作为由全球顶级社科学术期刊《哈佛国际评论》（Harvard International Review）主办的写作竞赛，HIR哈佛国际评论学术写作竞赛（HAWC）自2020年创办以来，已成为国际中学生展示学术能力、培养全球视野的重要平台。其含金量不仅体现在赛事的权威性上，更在于对参赛者综合能力的深度锤炼和名校申请中的独特价值。
Surveillance has become a ubiquitous part of people’s lives; it takes any number of forms, but the surveillance state exists wherever governments do. Part of the national security law passed by China towards the end of June 2020 codified and expanded the Chinese government’s ability to massively surveil the citizens of Hong Kong in order to halt political subversion. In the United States, corporations and industry organizations—including the Chamber of Commerce—have urged the federal government to expand its use of facial recognition technology as a tool for policing, border security, and more. The Israeli government’s response to COVID-19 includes a provision granting the country’s internal security agency the power to monitor and collect cell phone location data. On a global scale, responses to the coronavirus are accelerating the expansion of the surveillance state, particularly as a tool for authoritarian regimes.
Currently, domestic surveillance law is under the purview of individual nations. But national borders cannot neatly confine the modern surveillance state as a domestic issue. Cross-border surveillance—when nations surveil individuals in other countries—is becoming increasingly prevalent, and laws controlling it have not kept up. Many countries simply have no restrictions on entities conducting electronic surveillance outside their borders. In contrast, the United States has specific legal frameworks regarding cross-border surveillance. And in the most extreme instances, the governments of multiple nations collaborate to conduct cross-border surveillance, as the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did with Project Echelon, “a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.”
Unfettered international surveillance creates an array of issues, from invading intellectual privacy to distorting power relationships between state and citizen to accelerating discrimination and human rights abuses. The surveillance state is ubiquitous and increasingly transnational, so the realm of international law presents an opportunity to build a theoretical framework for at least protecting the human rights and privacy of non-citizens from foreign surveillance. Considering and implementing this framework is a necessary first step in the path to a universal reduction in surveillance for all people in all nations.
While the origins of global surveillance reach back to intelligence sharing between Allied Powers’ armed forces during the Second World War, in recent decades, technology has increased the capacity of nations to conduct widespread surveillance due to the rise of mobile phones and the internet. The public’s awareness of this issue dramatically rose with Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks unveiling illegal surveillance conducted by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) and other nations’ intelligence agencies. The documents disclosed by Snowden unveiled the extent to which governments collaborated with one another and corporations to establish a system for the collection, analysis, and use of data on their citizens and non-citizens alike. The system includes collection of telephone metadata, email communications, financial transactions, smartphone data, and even the infiltration of commercial data systems (like private Google data centers). The Snowden leaks resulted in some policy changes by governments to strengthen already tenuous legal justifications for surveillance of their own citizens, but few privacy protections exist for the surveillance of non-citizens. This is where international standards ought to play a role.
A country surveilling its own citizens might be indirectly influenced by international standards, but the murkier problem of states surveilling non-citizens has the potential to be solved through the mechanisms of international institutions and law. The fundamental right to privacy is codified in the foundational documents of international institutions. For example, the foundational International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) reads that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.” Unfortunately, while other transnational issues like ozone pollution have been solved with the shared responsibility framework of international agreements, there has been far more cooperation between governments towards conducting surveillance than addressing its ramifications. Unlike other issues of international significance, surveillance is largely unseen, secret, rarely causes tangible harm. This significantly lowers the incentive for states to engage in cooperation to limit these activities, as the costs of secret, intangible surveillance are far exceeded by the benefits it confers to the intelligence and national security interests of states.
There is no single treaty that has been written or proposed on the issue, but the UN has not been silent on the issue of global surveillance. Since 2010, the body has issued several resolutions outlining the dangers of states surveilling non-citizens in particular. Reports from the UN Commissioner for Human Rights describe how systems of direct access and indiscriminate data collection limit people’s right to freedom of expression and discussion, create a high risk of abuse, and may facilitate illegal disclosure to third parties. The closest thing to a treaty affirming these resolutions was a set of principles the UN Human Rights Council put forward in 2014, called “International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance.” The core principles outlined are that surveillance must achieve a legitimate aim and be as minimally intrusive as possible and proportionate—confined to relevant information with a high probability of usefulness after the exhaustion of alternatives. But without adequate enforcement or incentive for states to adopt them, these sound principles do little to affect real change. Still, the document has been adopted by some non-state actors; hundreds of companies, organizations, experts, and elected officials have signed the principles document. However, it is still far from the kind of effective international treaty that has a chance at solving global issues.
