Introduction To Dutch Bicycle Culture
There are a lot of bicycles in Holland, in we have one for every man woman and child in the country, that is some 16 million bicycles!.
Bicycle have rights too, that is to say that the bicycle has the right of way every time, unless you are a tram, then the tram is master, but that is the only time that the bicycle has to yield. Think about that for a moment - can you imagine this happening in America, a country that is so pro-car that car owners have been known to successfully sue the pedestrians they have struck for their flesh and blood bodies causing damage to a car. In Holland bikes (fiets) have the right-of-way.
From birth we are brought in close contact with our bikes. They are often part of a cramped city centre apartments furniture, so that baby grows up playing around them. As you will see from the day a Dutch child is born it travels by bike. I can still recall being a tiny tot in the handle bar seat facing my mother and laughing as the wind blew her long hair about her as we sped through the woods of Arnhem. Being older an on the back seat, then graduating to my own bike beside her on the cycle lanes. The bike is simply bred into us.
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Helmets
This is extremely important; do NOT wear a helmet. Three types of people wear a helmet on a bike in Holland;
The English.North
Americans.
The mentally afflicted.
The English and Americans wear helmets because in their worlds common sense no longer rules and people must be safe from their own actions at all times. Also it is a well known fact that when Americans fall off a bike they fall on their heads, why this should be we do not know. God gave us each an ass, he appears to have given many Americans more than one ass and yet they do not use them, you have to wonder why. On the rare occasion a Dutchman comes off their bike we fall on our well padded behinds (and it’s ALWAYS the fault of a German motorist).