> as long as the rest of the traffic is also similarly light weight.
This. I'd love to use an electric bakfiets to move my kids and myself around, but I'd be doing it on roads where people are moving around 1-2 tonne pieces of steel inches from the bike... The safety engineering of these bikes (and rickshaws) are just nowhere near a car, and unfortunately in my environment I cannot ensure sufficient distance.
I know it is important that bicycle infrastructure feels safe otherwise people will not start biking. From my own experience safety is usually not a problem, bakfiets are visible in traffic and the kids are obvious in most cargobikes.
My point is that the safety engineering is pretty good because the threats are so much smaller. Cars need protection because they move in very dangerous ways. Infrastructure is important because there is no way to be safe from a car crashing into you at 50mph.
Safety engineering takes a parameter: the environment you want to be safe in. For bakfietsen, the parameter chosen clearly wasn't on kilometers of fietsstroken on through-fares where to most likely collision isn't with another bakfiets or cyclist, but with a car. And it would be very difficult to do so, without turning it into a mini-car I suppose.
I'm Dutch. Many Dutch roads are, but also here there's a difference between urban and more rural environments. My particular environment has fietsstroken on an N-weg (which is signed at 50 km/h, but people often drive faster) as only option. These stroken were painted before 2006, when their advised minimum width was set at 1.5 m (they're still 1 m). I don't even cycle comfortable there myself, and I've lived in France for years which also didn't have great infra or friendly motorists. I've tried to argue (and will continue to do so) with my municipality for a separate bike road (or trail even), but since we're in a valley and between private land owners and legally untouchable nature areas, that bike road would need to come out of a car road. Since everybody drives here, that's not going to happen unless fuel prices triple or something.
This. I'd love to use an electric bakfiets to move my kids and myself around, but I'd be doing it on roads where people are moving around 1-2 tonne pieces of steel inches from the bike... The safety engineering of these bikes (and rickshaws) are just nowhere near a car, and unfortunately in my environment I cannot ensure sufficient distance.