In the absence of a consensus approach to international surveillance law for states, there are several ways to consider how surveillance should be interpreted from existing laws and principles. The first and most simple is an application of the Lotus Principle, an idea dating back to the League of Nations which posits that in the absence of explicit prohibitions on an activity, states may act as they wish. This interpretation means that without any explicit prohibitions on a state surveilling the citizens of another state, they are free to do so. But these laissez-faire interpretations are not adequate in the real world; their implication is a harmful, unregulated expansion of harmful non-citizen surveillance—in other words, what practically exists now.
Three different interpretations offer potential ways to push back on this. One uses the previously discussed ICCPR and the fact that surveillance of a foreign citizen could violate the global human right to privacy. Another rests on Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires all foreign officers to respect the laws of the country in which they are posted, meaning that surveillance conducted by diplomats is illegal (this was the basis of a 2017 criminal investigation in Turkey concerning embassy spying). Article 41 does not extend to non-diplomat citizens, but establishes the precedent that unfettered surveillance ought to be regulated. A final interpretation relies on the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity that could be extended to mean that surveillance constitutes an undue interference in the internal affairs of another state.
The simple fact that states do not respect these implied prohibitions means that the reality of the way international law governs foreign surveillance is far more permissive than prohibitive, but a theoretical approach based in human rights, the precedent of the Vienna Convention, and sovereignty means that prohibitive international surveillance law is possible to create.
The norm of states being permitted to engage in mass surveillance is slowly giving way. A combination of factors contributes to the changing norms: political pressure on heavily surveilling countries like the United States; rights-driven pressure from the UN, as illustrated by the previously mentioned resolutions; and economic pressure from technology companies that fear negative association with surveillance hurting their bottom line. This pressure was accelerated by the Snowden revelations, but it was not enough to spur lasting changes to international law. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring what the framework for future international surveillance law could look like.
Regulation of extraterritorial surveillance is unlikely to develop from state self-regulation. For example, the United States’ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act exists to provide structure to oversee requests for warrants to surveil foreign agents; however, no such structure exists for bulk transnational surveillance in the United States, and many countries have no such program at all. So, the development of international surveillance law has to be actively pursued.
The development of substantive policy on privacy and surveillance has proved difficult. Thus, in addition to the subject of the first stages of international surveillance law emphasizing transnational surveillance, they should also avoid establishing explicit substantive definitions and instead remain procedural in nature. Procedures should be built around accessibility and transparency; by minimizing the secret discretion afforded to governments, the potential for abuse can be significantly lessened. Critically, procedures should deemphasize the difference between surveilling citizens and non-citizens; this would significantly reduce the disparity in treatment between the two. Finally, procedures should be put in place to dynamically interpret transgressions of these principles. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provides an example of how to transnationalize rights through a court system. In particular, the case of Maximillian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner modeled the obligation and ability of states to protect the rights of their own citizens against transgressions by foreign powers. The inclusion of some form of court process—whether a new one or within an existing institution like the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—is essential to ensuring dynamic interpretations of the procedural norms in the eventual international surveillance regulation system.
A World Without Mass Surveillance
Although international surveillance law remains elusive, considering the theoretical framework of such a law is worthwhile. In the absence of norms or procedures governing it, transnational surveillance and the inherent unfettered privacy violations of non-citizens therein are only going to grow worse as technology improves and global crises provide justification. Identifying and implementing the most effective design of international surveillance law even in the face of profound difficulties is critical to protecting the human rights and privacy of non-citizens from foreign surveillance and the beginning of a world without mass surveillance.
