Is c level a motorcycle or an e-bike? I’ve never seen an icon for an e-bike before, and if it is, I am loving the conciseness of the design. If not, there’s no way a motorcycle is better than a line bus right?
Just a bonus note from a Dutch guy, the text just below say lekker blijven likken, or: ‘just keep on licking’.
Weird that the longer bars are worse. It’s a cognitive flip, even if what it may represent (carbon footprint, maybe? Fossil fuel expenditure?) is growing with the lower tiers. Oh, and whoever made the poster missed the fantastic opportunity to use Heil! instead of hell.
The design of the bars is borrowed from the European energy efficiency labels for electronics. On those labels, longer bars mean higher energy consumption. So it’s probably meant to reptesent either fuel use or general environmental impact here.
Mate you ever rowed a boat? That shit is hard work, it goes below the bike for sure
Of course, the pedalo manages to combine the worst of both worlds and seems to exist solely as a way to work your quads out without looking like you're doing a gym session
If you have good balance, I think paddle boards are more efficient than a kayak, assuming your not carrying a load. You can put your whole body into the stroke. Kayaking destroys my shoulders
I'm definitely biased here since I spent years kayaking and have only gone paddleboarding twice, and I also definitely don't want to just be all "lol skill issue", but I think this might be an issue with your (kayak) paddling technique. You should be using your whole torso rather than your arms and shoulders
Anecdotal information from my observations only: I have two paddle boards, and a tandem kayak. When we go out, the person(s) in the kayak are always able to go faster with less effort - even if they are solo. Rowboats with oar locks are generally faster still, and none of us can even hope to keep up with one of those Hobie kayaks with the pedal driven mid drive.
I agree in perfect conditions, but paddleboards are completely impractical as transport. I once got blown out to sea by unexpected high winds while on a paddleboard and I was lucky there was a boat going past to pick me up. Kayaks on the other hand can handle rough seas and carry many days of food.
The bike’s production has a non-zero carbon footprint. A very small footprint, but one that is there nonetheless. The carbon footprint of walking is negligible in comparison.
Debatable, and largely depends on a person’s diet and some other factors like how much travel is getting done. If someone is fueling their biking (or walking) by flying in beef from the other side of the world, I think it is pretty safe to say that their carbon footprint is worse than a typical gas car, (because air travel and beef are just that bad) or if not that at least an electric car from renewables and ethically sourced materials. For everything else in between, we’d just be speculating and we’d have to factor in source and type of car fuel, and the source and type of additional food consumed by a cyclist where that “additional food” line lies exactly.
Controlling for diet, distance and purpose of travel, I think cycling virtually always wins over walking.
Shoe production has a non-zero carbon footprint, especially with the vast majority of shoes being a “single use” product (i.e. not resoleable) and with a very limited amount of miles
Not all shoes are so limited, you can buy shoes that have plenty of lifespan such as Brooks running shoes. I’ve put hundreds of miles on mine and they’re still in good shape. That being said with planned obsolescence and cheap manufacturing for fast turnover being prioritized, we end up with less reliable shoes.
And hundreds of miles, before you throw away a pair of shoes, my… Look, that might mean much to a Northern American who drives everywhere.
“Hundreds of miles” is what I actually run each year, and then I get lots of hiking and just walking around on top of that. I guess I can measure my Redwings and Hanwag in tens of thousands kilometers each, and my Lundhags I could pass down if I had kids.
I’m not sure I was disagreeing with you in the previous statement. I haven’t thrown my shoes I’ve only put hundreds of miles on yet.
My point is that it isn’t exactly easy to find good shoes unless you invest a lot of money into them, especially in North America since we’re specifying locales. Most stores, even specialty stores, don’t carry custom-made or handmade shoes that are re-soleable. You could blame that on car-dependency, but it’s more likely due to an overall lack of understanding why one would need shoes that last much longer. People spend their money on cheaper, shorter-life shoes because they don’t have that much money to begin with.
I’m not sure I was disagreeing with you in the previous statement
Then don’t repeat things I explicitly mentioned, as if I said something else?
