling those bikes, as they've been sitting out in the rain for months, or even years now. And I guarantee those homeless camps aren't full of multi-thousand dollar bikes.
https://pimpmybikeretail.co.uk/product/sherlock-bike-tracker...
The reasoning is simple: bike thieves disproportionately contribute to climate change by discouraging large-scale bike use. This must be punished.
Please don't - this is typical 'tough on crime' trick: promise long sentences, so easy - longer sentence-less crime, right? Wrong. Sentenses are useless if no-one ever gets caught. Look at countries with the toughest sentenses in the world, and you will find they have loads of crime
You actually have to use your brain, and think and plan, on how to make sure criminals are caught. You have to take real action like training investigators, installing trackers, registering property, etc.
For example in UK concervatives have been in power for 12 years, punishment got much harsher but crime is growing because they have cut police numbers, and you chance of getting caught is ~0%. The longer people get away with crime, the better they become at crime. Now we have a large 'talent pool' of highly trained thieves.
Perhaps the causality goes the other way here? Perhaps suffering under loads of crime makes people vote for tough sentences?
Bike theft is a very harmful crime. It stops the move to healthier lifestyle, it leaves people, often poor ones who don't have cars without means of transportation and it cause many to not commute by bike.
I want aggressive policing, including trap bikes set up by the police to fish out potential thieves and lock them for years once caught, alternatively make them wear GPS locator all the time. I want them to feel fear every time they think about stealing. Maybe empty "tough on crime" promise isn't enough but it's surely better than typical approach of "let's all think about those poor thieves" or victim blaming (just lock your bike with 2 U-locks and keep your eyes on it all the time if you don't want it stolen).
Yes it is, but I disagree that turning bike theft into a 20-year sentence is going to help.
> Idk, it seems theft is low in countries where they cut hands for it.
Russia has 99% conviction rate, long sentences and torture in prisons, yet crime rate is sky high. US has more prisoner and tougher sentenses than UK, but UK has less crime
Half the people here are engineers, think like one, about systemic solutions and not revenge. Crime is a business, it only happens because its profitable.
You could setup a city-wide LoRaWAN bike tracking network for $100,000, you could hand out $20 trackers to every cyclist and weld them to the frame, from the inside if you have to. You could produce airtags-compatiable trackers, register every bike and check them periodically, etc.
You could install safe cycle storage throughout the city, that is alarmed and has cameras and calls the police when it detects sound of angle grinder.
Thousands of different solutions are possible.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/theft/
Neither USA nor UK have tough punishment for theft. Theft is different than violent crime as that is most often caused by emotions/rage/etc. While theft is more calculated. It makes sense there is little consideration to punishment when committing the former but more when engaging in the latter.
Some people want to steal. Bikes are currently one of the easiest targets but if you make those difficult to steal they will move to another attractive thing like catalytic converters or purses until you lock everything. Aggressive policing and punishment wasn't tried yet in Western countries when it comes to theft. That would involve setting traps for thieves and taking the crime seriously instead of making naive calculation about the value of stolen items and ignoring long term cost and damage to social structure.
What is the basis for your certainty? We've done research on the subject, we know that certainty of punishment is a lot more effective than severity.
Noone thinks 'ow yeah, I am gonna do a year in jail', everyone thinks they will get away. I am not against setting decoy bikes that are actually traps, but thievs will learn to tell them apart. US police uses sting operations against hookers and drug dealers all the time, and there is no shortage of either.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/deterrence-in...
> ignoring long term cost and damage to social structure
You could try that, but you cant just have a special calculation for one crime. Then we must equally apply it to corporate misbehaviour, like illegally selling customer data or manipulating the market.
The paper you linked doesn't mention aggressive, proactive policing. It wasn't tried anywhere in the Western world. It mentioned punishment comparison in UK, Sweden and US and is about general crime. All those countries have similar punishment and attitude to theft. Meanwhile countries where they cut hands or has done so in recent past has very little theft.
I tend to agree it's more important to catch thieves than punish them harshly but the point is we are not doing either so I vote for people who at least acknowledge it's a problem.
As long as you don't actually drink anything hah. Everyone's a designated driver with bikes.
It's still illegal in most places however, so your point stands
As for the law, it's good to have limits to drunk cycling, but it's important to have them tolerate a considerably higher BAC than those for driving.
The limit for a bicycle is if you can cycle safely, and it is only a fixed fine. You can go to prison for doing it in the other cases (though you will typically not, for a first offence).
The other advantage is that you can walk home with your bicycle if you are too drunk to drive it. You don't have that option with a car.
