Bikes and cars don’t mix. It’s quite obvious: bikes move slow and cars move fast. They should not be sharing the same surface. It is highly impractical.

Now, I don’t do this often: I live in Canada now, and I try not to draw comparisons between Canada and Holland, and I don’t call Holland ‘home’ (my home’s in Ottawa), but I have to say that, for once, Holland got it right when it comes to traffic handling. True, the streets are narrow, and people drive like crazy, but at least they had the foresight to separate pedestrians from bikes from cars.

Road way, curb and bike path

They separated all traffic into three levels: slow, medium and fast. Pedestrians are in the slow category, bikes & mopeds are in the medium, and all motorized vehicles over 50 hp are in the fast category. Fast goes on the street, medium goes on the “medium” path, and slow goes on the “slow” path. So, you have the road way, then a curb, then the “medium” path then a separator of some kind (gras, gravel, painted line, whatever) and then the sidewalk. And this goes on both sides of the street.

Intersection: the road way, a curb, the bike path (the red paved section) and the side walk intersecting each other. If you look closely, you can see the bike cross roadways on a ‘crosswalk” type of crossing, with their own traffic lights.

The following video shows the lights in action. Now, you have to disregard the IDIOTS who bike through red, don’t pay attention and cross intersections without regard for personal safety. We have those IDIOTS here too. I want you to pay attention to the bike traffic lights and how they work in relation to the cars’ traffic lights.

And here’s one on a roundabout:

There is no reason whatsoever to not put these kinds of measures here in Canada, or at least in “bike friendly” cities like Ottawa and Victoria, B.C. Maybe the number of bikes doesn’t make it cost-effective to construct these elaborate intersections, but how much is a human life worth? Can you put a price on a lifelong disability from being hit by a car?

Now, I can already hear all car-people come out saying “but those bikers don’t follow the rules of the road! They don’t stop at stop signs, don’t signal where they’re going”, and I can hear the bikers say “the cars don’t respect us! They zoom by us like we’re not there!”. I hear you. I really do. But something has got to be done. At least separating the bikes from the cars will avoid a large number of collisions that will almost always leave the cyclist with life-threatening injuries.