Hehlmeht Woehrse: Dutch Logic Assassins

Fearing more threats against my life by the Dutch, I have become hyper sensitive to my environment.  A swatch of orange fabric makes me cower in fear, the smell of potatoes induces nervous sweating, and the clomping of wooden-soled shoes on the pavement shatters my concentration like a gunshot.  To protect myself, I have prepared flash cards for study purposes and placed them in various and sundry places about my hovel and place of work so that I may spot the enemy on site and flee:

Being keen and crafty, the Dutch can strike at any time, so I believe that my paranoia is warranted.  Indeed, I recently found proof of what I consider to be a subtle Dutch plot against my life in an article penned by serial proselytizer, David Hembrow, hosted by Momentum Magazine.

Hembrow, by means keen and crafty, data mines injury and fatality statistics to argue that survival rates of Dutch cyclists are not improved by wearing a helmet.  To further stigmatize helmet wearing, Hembrow data mines the rich statistical data documenting British children dying in--wait for it... waaait for it... --car crashes to demonstrate that Dutch cyclists are safer than British children being driven about by concerned parents.  (The accident/fatality rate per kilometers traveled by car for a country's population is a statistic Hembrow doesn't review ...likely because it would obviously undermine his case.)  Hembrow does, however, identify that the low risk of head injury for Dutch cyclists is primarily due to their progressive, and therefore safe, infrastructure.

The insinuation of the article, however, is clear: the Dutch don't wear helmets, so neither must you.  While I appreciate anyone's effort to appease my fears, I'm also risk aversive (amongst a host of other allergies both various and sundry) and wearing a helmet, like wearing a condom, is one of those things known in the common discourse as a 'Good Idea', even if it barely fits or never even gets used during your time spent riding (minds out of the gutter, please).

In Hembrow's universe, helmets aren't for heads and condoms aren't for peepees.

The unasked question arising from the article intrudes nonetheless: So what?

The Dutch don't need helmets because their coddled by infrastructure that will not be implemented in my ward within my lifetime, so Hembrow's pronunciations are at best trivial, and at worst, a life-threatening abuse of logic.  For the time being, I am pleased to declare that the Dutch will not coerce me, by means either statistical or crafty, to expose myself to even the slightest iota of fatal risk, and thereby fulfill their plot against my life.

It was a good try, however.  It was a considerable improvement over the time they sent this guy after me:

Missed me!!

Till we meet again, Hollanders!!  Thpbpbpbpbpbpb!!

The Dutch Oven: Toronto Guilty of Pedalling Foreign Influence?

Dutch cycling lore being all the rage in North America, trend watchers are scouring Dutch urban centres (read 'scraping the bottom of the barrel') for the hottest new trends in Dutch cycling.  This season's must-ape protocol is the advanced locking technique:

The Hollander High Lock.

Toronto cyclists, eager to flaunt their progressive (and therefore Dutch) attitude to cycling, are adding a sprinkling of Dutch Delight to their own locking techniques, as can be seen with this cruiser shackled outside the entrance to University of Toronto's Bike Chain:

So coercive is the allure of Dutch cycling (and so powerful is the sucking vortex created by the gapping vacuum where Toronto's indigenous cycling wisdom should be) that the City of Toronto, in partnership with the Royal Consulate of the Netherlands, is importing Dutch urban planners to assist Toronto in developing dynamically synergistic and integrative 'movementways' in partnership with cautiously optimistic public-private community initiatives on a going forward basis.  In other words, they're going to tell us how to do stuff we're apparently too stupid to figure out ourselves.  Organizers are publicizing the epic meeting of minds as the Toronto ThinkBike Workshop to create the illusion that genuinely reflective thought will be done at the event.

Toronto's Team Blue is tasked with the tasking task of making a network a network to free up Team Orange to tackle the more difficult issue of separated bike lanes, something Toronto has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that it's too stupid to figure out on its own.  Dispensing my usual pessimism, I'm genuinely eager to see the Hollanders' plan.  The Dutch, having mastered dikes before mastering the art of cooking, are also masters of the installation and routing of alternative transportation within urban centres.  I am convinced that Team Orange's system of dikes, sluice gates, canals, and locks will revolutionize cycling in Toronto:

When approaching an intersection, the cyclist will be floated up to street level through a series of locks powered solely by the cyclist's own smugness.  Exiting the canal system at destinations along the route will be facilitated through the use of sluice gates opening onto individual buildings, which will be paid for through public-private initiatives and will create much-needed jobs for local sluice gate artisans (when they've taken up rug-making, you know times are tough).

Given the rich Dutch content of the event, one marvels to see Curbside Cycle's Eric Kamphoff conspicuously absent from the event bill.  Perhaps he'll feature as a surprise guest speaker, ready to embiggen us all with a slide show and lecture on the vast superiority of cycling in Europe, topped off with the de rigueur image of Kamphoff sucking on a pastry:

It wouldn't be European without it.