30 seconds of Googling suggests (and a comment upthread) suggest that a defense based on reasonable expectations and circumstances beyond one's control is available to drivers in The Netherlands. The stakes are also much lower when the thing you're assigning is an insurance company payout. Cyclists presumably aren't insured when they hit pedestrians. If there were no defense available, cycling would be a bad idea.
We're under no illusions that cycling presents a danger to others in the same way that driving does. When we say cycling is unsafe, we mean it's unsafe for the cyclist.
The point is that your experience in a society that privileges automobile driving has left you with misleading impressions of how other societies function. In other places poor drivers are held responsible for their poor driving, and the sky has not fallen.
> In other places poor drivers are held responsible for their poor driving
As they should be everywhere. What seems crazy, though, is the belief that every collision is necessarily an instance of a poor driver committing poor driving, with no reference to how a reasonable person would have handled the situation differently.
Found this: https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/dutch-cycle-because-...