gen with anything else—and their levels were rising or stable, and here we went from 37 percent bike mode share in 2008 down to 35 percent, and the only thing that’s changed is the city started promoting helmets. [A report by the city government blames the drop on recent harsh winters.]
I have seen more people wearing helmets here than I thought I would.
Three years ago there were none.
Which is interesting because it does give you the impression like, “Huh, should I be wearing a helmet—is this safe?”
That’s it, for every helmet you see here you’re scaring somebody off a bike, potentially. And after the helmet law proposal we sent the letter to all the members of parliament and to all the newspapers. Last Sunday I was dancing because one of the national newspapers ran the headline, “Bicycle Experts in Collective Front Against Helmet Laws.” It was brilliant.
When it comes to cycling it seems like you favor things being very simple and intuitive. You advocate for riding in everyday clothes and you’ve written, “If anyone tells you you need anything other than a bicycle, they probably want to make money off you.”
Well, what you’re seeing here in Copenhagen is not bicycle culture, it’s vacuum cleaner culture. Everybody has a vacuum, everybody uses it. We don’t give them names. We don’t wear vacuum cleaning clothes. We can’t repair