I found this excellent photo diary of a day in the life of Amsterdam bike culture as compared to that of San Francisco, as seen from what appears to be a Nieuwmarkt cafe table, and one of the things the American diarist seems most perturbed by is bikes with multiple passengers.
Here in typical Dutch fashion are some average people doing dangerous and probably illegal things as a police vehicle stand by unconcerned. Of course they’re unconcerned; everybody does it, even the cops.
With all this negligence about and with open canals and chaotc traffic and the like, there could be fertile ground here for an unscrupulous personal injury lawyer, were it not for the fact that despite occasional nasty accidents people seem quite unbothered. Life goes on its merry way despite the many and multifarious dangers and hardly anyone ever sues.
One of the things that never fails to astonish about the Netherlands and Amsterdam is the completely lackadaisical attitude to health and safety: if a British health and safety officer were let loose in the city you’d hear the sharp intake of breath from here to Swindon. The place would be festooned with dire warnings and swathed in orange safety tape within minutes.
