I failed the traffic test that I passed as a child 

Actually the other countries are countries of the past

Helps sparks hope for the States as well.

@@blakksheep736 Yeah, but the US has gone on way longer and way farther than it ever did over there. Not really comparable unfortunately

@@blakksheep736I’m sure there are plenty of places in the US where these reconstructions would be feasible

That is just so true! Villages in Germany are having slight Problems with eroting infrastructure while cities are trying to transition to cycling. Some cities do it the wrong way tho, for example Hechingen putting bikelanes on way too narrow main streets, which makes the cars overtake at a too small sidedistance. That is why on these roads I ride my bike more in the middle of them staying away from the bike lane, so that the cars dont do that

That slightest bit of colour helps alot. Much warmer and better on the eyes.

And that was smooth asphalt. Usually, at least in my hometown, this is not even the case.

So true.

Bricks are super fucked during rain and snow/ice to walk and cycle over. Just last monday I fell because of those shitty wet cobblestones.

There are more things important for street design than just the looks. The bricks aren't water permeable like permeable asphalt (ZOAB) and can get slippery when wet depending on the exact type. The genuine old brick (clinker) is absolutely beautiful in an old city, but extremely slippery, posing a risk to everyone except cars. Modern brick or tile paved surfaces will also degrade in surface smoothness over a relatively short period of time, making it still fine to drive a car on (with plush suspension) but bone shaking to cycle on. Having rattly, rough paved roads is actually a way to slow down car traffic because rough, loud roads make people drive slower. But imagine if a car driver in their plush little box already slows down for it - how rough it is for cyclists if they gotta share that surface... These also are barely water permeable. Again, permeable asphalt would be a better choice environmentally speaking, to allow rain to infiltrate the ground, rather than to be flushed away to the city drainage system right away and pumped out to the sea, when ground water levels in the whole country keep getting lower. In my residential area, the cycle path was tiled, but because of sand that got flushed away after gaps appeared between the paving tiles, a void appeared under a bunch of tiles and one of them ended up vertical (like a tombstone). A person on a moped hit it and had very serious injuries. I've cycled over them a couple of times and actually stopped to put one back into its spot. For pedestrian-only spaces with good drainage, or for like short bits of shared pedestrian-cycling spaces, it's fine as long as the city council proactively inspects them for quality and safety, but for actual important cycle routes that you follow for hundreds of meters or multiple kilometers, you absolutely need asphalt. In short: paving stones are fine for cars, but less so for cyclists. There's no one size fits all solution for street design because there are often conflicting interests for various areas - cyclist comfort, car traffic calming, making the city pretty, water infiltration and storage etc etc.

Thanks for the recommendation 😌

Thanks Jason! Also for mentioning this video on your community page!

My roommate voted that city recently and loved it, I really have to visit some point because I love biking but I live in the US -_-

Utrecht is definitely on the list of places to visit when we’re in the Netherlands in June. I’d also like to visit Groningen but I don’t know if we’ll make it out there.

I love how Utrecht looks with the canals! Even as a Dutchie I’d recommend it to tourists.

In Holland, the best place to break the law is straight in front of a police station.

In today's Netherlands it seems like it is of no importance at all for cyclists to stick to the laws, laws are solely meant for other road-users, even those pesky pedestrians. So you do as you please, just like the author of this piece did. Until you suffer from others, like delivery vehicles that do obey the rules, then you complain. No wonder that those cyclists, once they have obtained their driver license and have access to a car, misbehave. They are simply used to this behaviour, not educated nor used to take other road-users into account, and so they cause more and more accidents. You get what you ask for I guess

@@jaaput cyclists occasionally quietly going through an area they technically shouldn't be, not bothering or disturbing anyone is very different than driving a 2000kg giant death machine. It's wild to say they're the same thing. Laws are more strictly enforced for drivers of autos because it's incredibly easy to kill someone or yourself if you break said laws.

Yeah. I've seen major enforcement actions aimed at cyclists in both Amstelveen (Amsterdam suburb) and Utrecht, but it was always to make sure everyone gets around to making sure their lights are in working order in the fall as the days get shorter. I can't recall ever getting a ticket or hearing of somebody getting a ticket for a cycling infraction outside of that, though I'm sure it happens. Especially in a place like Utrecht, where the local culture is fairly blunt and confrontational, a lot of enforcement is more in terms of getting yelled at by random locals. (Perhaps slightly less likely where I'm from in Limburg...) I was very confused when I moved to California and promptly got a very expensive ticket for cycling the wrong way on a 3 lane one way street...

@@jaaput You sound kind of angry. I don't know where you are from, but I can assure you, Dutch driving licence are hard to come by. Also, being angry at city traffic is a shortcut to becoming very much part of it. That's how they all started. Also, if you get angry at cyclists, remember it's often the other way around, too. If you have a bit of a confrontation in traffic, try to laugh it off, don't be a stickler for the rules, bad for yourself. Shit happens. In cities more, because, you know, more people, more traffic. Be gentle, be patient, be brave.

