When I arrived in Copenhagen for my week-long visit, it felt like I landed in the opposite world of Toronto. There was plenty of congestion on the roads, but it was bikes clogging the streets and not cars. Shop owners weren't demanding more parking for vehicles but were providing their own racks for bikes. Businesses were lobbying for more streets to become pedestrianized. It seemed like I had travelled into the future of what a sustainable transportation city could look like.

This was driven home when I was sitting having lunch with Andreas Rohl, project manager for Copenhagen's cycling infrastructure, when the Dane shocked me with the simple statement: "We try to never talk to the public about cycling safety."

Copenhagen is vying for the title of the western world's best bike city. About 40 per cent of trips made by residents are on bike. When the weather allows it, the number reaches 60 per cent. The city has adopted a goal that 50 per cent of all trips in the greater Copenhagen region be made by bike by 2015.

With so many people riding on two wheels (and more by three wheels and cargo bikes), wouldn't safety be at the top of the list of priorities?

"Riding a bike is like brushing your teeth in Copenhagen. It's just a part of our everyday life. But every project we do has the goal of making cycling more safe. We just feel if we start to talk publicly about safety, people will start to doubt if cycling is safe," says Rohl.

From a Torontonian's perspective, it's a wonder that any cyclist in Copenhagen would feel unsafe riding. A large percentage of bike lanes have their own curb and are raised a few inches above the road used by cars (and a few inches below the sidewalk). Other lanes are completely separated, with either bike or vehicle parking used as a buffer. There are traffic signals specifically for bikes, bright blue lanes are painted at intersections, and in the suburb of Frederiksberg, a few bike lanes even have green LED lights so drivers and riders can identify the allocated road space when it's dark.

I happened to be in Copenhagen in early May when a video appeared on YouTube of a Danish police officer stopping a male cyclist, handing him a bike helmet and giving him a hug. Text scrolled across the screen that stated "We love you and would love you to wear a helmet."

The viral film, produced by the Danish Cyclists Federation in the country's fourth largest city of Aalborg, has put Copenhagen's bike and traffic planners at odds with the federation.

"We don't have a law in Copenhagen mandating cyclists to wear helmets," says Brian Hanson, the head of the city's traffic planning department. "We have no problem with anyone wearing a helmet and understand the safety benefits of it. But we've studied the topic many times and the results are always the same: it will decrease ridership significantly. We feel the health benefits of bike riding – active lifestyle, very low carbon emissions, clean air – far outweigh the risks of riding without a helmet." And with ridership still increasing in the city, cycling is becoming even more safe. "The number of accidents has been decreasing year after year. More bikes on the road means it's safer for cyclists," says Hansen.

Mikael Colville-Andersen, a transplanted Calgarian who now runs the popular English-language bike blogs Copenhagenize.com and CopenhagenCycleChic.com, went so far as to create a parody of the road safety commissions video – when a man stops him and hands him a helmet, instead of putting it on himself, he places the helmet into the cargo space of his bike and uses it as an ice bucket for two beers.

"The last thing we need in this city is to have the culture of fear creep into the world of cycling," Colville-Andersen says.

The day after I returned to Toronto I strapped on my helmet and rode the four kilometres from my home to my office. As I squeezed in between streetcars and parked cars and listened to drivers honk at me for taking up too much of the road, I fretted about how two cities like Copenhagen and Toronto, with such similar geography, climate and density, could have such different attitudes toward riding a bike.

Even as Toronto modestly tries to move our transportation habits into the future, I couldn't help but feel we're still living far in the past.

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Matthew Blackett is the publisher of Spacing, a magazine about Toronto's urban landscape and public spaces.