I am ok with people killing themselves but it's not OK do something stupid that makes another person kill you. An example would be jumping in front of a train to commit suicide. These things leave deep trauma in the people this happened to. I view drunk cycling in that category.
achenet: The officer will direct you to the separate bike lanes for Ketamine and LSD.
Personally, while drunk, I lose the ability to walk straight before I lose the ability to bike.
Drunk tricycle driving and bikes with training wheels: now those much more inherently dangerous problems!
That said, I have seen and still see some questionable cyclist practices on these roads from type of bike, lane of travel, footwear (or gear in general), lack of helmet (or misfitting/unfastened helmet) and route choice though I understand, at least where I live now, there sometimes isn't a choice. In larger cities there was an unspoken agreement _most_ of the time between myself and vehicles in the road that we were "aware" of one another. I find sometimes cyclists being far too aggressive to assert that awareness on drivers here (or today?) where it could be an honest misconception that the person behind the wheel knows how to interact with a cyclist for any number of reasons.
Full disclosure; former bike messenger in Boston, Philly & Portland OR, long-time commuter when not riding for work.
...and you're absolutely royally fucked if you hit one, plays a part.
It is very difficult to use the brakes and indicate a change in direction at the same time.
While cyclists should indicate, the nature of the vehicle does make it hard under some conditions.
Here's a question for you. If i am stopped at a red light on my bike in what is clearly a left turn lane, why do cars attempt to pull up in front of me anyhow?
Cant be bothered waiting for me to make the left so they just force themselves in front of me? is this because i didn't signal?
Signalling a change in direction should only be done with your left hand, per manuals.
Braking can be achieved with only the right hand (rear brake, typically).
Dismounting and signalling/braking is hard to do at once though. And you're right it should be obvious that a cyclist is turning left if they are in the left turn lane.
Comment in question claims people are more empathetic because individuals seem to switch between biking and driving cars almost daily. This is not happening. Live a 30 minute drive away from work, most individuals would take the bike every weekend at best. Most individuals do in fact live that far from work. Furthermore, car usage continues to increase, and roads continue to be expanded as a result. You can say all you want, most individuals are not going to cycle after an 8 hour workday and spending at least an hour commuting.
>While cyclists should indicate, the nature of the vehicle
>why do cars attempt to pull up in front of me anyhow?
Way too focused on cyclist vs vehicle. There are plenty of roads where it isn't always obvious which way someone is going, no matter cyclist or vehicle. These are old roads, but they exist nonetheless. Vehicles are actively punished for not indicating, cyclists are not. Both are hazards for everyone else, themselves and pedestrians included. That's not exactly something that would instill empathy.
That should also make it obvious the inverse situation doesn't create empathy either. It's a two-way street and neither is particularly giving to the other. That has nothing to do with automobile vs cyclist vs pedestrian vs whatever, it has to do with.. who would've guessed, people being people.
Why do you think laws were made to accommodate cyclists in particular? Why do you think lanes are split? Why do you think many individuals have a particular distaste for sport cyclists, who go high speed through busy roads and expect everyone to adapt to them? It's not empathy, it's a lack of empathy, followed by individuals not wanting to get in trouble over petty little things, and a legal system not wanting to spend thousands of manhours covering he-said-she-said scenarios.
Is it actually true that "[motor] vehicles are actively punished for not indicating, cyclists are not"? So far as I can tell, it's extremely rare for anyone to be punished for not indicating. (Which is probably the Right Thing; the police surely have better things to spend their time on than watching for drivers or cyclists who fail to indicate.)
Bicycles aren't the problem, the singular focus on cars in our societies is the real problem. Roads used to be shared between horses, carriages, bicycles, vendors, and pedestrians.
The car is a monotheistic religion, there can only be one god, the car, and you have to devote your whole life and society to it.
This feels a bit like saying that the US shouldn't have abolished slavery since it was founded by slave owners.
> Roads used to be shared between horses, carriages, bicycles, vendors, and pedestrians.
Lead used to be in paint and gas. Doctors used to perform surgery without even washing their hands first. People used to use chamber pots instead of toilets. And roads used to be disgusting from being covered in horse manure.
> The car is a monotheistic religion, there can only be one god, the car, and you have to devote your whole life and society to it.
No, we just want different spaces to be used for different means of transportation, similarly to how you wouldn't want someone riding a motorcycle on the sidewalk.
So does every cyclist. Yet it's motorists that protest against that every time they'd have to sacrifice a lane.
People also want to have as low rent/housing costs as possible, so they'll often want to move as far away from the city as possible.
e.g., I'll never move to a place where my commute to work is over 30 minutes.