On September 18, 2020, the front page of Dimokratia, a right-wing Greek newspaper, featured the headline “Siktir Git Mr. Erdogan,” meaning “F*** Off Mr. Erdogan.” In response, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leader of Turkey since 2014, filed an aggressively worded criminal complaint against the four people involved. Erdogan’s criminal report and the scramble by Greece and Europe to respond reveals the degree to which Erdogan’s desire for total control over his public image has expanded beyond Turkey’s borders, impacting the way he engages diplomatically with both allies and rivals. This diplomatic tension, unfolding against the backdrop of Turkey’s resumption of talks with Greece over energy control in the Eastern Mediterranean, highlights Erdogan’s use of journalists as leverage in his broader fight for regional hegemony. By weaponizing his abuse of the free press to serve his internationalagenda, Erdogan is signaling his increasing willingness to push the boundaries of international norms in his overall campaign for more geopolitical power.
Erdogan and the Press
Erdogan has had a rocky history with the press: the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 47 journalists are currently jailed in Turkey, and Erdogan has sued over 2,000 people for insulting him since taking office. The legal consequences for insulting the president as well as restrictions on vaguely defined “terror propaganda” and content that allegedly threatens national security contribute to an atmosphere of media self-censorship in Turkey. Even for journalists who don’t face legal consequences, the professional pressure to refrain from censuring the Erdogan government is strong, aided by government policies after the 2016 coup that forced over a hundred media outlets to shut down and required others to be transferred or sold at below-market rates to businessmen who are friends or allies of Erdogan. This functional cartel of business interests, which are intimately linked to Erdogan, transforms nearly all Turkish journalism, even privately-owned news outlets, into de facto state media. Because of this tight control, Turkey ranks 154th out of 180 on the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, lower than Russia and Pakistan.
An International Incident
While Erdogan’s relationship with the press in Turkey has consistently worsened since he took office, international outlets have, naturally, remained largely outside of his sphere of influence. The recent Dimokratia dispute, however, has appeared to change this norm: although the offensive headline was published in Greece, Erdogan has attempted to use the same aggressive legal threats that granted him full control of the Turkish press to silence international journalists as well. Rather than address his concerns with Dimokratia to the newspaper directly or to relevant Greek officials, Erdogan has attempted to resolve his dispute exclusively within Turkey’s bureaucracy, a major affront to Greek sovereignty. Inflating the severity of the headline from a personal slight to a perceived international crime, Erdogan’s complaint was submitted directly to the Ankara prosecutor’s office. Although the only “suspects” named in the complaint were the four journalists directly involved in the publication of the article (Manolis Kotakis, Andreas Kapsampelis, Yorgos Giatroudakis, and Dimitris Rizoulis), Erdogan’s complaint also implicated broader Greek society; it asserted that, “considering the silence of the Greek public, it is understood that this moral collapse is not limited to marginal segments.” This view that all of Greece was somehow involved in the headline’s aggressive view of Erdogan’s administration was echoed by Dimokratia itself, who responded to the backlash by saying that their headline “said everything that all the Greeks wanted to say.”
Acting on his complaint implicating the entire Greek public, Erdogan has mobilized all levels of Turkey’s government to fight the perceived slight against him, treating it as an affront to Turkey rather than to Erdogan as a private citizen.Fahrettin Altun, Communications Director at the Turkish Presidency, wrote a letter to the Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas, stating: “on behalf of the Turkish government, I condemn in the strongest terms the publication of insults directed at our President.” In a letter to Greek Justice Minister Kostantinos Tsiaras, Turkish Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül goes even further: “I strongly condemn and find this immoral and shameless act unacceptable that is presented under the guise of freedom of the press but is far from the objective of freedom of the press and in no way compatible with the peaceful intentions required by international law.” This understanding of the “objective of freedom of the press,” apparently defined by Gül as media that does not offend the sensibilities of foreign leaders, was not fully embraced by the Greek foreign ministry, which was summoned by the Turkish government over the incident. In response, the Greek ministry wrote:
Freedom of expression and freedom of the Press are fully protected in Greece. This fact does not negate the obligation to refrain from insulting the personality of any individual, particularly a foreign leader. The use of offensive language is contrary to our country’s political culture and can only be condemned.
Although they did not accept Turkey’s broad assertion that insulting Erdogan should be internationally illegal, the Greek officials’ willingness to condemn the headline reveals Erdogan’s surprising influence in Greek matters. By garnering a somewhat receptive response to his rather aggressive claim, Erdogan has succeeded in his goal of pushing the boundaries of Turkish influence a little further, thus encroaching on Greek sovereignty.
Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean
Erdogan’s decision to use Turkish bureaucracy to fight the headline makes sense, as his complaint argued that “the target of this despicable act was not only the president, but the interest of Turkish nation that Erdogan defends with determination in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea.” Erdogan’s determination to be the sole defender of the Eastern Mediterranean has been the topic of significant international scrutiny lately as Turkey, Greece, the European Union, and NATO have recently resumed talks over energy control in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ever since large amounts of hydrocarbon were discovered in the Mediterranean, Turkey and Greece have struggled to delineate their maritime borders in the region. Typically, such disputes would be decided by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which governs the boundaries of exclusive economic zones off the coast of countries. However, Turkey has not acceded to UNCLOS (Greece has), and both countries claim historical control over islands in the Eastern Mediterranean that would make the region their exclusive economic zone. Because of these disputed territorial claims, the issue of regional control remains hotly contested. Control of the Mediterranean is especially important to Turkey, as Cem Gürdeniz, a former Turkish admiral, described gaining control over the sea as “defending our blue homeland [...] after our continental shelf was stolen by Greece and Cyprus,” singling it out as “the greatest geostrategic challenge of the century.”
In pursuit of total control, Turkey has deployed two research vessels near Cyprus over the past few months, ratcheting up tension in the region. These tensions peaked in August, when Turkish and Greek military vessels collided in the Eastern Mediterranean, causing years of slowly bubbling tensions to reach a boiling point. While Turkey has since removed the offending ship from the waters, its recent aggressive moves—the continued deployment of more naval vessels—have exacerbated the consistent tensions between Turkey and the EU over maritime control. In treating the Eastern Mediterranean as Turkey’s exclusive territory before the dispute has been settled, Erdogan has demonstrated his willingness to presumptively act as if he has control over other sovereign states, then occasionally pull back when challenged. While none of these disputes have escalated into military confrontations, Erdogan’s tendency to push the outer bounds of international acceptability demonstrates a deeply concerning trend. The recent criminal complaint against Dimokratia is only the latest in Erdogan’s series of nonviolent but unmistakably aggressive moves toward Greece, which strategically pushes them into a constantly reactive, defensive position when entering talks.
Erdogan’s consistent challenges to Greek control through military actions and attempted media censorship have certainly upset some Greek officials, including Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who has stated, “one thing is certain: Turkish provocation, whether manifested through unilateral actions or through extreme rhetoric, can no longer be tolerated.” However upsetting they may be to Prime Minister Kyriakos, Erdogan’s consistent “provocations” may make sense for Turkey’s long-term geopolitical strategy, as they allow Erdogan to regain the perceived upper hand in diplomatic talks mediated by Germany and the European Union (EU). Maintaining dominance in diplomacy is clearly important to Turkey, as Erdogan has repeatedly warned the EU that they must be impartial in negotiations and expressed concerns about possible biases toward existing EU members, specifically Greece and Cyprus. In forcing the Greek people to respond to his complaint against Dimokratia, Erdogan could be attempting to regain some of the influence he feels he has lost in the EU’s mediation.
While Turkey may be somewhat disadvantaged in negotiations with the EU, it is ostensibly on equal footing with Greece within NATO, in which both countries are members. On October 1, Greek and Turkish negotiators agreed to a bilateral de-confliction mechanism through NATO that includes the establishment of a hotline between the two countries to prevent military conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean. Assuming this mechanism will be effective in preventing military conflict, which is far from guaranteed, the NATO resolution only sets the basic groundwork for diplomatic discussions of long-term control over the hydrocarbon reserves. These broader discussions, as of right now, are still being mediated by the EU and its member states.
Erdogan’s decision to target members of the Greek press, whether as a strategic provocation to gain leverage in energy negotiations or simply the protection of a totalitarian strongman’s ego, reveals his disregard for the free press of other sovereign states. Erdogan’s attempted encroachment on Greek press not only highlights his willingness to treat journalists as pawns in his geopolitical power struggles, but also advances his concerning pattern of provocations toward Greece in particular and Europe in general, including his recent assertion that French President Emmanuel Macron needs “some sort of mental treatment.” This comment, coupled with Erdogan’s increasing military aggression, has caused the EU to threaten to impose sanctions against Erdogan if his affronts toward EU nations continue. As Greece and the EU head into energy talks with Turkey, how they choose to respond to Erdogan’s more aggressive maneuvers, both military and diplomatic, may be pivotal in the broader struggle over regional dominance.
