Originally Posted by
50PlusCycling
There is nothing wrong with cycling infrastructure in the US. As bicycles can ride most places cars can drive, America has more roadways available for cycling than nearly any other country. What America needs is to properly educate car drivers on sharing the road. Simply putting a couple extra questions in a written drivers license test would go a long way to making roads safer for cyclists.
I live in Japan, where drivers are reminded over and over again about driving safely around pedestrians and cyclists.
A lot of those roads you mention being available for cyclists simply aren't realistic for a huge % of people who consider themselves cyclists, so they for sure aren't realistic for those who would take up cycling if not for traffic..
Yeah there are 4 million miles of paved roads, but that doesnt mean there are 4 million miles of good cycling because those roads weren't designed for use by anything but cars.
its as simple as that.
Educating drivers certainly helps, i totally agree. But even with fully aware drivers, a massive amount of roads in the US just aren't designed for cycling and are therefore not ideal.
Simply having roads /= good cycling infrastructure.