I agree, that's why I like this channel. The BEFORE pictures and clips are priceless!

Memory bike lane!

The plant cycling by at 4.50 did it for me ♡

It is that you mention it, because I did not even notice it! For us Dutch that actually IS normal..

A few streets from here (actually the street with the ignorable traffic light, but a bit in the opposite direction), a great gif was filmed where someone is moving an Ikea closet on the front of his bicycle, not capable of seeing anything. Of course it ends in a (light) collision, and of course the collision is with a scooter who didn't look before driving onto the cycle path. I tried to look it up -- I don't know what happened to Google, but I have never had search results that inaccurate. I couldn't find it.

@@rientsdijkstra4266 that's what makes it remarkable to people like me that carry stuff on our bikes in other countries. I live in a world of "are you a courier" "gosh that's a big load" and so on. You live in a world of "oh, another persone with an armchair balanced on their handlebars gosh is that the time, I better run"

@@mozismobile Yep! And before these kind of video's on RU-vid I would not even have paid attention... Lets hope that someday soon that will be just as normal in the country or place where you live!😎🤘

I was suprised too. But I must say that it was very close to noon and on a Friday.

I noticed that place too - I'll have to stop by next time I'm there!

Agreed!

I believe there's some changes happening. They're slow and more out of necessity than a desire for improvement, but they're happening. Also did you mean NLB or NJB?

Unfortunately I agree. The people who say to not give up on America are clearly in denial.

​@@blakksheep736 I mean that's the thing though, any argument as to why America isn't too far gone always involve some sort of qualifier, like you're trying to cheer up your friend who's not good at something without lying to them. SOME improvement is happening in SOME places SOMEtimes, doesn't really mean a lot when you have a plane full of children falling out of the sky every year

@@cherriberri8373 yeah, fair.

​@@cherriberri8373The sad thing about North American infrastructure it isn't like a shitload of planes falling from the skies. It is the more insidious problem of getting used to people dieing as 'the cost of doing business'.

That's great! Here's a link to that picture in the Utrecht Archives: hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeld/0DA29D15B04057B4A1B49E653E8489BF

😂

Or JoyCyclingDutch, lol.

Yes we were the same age over here in the UK...oddly though it didn't cross many parents minds to send their kids to school on bikes because of the vehicle traffic even in 68-9. So it was a bus ride followed by a fair old walk instead!

Oh, snap! That's around the same time I took mine. I can't even remember the route though, only the school playground agility type exercises...also the fact that if you got 100% score you were taken in to Maidstone for a Knickerbocker Glory at DiMarcos...I got 95% or something so just missed out.🥹🤤😄

The claim that UK roads are now more dangerous for cyclists is not supported by the statistics. In 1967 there were almost 500 cycling deaths on UK roads, whilst in 2022 it reached an all time low of 98. Going back through history, in the mid 1930s, when there was a fraction of the road traffic, there was around 1,500 cycling fatalities per year. In 2022 the Netherlands has had a large and noticeable increase in cycling fatalities, reaching 291 (equivalent to 1,100 in the UK when adjusted for population). In terms of total road fatalities, that that increased to 737, which is the highest figure since 2008 (when it was 750). Again, to put that in perspective, if adjusted for population, that would be the equivalent of over 2,800 in the UK vs the 1,766 recorded in 2022. Of course the Dutch to cycle a great deal more than do the British, but the rate of fatalities per billion miles cycled has rapidly closed. The Dutch cycle a total of about 17.6 billion km per year, whilst it is about 8 billion km in the UK (meaning the average Dutch person cycles about 8.5 times as far as the average Brit per year). When looked at in fatalities by distance cycled, in the Netherlands (in 2022) there were 16.5 fatalities per billion km cycled. In 2021, official UK figures had the rate of cycling fatalities at 16.3 per billion km (26 per billion miles). In 2022 that rate will have dropped a bit more again assuming distances cycled have been maintained. I should add that the fatality rate per billion km cycled has halved between 2004 and 2021 in the UK so the roads are getting safer for cyclists, at least so far as fatalities are concerned. Now it may be that 2022 was exceptional in the Netherlands (2022 saw a 40% increase in fatalities compared to 2021, and is the worst in the 27 years for which records have been kept), but it needs watching. I believe over 50% of the fatalities were aged 60 or more, and the growing use of eBikes, especially by older people, seem to be implicated. The Dutch are also insistent that cycling helmets don't make cycling safer. I don't find that credible. Speaking as somebody who fell off a bike (no car involved) and was knocked unconscious for about 10 minutes without a helmet, then I rather doubt that. I have worn a helmet since then, and not suffered the same way despite a nasty incident when "doored" at about 30 kmh, which cracked the helmet but didn't suffer any head injuries.

