liability laws meant that if an accident occurred, car drivers almost always took the blame. In the 1960s and 1970s Dutch bicycle use dipped somewhat, but it then recovered. By the time I moved to the Netherlands, more than a third of all short journeys in the country were made by bicycle. From my own house I could easily cycle thirty or forty miles without ever having to share space with cars, sticking to the red fietssnelweg (cycle highway) connecting Rotterdam with other cities. According to the Dutch government, by 2009 the Netherlands was the only European nation with more bicycles than
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