The movement against deaths by cars started with the death of a child’s journalist in a road accident. He (Vic Langenhoff) was the first person to use the term “stop de kindermoord” (stop the child murder). After his child’s death, he published an article with this headline. This slogan was a powerful message [2]. The original idea of Langenhoff was to protect the kids from cars by sending them in bus to the school, but soon after more experienced campaigners contacted him to redirect the campaign to reduce the danger in the roads. From this starting point, the group focused their efforts in increasing the roads safety, especially for children.
There were several demonstrations from the group: occupying accidents blackspots, organizing special days were streets were closed to allow children to play safely, they cycled with an organ in front of the house of the prime minister Joop den Uyl, to sing songs asking for safer streets [4]. A characteristic is that the protests involved both the parents and children [2]. One of the most remarkable protest, and is still use today, took place outside Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in the mid-1970s, were the participants laid down with their bicycles pretending to be dead [9]
In 1973, the oil crisis also gave momentum to the movement, and the government started the “Sunday free car” which reminded citizens how it was before the introduction of the car. The crisis increased the mass protest to improve road conditions, putting pressure on government to take measurements [2].
Two years after the creation of this group, the Dutch Cyclists’ Union was created, to demand more space for bicycles. They made mass noisy demonstrations, painted illegal lanes in streets, among others[4]. Both groups continue in the fight. “The battle goes on.. the propensity of urban planners to give priority to cars is still persistent”[4].
The 1960s had also witnessed in Amsterdam the movements of Provos (and later the Kabouters) - the Provos painted bycicles white that were left freely in the streets for public use. Their ideology was already anarchist-environmentalism. Opposition to the Dutch monarchy, the war in Vietnam and air pollution from automobiles became the major issues for the movement.
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