To equitably address health and climate change worldwide, one solution stands out: the bicycle. However, bicyclists compete with drivers in most countries, and cyclists’ vulnerability to crime discourages their use in higher crime neighborhoods. Unfortunately, many lower-income, ethnic-minority neighborhoods lack the safest bicycle facilities because allocation of funds depends on the public participation process, which requires many volunteer hours and knowledge of which bicycle facilities are the safest. Bicyclists also compete at public meetings with home and business owners who want to continue to have cars parked on the side of the road, and transportation officials often side with those residents and business owners, not the bicyclists who would use the public right-of-way for transportation.
To change from the current system, decision makers charged with responding to the larger issues of health and climate change should allocate funding based on those concerns while avoiding making decisions for just the loudest residents’ interests. Also, climate change should be anthropomorphized so she has a voice at public hearings and can offer her insights when rewriting bicycle facility design guidelines.
What Environments Are Safest?
In a recent study conducted in Boston’s lower-income, ethnic-minority neighborhoods, individuals familiar with the neighborhoods examined 32 pictures of different bicycle environments to gauge their potential for adverse safety outcomes, such as crime or crashes. Eight groups, deemed community sense, included individuals from churches and YMCAs, and five of the groups, deemed street sense, included residents in halfway houses and homeless shelters or gang members. Including this latter group was critically important because they see opportunities for crime and can suggest how to lessen vulnerability. Their comments, aligned with 55 different themes, offered details about the best and worst bicycle surfaces and contexts through which to travel.
From the quantitative ranking, the two-way cycle track or protected bicycle facility was the safest related to crime, and the shared-use path was the least safe. Related to crashes, the shared-use path and the two-way cycle track ranked the highest.
A wide two-way cycle track with newly painted lines, bike stencils, and arrows that indicate the correct direction to bike represented the lowest crime risk. Some participants figured that bicyclists would know the way back home, so they would avoid getting caught in risky situations. Contextually, the participants felt safest in areas with good lighting, clean signs, well-maintained greenery, and homes and businesses, while they felt more at risk in areas with litter and dark alleys.
Participants reported that one-way wide red cycle tracks with a median, a bicycle stencil, and a directional arrow were safest in terms of crashes, while the safest surrounding context for low crashes had people around to report the crash and bicycle signals. Cars nearby, bus stops, and multiple intersections decreased crash-related safety, the participants felt.
How Do Current Guidelines Fare?
Unfortunately, current bicycle facility guidelines do not reflect the participants’ feedback. Guidelines such as those published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) used the same materials in the bicycle facilities that engineers specify for the construction of roads such as lines, delineator posts, signals, and signs, leaving other bicycle-specific facilities out of the mix. While the transportation guidelines suggest lessening crash risk with barrier-protected cycle tracks and bicycle signals, they do not mention reducing the corresponding crime risk. Furthermore, the AASHTO and NACTO bike guidelines do not discuss refined details about the surface of the bicycle facility, such as faded stencils, or the surrounding context through which the bicycle facility passes, such as cafes, second-story windows, and shops for added surveillance. Therefore, incorporating these environmental factors could significantly improve the safety and desirability of biking.
The Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles also reflect dated ideas about bicycles and crime. Published in the 1960s and 1970s, they included the recommendation for “eyes on the street,” a concept involving neighbors knowing neighbors. However, on a Main Street with sidewalk cafes and storefronts, not everyone would know the bicyclists passing. Therefore, the study’s insights suggested updating the CPTED to foster caring amongst strangers through locally owned sidewalk cafes, flowers, room-creating tree canopies, and downward warm lighting to enhance bicyclists. By incorporating the context enhancements from this study, city officials might see the economic development benefits from an enhanced cycle track network.
Building Equitable Bike Infrastructure Everywhere
The insights from this research came from individuals familiar with lower-income ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States, and these neighborhoods are the last to have the state-of-the art bicycle facilities. The current system to get the best facilities involves the public participation process, and the largest group of work-commute bicyclists live in households that make less than $10,000 each year. Since they have less time to attend countless hearings, this means policymakers do not take their opinions into account.
