As a semi regular tourist to the Netherlands from North America it took a bit to adjust to all the modes of traffic at once but now I can easily navigate and stay safe around bikes, mopeds, trams, skinny cars etc. But I’m also a seasoned traveller in the region.
So, there would be an adjustment period for the population of your country, and it might take a while, and depending on culture might not be easy.
The first day in Netherlands I learned that when surface under my feet changes, when I'm crossing the line between two surfaces I need to look back over my shoulder because there might be someone coming in fast. I apply this rule since I learned it in every country I live and it works great.
I live in England, so there are already bike lanes and such, they're just not as widespread as I wish they were and its almost always part of a car lane or a pedestrian lane
My mother cycled from NL -> -> BE -> FR -> UK Stone henge and back again.
Never again she said. It's a lovely country but the cycling infrastructure was ... questionable to say the least (according to her).
Which I found surprising, as their hiking trails are awesome and very well kept! For example I loved hiking on the Jurasic Coast and Cornwall. (Even signed up a for a National Trust memberships)
Can confirm, I've done quite a lot of walking and properly marked trails are generally very well kept. I've walked quite a lot of the Cornwall coastline and there are active efforts to improve the walkability in certain areas in response to storms and such like. But yeah, you're very unlikely to find any kind of cycling infrastructure outside of cities, and even then its not amazing
My memories of living in the UK is that there's a weird disconnect where "everyone walks" so walkers are treated as in-group and supported in their hobbies of walking, while "only lycra-clad fitness freaks cycle" so they're an out-group and demonised. This also extends to "how dare cyclists not need to pay road tax" when pedestrians also don't and also have essentially the same requirements for road surface quality, and lead to the same resurfacing requirements, as a bike.
Also, the UK romanticises the countryside — not just because it has some nice bits, but as part of its own national identity — and the imagined ideal when I was a kid was some old guy with a flat cap and a walking stick wearing tweed as they walk through it, not a cyclist.
Basically the imagery of 1974 J. R. R. Tolkien Calendar[0] (how did that ever happen?) crossed with Last of the Summer Wine[1].
This romanticist nonsense also means that adequately lit and drained paths - for walking, cycling and wheeling at all hours - inevitably attract rural NIMBY ire.
"Preserve the character of our rural village with its 5000 SUVs and its manor house built by plantation owners".
Presumably someone's done a Tolkien fanfic where it turns out the hobbits have a bunch of plantations in Numenor or somewhere populated by enslaved Uruks, and the twee-ness is a front for general assholeness and moral hypocrisy?
Decent amount of manufactured goods, always enough food, no sign of a serf labouring class or any manufacturing to speak of.
It's 18th(ish) century rural England, without all the stuff that made 18th century rural England a relatively comfortable place, which is to say colonies, the slave trade, the early industrial revolution and so on.
My city (Valencia, Spain) generally has good biking infrastructure but recently they redid an intersection and came up with this monstrosity. Even for locals it's confusing / dangerous.
In the direction I travel frequently, I have to stop in the middle of the bike lane which is sandwiched between two pedestrian crossing to wait for a light. Once the light turns I cross over three lanes of vehicle traffic and immediately am thrown into a bike lane crossing my path. The cars here give you no leeway so if you are slightly late in crossing (and there's only about 3 seconds between the "hurry up the lights gonna change soon" flashing light to the cars getting a green light) then you have no place to stop / slow and look if there's any bikes coming.
After that you are directly in a pedestrian crossing zebra zone in the island, which then throws you into anther bike crossing, another pedestrian zone and then finally crossing the other three lanes of traffic. Of course on the other side you t-bone directly into another bike lane, and then the lane I'm on turns into a "mixed use" lane (just paint on the sidewalk).
Probably any change in country takes some time to adjust to traffic. Coming from the Netherlands, I got quite confused when driving in San Francisco, by many wide roads without any clear road markings. Which parts are meant for overtaking, pre-sorting for turns, parking on the side of the road or just parallel driving lanes? On several roads that could fit 3-6 cars I couldn't tell the direction of traffic on the middle lane(s) or the lane separations.
> Probably any change in country takes some time to adjust to traffic. Coming from the Netherlands, I got quite confused when driving in San Francisco,
To be fair, driving in SF is a challenge even for many people coming from other parts of California, due to the high density plus the steep and narrow topography of the city. Whereas someone coming from Pittsburgh might not find it strange due to the similar topography.
Until regenerative braking came around with hybrid and electric cars, SF cars needed very frequent brake pad changes.
I live in The Netherlands (actually in the same city as the photo's were taken): There is a very large difference in traffic density and complexity between the larger cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and the rest of the country (including middle sized cities).
When I visit one of those larger cities, I am also constantly looking for bikes everywhere not to be crashing into me.
So, there would be an adjustment period for the population of your country, and it might take a while, and depending on culture might not be easy.