Some fun facts:
- There are more bikes than people in Amsterdam
- A quarter of all trips are made by bicycle in the Netherlands (in some cities half of all trips are made by bicycle)
- Wouter’s niece is 4 and is already a master of the two-wheeler (without training wheels)
- In a collision between a car and a bicycle, the car driver is always financially liable if at fault or if the cyclist is below 12 years old; the driver is liable for half even if the cyclist is at fault
- Next to the central station in Amsterdam there is a three-storey bicycle parking garage
- <1% of cyclists wear helmets in the Netherlands (the comparable figure for the US: ~38%)
- There approximately 200 bicycle accident related deaths in the Netherlands each year; this works out to <20 deaths per billion kilometers cycled (the comparable figure for the US: 110 deaths)
- You’re more likely to die of murder in the US than by cycling in the Netherlands
Hm… while this last one may be statistically accurate, I didn’t feel that way the first time I cycled in Dutch rush hour.
Dutch goes Dutch. 