@@TheEulerID I think the increase is almost entirely due to the popularity of e-bikes, I see them everywhere in Amsterdam, young and old and they all ride too fast. I think the issue can be solved if the max speed of the e-bike isn't any higher than regular city bikes. I agree with using a helmet for e-bikes, but not sure about regular bikes.

@EdoTyran I've read somewhere that if a helmet becomes mandatory for bicycles, it should also be mandatory for taking the stairs. Equally dangerous.

@@worldeconomicfella3228 This is one of those faulty arguments that says we ought not to do some action because something else is equally dangerous so it doesn't matter. Some prevention measures are just more intrusive than others, and making everybody wear a crash helmet at all times they might be moving is going to be one of those. In any event, it's up to democratic countries to deal with the issue. However, denialism is never a good thing. It's like those US gun advocates who make endless claims that easy access to firearms has no effect on gun deaths.

De Filmende Fietser filmed all 8 of them ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9ISInJwAqFY.html&pp=iAQB

@@BicycleDutchI was thinking about participating in an exam, including the bike check. The full experience so to speak.

Yes, I remember. In Bavaria it's a big thing with a theoretical and a practical part in the last year of primary school (aged 10). When I did it in the eighties, we weren't allowed to cycle to school before passing the test. But we never ventured into traffic - the practical part happened in a dedicated part of the playground where streets and traffic signs are permanently painted on the ground.

completely agree, that was to close to pass. best way of dealing with long vehicles (busses, trucks etc) is staying out of their way and making sure you are able to see the driver in the mirror. chances are, if you're able to see the driver the driver is able to see you.

In the Netherlands this is normal for truck drivers. They are not just suddenly going to reverse again quickly without checking.

@@Zooz.I am a driver from a truck... I try too say this easy: WE DONT ALWAYS SEE YOU IN TIME!!! And when i hit you it is too late.. You never win from a trucks wheel.. When the wheel hits you it is at a MINIMUM of 7000 KG! what is driver over you.

The truck driver is always at fault when there's a traffic accident involving a cyclist or pedestrian, so he'll be super cautious.

@@carmenl163 "partly at fault" the amount of fault is determined by the circumstances. in this case the cyclist gets into the "dode hoek" (don't know the English term) where the driver is unable to see anything. so in this case a lot of the blame/fault is on the cyclist and not the driver if something goes wrong. and even if it's (technically) not your fault as a cyclist. putting yourself in a position where you could end up underneath a (garbage) truck. and giving the driver a "mild heart attack". isn't worth the few second you might be able to save. it doesn't hurt a cyclist to wait a few second and give a big vehicle the space it needs to turn. just be a little considerate towards each other.

In Utrecht that used to exist too, but they closed it to develop it into expensive appartments with zero parking spaces.

Here the general view is "if children have to go to a traffic garden to learn about traffic, that real world traffic is not safe enough and should be made safer". However, we do have a traffic garden in Utrecht, but that is for younger children (until about 10). This traffic test in real traffic is for 12-year-olds.

It's back, no appartments were built in its place. The Utrecht traffic garden reopened in 2016. www.verkeerstuinutrecht.nl/

The test is to learn how to behave in traffic. It’s meant to prepare the children biking to high school. You’re supposed to know already how to ride a bike.

Kids in the Netherlands are expected to be very independent. Going to high school independently is completely expected, and (if the distance and traffic situations allow) many already go to school independently in middle school, too. But for that independence, the kids need to know how to behave in traffic: make sure to look right-left-right before crossing, indicate what direction you are intending to turn with your arm, keep right, don't goof off with silly tricks like wheelies, this sign means you are suppose to cycle here, shark teeth mean you are supposed to yield, etc. These tests are not about learning to cycle nor about being licensed to cycle. Kids at that age will already know how to cycle, especially in our culture, and there is no such thing as a cycling license. This national exam is completely focused on teaching kids how to remain safe and not get themselves killed because nobody taught or practiced these basic rules with them. Compared to the US where many kids will have their first 'real' traffic participation at the same time they get their first beater car at 16(?) with an education that mostly focuses on the rules of the car, kids in the Netherlands will already have been independent commuters for 5+ years. So in the US, learning to participate in traffic is a struggle about applying common sense they never performed themselves that may be harder than it looks in a huge vehicle, whereas in the Netherlands, it is about driving home the common sense and the reason it is called common sense to little kids that don't quite grasp how vulnerable they can be when bumping into a car.

