The Life-Sized City Blog

Related photo from Norway in this article Fortunately, no one was killed here Denmark and the Netherlands are the safest places on the planet to ride bicycles. Full stop. Unfortunately, cyclist - and pedestrian - lives are lost in collisions with motorists despite best and largely successful efforts to reduce loss of life. A few days ago another life was lost when a truck driver wasn't paying attention when turning right. This time it was a six year old boy on his way to school with his 12 year old sister. The truck driver was turning right and the children were heading straight on, on a cycle track. The truck driver hit and killed the boy, crushing him under the front wheels. The truck driver didn't check his mirrors and didn't see them. He said that he was watching a moped coming up in the distance from behind and didn't look to see if there were any cyclists next to him. I don't need to elaborate on how tragic this is. We can call figure that out and re...

The seeds of bicycle culture in Denmark were first sown 120 years ago. We found a fascinating article about some of the historical aspects of Danish bicycle infrastructure history and thought it relevant to include it here. The first bike lane in Denmark was constructed on Esplanaden in 1892 and in 1896, Copenhageners were allowed to cycle on the side of equestrian paths. Marking out bike lanes in Copenhagen, 1915. Bike lanes along roads weren't, however, constructed back then, despite the rising number of cars on the streets and the rise of the bicycle as transport. There was a battle for space in the cities. Between bicycle users, trams and horses and carriages. It was in 1923 that bicycle users and pedestrians were first allowed to use the one metre wide shoulder on country roads. Nevertheless, many bicycle users chose to avoid the shoulder because of the refuse that collected there, choosing instead to ride farther towards the middle of the road where the coast was cl...