If you add lanes, travel time decreases, so more people move further away. This increases demand, so that congestion quickly becomes just as bad as it is today.
This means there are never enough lanes. If you reduce the lanes, over the next years people will move closer to the city again, demand will decrease, and the congestion won't be any worse than it is today.
You can never have enough or too many lanes, all you can do is decide whether you want to subsidize people moving further away while making cars required for transportation, or if you do something against this, and reduce the lanes available to cars.
Considering this is a zero-sum game, if you reject replacing lanes with bike lanes, you reject bike lanes pretty much everywhere.
This allows development of mixed use, middle-density (think: 3-8 floors) buildings, which provide a lot of housing at far lower cost compared to high rises.
These mixed, often mostly walkable, neighborhoods are what can help provide living space. Single-family housing is something that just gets cities into debt, increases traffic, yet does not improve the housing situation at all.
I would argue that they are not the same thing. I find it easy to tell which direction a cyclist will go even when they don’t/can’t signal. I see it in their head movement, the orientation of the bike, etc. Especially when driving behind a cyclist.
When cars don’t signal, I find it harder to guess where they are going.
Now add the many laws favorable towards cyclists and measurements taken to accommodate them. It's not empathy. It's saving one's own hide from causing a lot of harm, a sense of guilt and the potential lawsuit waiting to happen. There's no special empathy given to cyclists in particular, only universal respect towards any non-motorized vehicle and individuals (e.g. children, individuals with heavy groceries).
Your experience is dispelled the moment you take an hour cycling to and from work. That's pretty easy for anyone not on a SDE salary.
The point these posts are making is that you need dedicated infrastructure to get people to cycle. Roads need to be walkable as well. So NA's car centric infra is the cause. Not the cyclists.
Unfortunately our kids weren't allowed to cycle to school unaccompanied by an adult until they reached year 4 and had passed their cycling proficiency test (mid-way through that school year).
I've been cycling with my daughter to kindergarten for at least a year, she's fine with the cycling bit, it's the looking-out-for-other-vehicles bit that's not quite there yet :/ This obviously depends a lot on local road layouts, and unfortunately we have a junction more or less right outside the school and kindergarten that way too many car drivers come through at speed...
Depending on region, children cycling on their own to school typically starts somewhere between ages 6-10.
I saw a lecture a while back by the head of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who spent some months in Amsterdam and talked about this. It was inspiring to think how much was possible here with relatively modest changes. Changes which seem even more possible with the pandemic, as a bunch of streets here got converted to low-traffic roads.
The infrastructure and safety comes from a conscious shift and a lot of hard work, roughly starting in the 1970s. But cycling used to be the predominant mode of personal transportation until well into the 1960s; the average Dutch person simply couldn't afford a car until then. There are films of throngs of bicyclists completely blocking the road for cars, purely by overwhelming numbers. There were campaign films "educating" bicyclists about "their proper place on the road".
(A short, easy example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTcQ9tSyUCs . It's a commercial, it's message is "It's no fun driving a car in Amsterdam; bring a bicycle!")
Bicycle-safe infrastructure was as much about clearing the main road for motorists, as it was about making bicyclists safer, and relatively speaking, bicycles have dwindled in importance since the country started building bike-safe infrastructure; correlation, not causation.
So I'm a bit uncomfortable when people mythologize the infrastructural revolution of the 1970s. Yes, impressive work was done. But it happened within a specific cultural and economic context that doesn't exist anymore.
Tbf I stopped doing that because I fell a couple of times, last time really hard, too.
Dutch cyclists are also more observant of the rules. In New York, cyclists regularly blow through red lights and cross walks going through wrong way and at high speed.
The first reason is the infrastructure, both visible and invisible. Separated bicycle lanes are commonplace and in the few places where they intersect with car traffic, care is taken to make crossing safe and comfortable. This visible infrastructure is complemented by the concept of "Hoofdnetten", where the default routes to some place for different modes of transportation coincide for the least amount of time/space. For example, going somewhere by bike might take you through a residential neighborhood with barely any traffic, which is also slowed by speed bumps and narrowed streets, whereas buses will use a bus lane taking a slightly longer route, and car traffic has to go all the way around.
The second reason is that here, everyone is a cyclist. Going for groceries? Five minute bike ride, much easier and quicker than going by car. Kids cycle to school alone from a young age. Going out for drinks? Bike. Because everyone is a cyclist and there are cyclists everywhere, cyclists are equal participants in traffic and are treated with care and respect.