“Stop killing our children!” This phrase halted the Netherlands’ steady slide into a car-oriented system when automobiles were at their peak popularity. Outrage over loss of life brought an entire nation of people together to demand change. Regular people marched in the streets and lobbied their representatives and worked to elect politicians from parties that would listen to them. To the Dutch, the death of even one child was too many. In the 1970s, the Dutch protested the skyrocketing popularity of cars. They rallied around one simple concept: Kindermoord, meaning child death. And they were successful. This is why the Dutch build their cities around bicycles. Meanwhile, in the U.S., we drive past overturned vehicles that must’ve flipped five or six times before crashing to a halt, pickup trucks billowing firey smoke, and motorcycles shattered into a million pieces on a daily basis without batting an eye at the carnage. To us, the death or maiming of our neighbor is only a
What if I told you that you could guarantee zero traffic deaths in your city? Imagine having the creative freedom to build a city from scratch. You'd have to consider how much green space to include, where the city center would go, and what modes of transportation to support. If you could prevent thousands of traffic deaths, would you orient all car traffic to a single ring around the outside of town like the City of Houten did? Houten is medium-sized, at 58.99 km² (36.65 miles²) with a population of about 50,000 people. Believe it or not, since its conception over 50 years ago, there has not been a single traffic death in Houten. That's zero traffic deaths, total. Houten was built in the 1960s from the ground-up, an initiative of the national government that was dealing with a massive population boom like most Western cities during this period of post-WWII prosperity. The Netherlands government essentially said, "Okay, we're going to have ten million more peopl