However, another approach exists. Other countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, decided to provide wide bicycle-exclusive cycle tracks and penalize a driver if they hit a bicyclist starting in the 1970s. The Dutch and Danish residents do not have to spend hours in evening hearings making the case for the bicycle facilities because building bicycle facilities is as automatic as building roads and sidewalks.
While these enhanced demarcations would be easy to conceptualize in China due to the country’s long history of providing extremely wide cycle tracks, the practice would be more difficult in crowded countries such as India or Nigeria. In these countries, cycle tracks are an open space that can quickly fill with vendors, temporary housing, or piles of gravel and sand. The best way to discourage encroachment would be enforcement of existing rules and beautification of the corridor and edges so that users realized the bicycle place is sacrosanct, along with a steady flow of bicyclists.
Cycle Track Systems as a Series of Living Rooms
To help frame the design of these bicycle facilities in different countries, city officials could think of cycle tracks as a series of living rooms. This distinction is necessary because a vehicle occupant and a bicyclist are not in the same environment. The vehicle occupant is sitting in a locked living room with a controlled temperature, seating comfort, sound, and even perhaps company. The bicyclist has no crumple zone, no protection from the weather, and is vulnerable to crime and crash contact.
When the bicyclist travels through a series of living rooms, they would want a consistent carpet or hardwood floor so they did not have to look down and could instead look up and enjoy the rooms as the pass through. They also would prefer to have a carpet runner as a desire line to help in their decision about direction of travel. In going from one living room to another, they would know, seeing a closed door, to stop and wait until given permission to enter. The bicyclist would be bored if traveling from one unoccupied beige room to another and would appreciate color variation, views out windows, and casual conversations with people sitting on the couch. Bicyclists would be hesitant to enter a dark room because furniture might be in the way, and they would find a room more inviting if lit with shaded lamps. The bicyclists would also appreciate details in the living rooms such as geraniums in the windows and seeing the children playing with the dollhouse.
The Dutch, who have been perfecting the bicycle environment since the 1970s, offer insights. The Dutch have red carpets on their cycle tracks to distinguish the bicycle environments from the road sections for vehicles. They also have timed bicycle signals as closed doors that open when bicyclists have their turn to enter the road. Bicyclists travel on the smooth red carpets besides housing areas, parks, cafes, and schools, and they can always enjoy the view because they do not have to be looking down for potholes. On the red carpet cycle tracks, the Dutch bicyclists are in their own room and, if a vehicle enters their room, the driver receives a citation. Sometimes the Dutch bicyclists are traveling through a living room shared with drivers but, in this room, the driver again receives a citation if she harms the bicyclist. Unlike the car occupant who is sheltered from rain and snow, the Dutch cyclist has to bike in the elements, but their travel surface, colorful storefronts, and views of nature are consistently present.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The car culture is so dominant in some countries that even the best efforts only result in isolated segments of cycle tracks. Especially in the United States, the public participation process is an unfair time burden on the bicyclists who have to attend countless hearings where the transportation officials,all on full salary, present their plans. Even the time citizens spend in meetings does not result in cycle tracks, so discouragement runs high.
While the overall number of bicyclists killed is lower than the overall number of vehicle occupants killed, bicyclists are killed at disproportionate rates, which reveals the unjust risk for bicyclists, more responsive to climate change than even electric vehicles. In the discussions about autonomous vehicles, bicyclists become secondary or non-existent, but AVs will only add to congestion in high density cities with growing populations, hurting bicyclists further.
Building on the Dutch example has involved copying some picturesque elements from their bike facilities, but it has regrettably not included their commitment to build the best bicycle facilities. Rather than just looking at the pictures in the Dutch bike facilities book, all countries should hire Dutch engineers and solicit their input on the best locations for bicycle facilities, as well as local communities. Elected officials should take their advice. If they do not, they should not be re-elected.
Rather than only showing car owners the stick, governments should also introduce carrots such as off-street car parking with EV charging stations so wide cycle tracks can replace parallel parking. Furthermore, the homeowners who live near tall apartment buildings should be able to buy, and not just rent, the vacant parking spaces in the building.
With dense cities, income disparities, care for racial issues, and climate change, the time is right to change the current model and establish new priorities. By focusing on the bike, it is possible to rethink the built environment and identify the best decisions for this generation’s health and the planet’s future.
Anne Lusk is a Research Associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she is one of the world's foremost experts in promoting bicycle usage among lower-income and marginalized communities.