It wasn't quite like that for the assumptions about the US. Kids were riding to grade school at that time in California every day. We were therefore learning the rules of the road as we went. I think there might of been some basic things tossed at us in grade school for rules of the road too. It was a combination of being bused at times based on where we lived in relation to the schools, or riding bikes, or eventually borrowing cars. I started borrowing my dad's car when I was late 15 after I got my license. The high school I went to was 7-8 miles off and with a poor traffic layout for biking. All of the kids I knew from my city going to Burlingame took the bus at 14 when it was time to go there, but the ones who lived there would often be riding bikes. See the buses were free and we only had to walk a few blocks to the stop. I'd get car rides too from a friend's dad when he was driving to work. But back a few years to the two schools I went to in Foster City where we lived, and everyone within four miles or so rode bikes to school up to 8th grade, and we all had them.

Obviously here and now there is a whole lot less for independence through cycling and getting to schools and around. I see a lot of school busing and I assume some that makes good sense and some of it doesn't. I know parents drive their kids to school way too often and I know they usually have them tethered ridiculously with cell phones. Getting around on a bike here is not that difficult or dangerous within a certain radius. It's also gotten better in the last few years. Although kids riding to school is rare unfortunately, from what I can see. That's a major difference from the 1970s. But for instance if one wants to get to the next city away, like Prescott, which is 11 miles, excepting one long remote dirt trail out in the boonies, the only way you get there from here, or the reverse is to drive on a highway that's insanity for cycling. Speeds are 55-60 MPH. There aren't regular public buses either. No car and you don't go there. So like every place, it could be worse, or it could be better.

​@@AviertjeShouldn't it be "look left-right-left" if you ride on the right hand side? Traffic coming from the left is closer to you.

you can add a quarter of a century to that ;-)

well, he was at some point 🙂

I cannot speak for all of them, but for a car the Trabant is super cute. Always happy to see them, just like old mini's & fiat 500s.

@@LeafHuntress Trabant may be cute to look at but it was rather terrible to to live with due to archaic construction and bad build quality. Mini and fiat 500 were a lot more advanced and user friendly, having nice look at the same time.

I would say it is the same or actually easier for delivery vehicles now. They are still allowed to use these streets, but there is less to no traffic caused by cars, which makes trips faster. They can still park on the curb or on the road for a while, without blocking car traffic now. Bikes and pedestrians can just go around them as you see in this video.

@@RomyDhillon my thoughts as well, but would be nice to hear it from some of them who actually do the work.

Indeed, those are indicating the bike test route

@@MaartenHartog Yeah, I get a detective badge! 😊

Most cities have a lot of pedestrain space. Do you mean Amsterdam city centre? Because I do agree there is just not enough space along the canals.

it really depends on the places you visit. the old cores of cities are mostly narrow between the buildings, so getting a car lane (or two) cycle lanes and a decent sidewalk at both sides is often impossible in those centuries old places. thanks to pedestrianizing those area's we are possible to take some space from cars (down to max one car lane and no on street parking) and return it to pedestrians and cyclist so it helps. outside the old city centers most sidewalks have enough space for at least 2 people to walk side by side. about cars blocking them, it depends on the situation. but if a car is blocking the sidewalk you're able (and allowed) to just walk on the cycle lane to pass the vehicle. cyclist will understand and give you the space you need to pass the vehicle.

Strange, never seen anyone do that.

I think she simply touched her face

​@@kipkippersExcept that she didn't touch it. Her fingers are before her eyes. It looks like she gestures "watch out" but that doesn't make any sense given the situation.

Those are the signs indicating the route of the test.

Goeie vraag. I wondered about it too.

These markings are the Dom Tower, if the Dom Tower would fall into the Zadel straat. The Dom is THE symbol of Utrecht. There is even a demarcation line in the Zadel straat, so cross the line and you would be crushed. If the Dom falls over into the Zadel straat. Better safe then sorry. 😜

And to add to @mardiffv.8775 . The Dom tower stands separated from the 'remnants' of the original church. The church is still large, they never rebuild the middle part after it collapsed (during a storm.. I believe). And at the square between the church and the Tower, they also outlined where the rest of the churchwalls and pillars used to be... Visible at 10:00

Dank voor dit heerlijke filmpje Mark! Jeugd sentiment (Al was mijn fiets examen ruim10 jaar later😉)!

​@@AnD-1999not just a storm, a tornado... yes, a tornado in the Netherlands, extremely rare and also extremely rare that it just happened to sweep over Utrechts old town and destroy the middle (Middenschip) of the Dom.

She's just touching her face. Her "gesture" started way before she looked in my direction. I never noticed her. We did not have eye contact, there was a lot going on there that needed my attention.

Ik ook, geen idee hoe dat ging en wat we moesten doen, het was ongeveer rond 1966

Filmed on Friday 15 September 2023.

@@BicycleDutch Thank you. I knew weather is too good for November.

It was also much too warm for mid-September.

It has been repaired since.