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538 comments
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Anyone who has ridden in rain and adverse weather would know one reason cars are more popular.
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Picking up a week's worth of shopping for a family, whilst taking your baby with you, in the pouring rain, and you live up a steep hill, and you have joint pain, and a sudden work meeting across the other side of town in an hour...
I'd love a city designed round bicycles (Cambridge, UK is quite good like that in the centre) but man, despite the downsides cars are amazing things.
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My mother brought my sister and me to kindergarten and elementary school on one bike early in the morning in every weather. After school she collected us and then went to buy groceries before returning home.
A colleague of mine rides with his son to the kindergarten, each on his own bike.
It works. You just have to work out how to do it. Concentrate on what you can do with a bike instead of what you can't.
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Nice!
Come to think of it, I have a friend in Asia who used to take his two children to school on a bicycle. There's a lot that can be done.
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Danish citizens cycle in rain with no issue.
Of course the workplaces accomodate for that.
You just need the whole society to revolve around bike transport, and it will become normal to ride in the rain.
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It's not even "revolve around bike transport", it's just "include bike transport as a serious and viable option".
I imagine that in Denmark people with disabilities have some disadvantages, but I doubt that daily life is virtually impossible because they're unable to bike.
However, in most of the US and Canada, if you don't have a car, your life is extremely difficult. The cities truly do revolve around cars.
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I'm Finnish and ride in the freezing rain (literally).
But I can see the advantage in not having to dress up in 8 layers and driving goggles to go sweat to a supermarket for some snack you're hankering.
Also, bigger stuff require a cart and yeah sure you have them on bikes.
But I've been biking for everything for years, used to have a car and I just miss the convenience. Cheapest pure electric cars are getting to be around 5k here so I'm gonna get one of those at some point. I'd love if it would also fit my bike though. It's a 26" but foldable but it's not exactly small folded and with my extensions to the headset.
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Yeah… pretty sure Denmark doesn’t get regular thunderstorms or hail storms.
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Why are you "pretty sure" about that? Did you give it any thought?
https://www.essl.org/cms/category/news/
6 July: A supercell produced a swath of very large hail across Denmark. Hail had very eccentric shapes with pronounced lobes, leading to very large dimensions across the longest axis, up to an estimate of 10.5 cm
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I never said they don’t get hail, I said they don’t get regular hail. In general, hail is uncommon in Denmark, and large hail is even more rare.
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Well ofc that depends on how regularly you mean, but it's definitely multiple times annually.
But yes, those are record ones.
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I was speaking anecdotally, but it’s good to back that up with some data.
https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-176/egusphere-2023-176.pdf
Page 15, Table 1 shows a clean table, with Denmark in the bottom 10 for large hail size in European countries; relative to places like Germany, large hail (the kinds you’d really want to avoid while on a bike) in Denmark is considerably more rare. That study only has two citations, though, so not the greatest source.
This survey is much better cited and comments on hail throughout Europe and in Denmark, but I can’t access the PDF at the moment: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169809516300291
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I understand.
My point point is the definition of regular.
regular
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more adjective
1. arranged in or constituting a constant or definite pattern, especially with the same space between individual instances. "plant the flags at regular intervals"h Similar: methodical systematic
Like in Finland, Denmark has a hail season. It's not that prominent compared to other places, but it is there and it is regular.
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Nah, I switched to cycling because of the weather. In the winter it took me longer to clear the car windows of snow and ice that the actual drive to my work. Now with a bike I'm about as fast as with my car in total. But a bike costs less than a car - by a lot! It's something like 50-80 bucks per year including a service at my local bike dealer. That wouldn't get me enough gas to keep my car running for a month.
If weather is a concern for you then you need to research how to cloth yourself for different kind of weathers. It's perfectly fine to ride by bike in -15 °C (5 F) or strong rain with the right kind of clothes.
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Let me introduce you to this amazing technology called raincoats. I found them perfect for rainy cycling commutes.
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538 comments