[seanmcdirmid]

> Anyone commuting to work should have a plan to deal with a helmet, it's such a trivial thing to plan for and deal with compared to maintaining your bike, having parking for it, arranging showers, etc.

There are whole countries, like the Netherlands and Germany, where that simply doesn't happen. In fact, biking is much simpler in those countries, they don't even bother with showers (instead they bike more slowly).

[wila]

Correct, besides that we also don't wear helmets. Note however that our road infrastructure is very different from most of the other countries.

Getting hit by a car is not something we worry much about. Besides the bike friendly roads, chauffeurs are used watching out for bycicles.

Then there's special laws where a car hitting a bycicle is always wrong. The reasoning behind that is that a byciclist is much more fragile. This also makes car drivers more careful.

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, but it does demonstrate show that armoring up bike riders isn’t the only sane option (we could improve our bike infrastructure and give them more priority).

[wila]

Yep, there are more ways as just one correct way. I doubt that armoring up would ever work down here. There are of course fatal casualities, but they are rare.

Riding a bicycle is embedded into our culture, another example is the dutch reach [0].

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-dutch-reach-how-o...