Also get better examples. Brooks break down as easy as Asics, Saucony, whatever. They are exactly the “single use” product I spoke about, making the shoe and clothing industry in general highly non carbon neutral, which was my point.
it isn’t exactly easy to find good shoes unless you invest a lot of money into them
Yes, it’s called the Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Hundreds of miles? I’ve walked/run hundreds of miles on my ~$10usd shoes and they’re still holding together. I would expect a expensive pair to manage thousands or ten-thousands of miles.
It depends. Expended energy/m is higher but space usage is much lower. For walking you arguably don’t even need a paved path while (non-sport) cycling needs a somewhat even surface and places to store and lock the bike. It’s not nearly as bad as with cars but even with cycling, space usage can become an issue in very densely populated areas; the Dutch don’t build massive bike garages because it’s cool (okay, maybe also a little of that) but because it’s a necessity.
If it’s near enough to walk, it’s usually better to just walk.
I unironically want to see bicycle infantry back. Would also be a nice thing to have for the individual soldier, as time in the open is far more dangerous than being hidden or in a fortified position.
I remember a town hall at a corporation I worked for. It was fall. Winter weather was expected. Someone asks the EVP if work from home would become allowable, in cases of bad weather.
The EVP replies that this type of arrangement was between you and your line manager. The employee responds along the lines of “what I’d my line manager is not being reasonable?”
The EVP didn’t have a real response here. But management on my team was rolling it’s eyes. Of course, because they can afford an apartment downtown, and drive a company car, with company insurance.
If you are some poor entry level sap? You live with your mom in the suburbs, drive a beater, and if you slip on ice and hit a light post? Well your insurance rates just went up.
Not sure how this company handled covid. We all had cell phones and laptops so WFH was entirely feasible, just largely discouragd unless you have a very specific reason and a cool boss. Otherwise?
Why not figure out what distance it takes to get going say 30MPH and install speed bumps at those intervals? They hurt if you go over them to fast so its a disincentive to do so.
speed bumps are garbage for speed control, you need to make the cars weave with alternating bollards or curbs. Traffic circles and roundabouts use this method to reduce dangerous collisions.
For small streets with no lane markings: bollards placed on both sides so cars have to stop to let other cars through.
For large streets - lanes that weave near pedestrian crossings with curbs or jersey barriers force drivers to slow down and turn work best.
You 👏 can’t 👏 reduce 👏 the 👏 speed 👏 limit 👏 without 👏 also 👏 changing 👏 the 👏 street 👏 geometry! IT DOESN’T FUCKING WORK!
People don’t give a shit about the what the speed limit sign says; they drive at the maximum speed at which they feel safe and comfortable based on the lane width, curve sharpness, etc. If you want to slow people down, you HAVE TO physically change the road – narrow it, add chicanes, etc. – to make it “feel” less safe. It’s not fucking optional!
For some countries (looking at you, USA) it would have an additional benefit. Cops should do their actual job, not lurk in some corner hoping to catch someone speeding. That's something easily done automatically, so why waste man power for this shit...
To be clear, I’m not saying that the goal of reducing speeds is bad. I’m just saying that attempting to do so on the cheap by changing the rules instead of the built environment itself accomplishes nothing but to generate more lawbreaking. Well, that and potentially making the road even less safe than it was before because having a wider mix of speeds is even worse than having everybody at a uniformly too-high speed.
That seems more like an “and” than a “but,” since it’s a physical change to the road that makes it feel less safe. Anyway, nice find! I like how inventive and relatively inexpensive it is.
E-scooters and e-bikes don’t have speed limits that vary by street. In order to implement a governor capable of limiting a car to a 20 mph speed in certain areas while still allowing it to run at highway speeds in others, you’d need either a computer vision system to read the speed limit signs or a GPS paired with a perfectly complete and up-to-date speed limit geodatabase, and you’d need to give either such fallible computerized system control over the throttle (which could be a safety hazard in and of itself, for multiple reasons).
The difference between a e-bike governor and a car governor that can be set to something lower than 70 mph is like this.
Just have a 20 mph limit in the city, and no speed limit outside the city. This would also require moving all the highways outside the city, but I think that would be an improvement.
How’s that going to work? The car limits its speed on the basis of an onboard computer connected to the internet that knows your exact location? Kind of think we should be moving away from that kind of thing instead, cars that spy on you are creepy.
You don’t need the Internet, only gps. You can also design a system that only connects to the gps and internet network if you want to go over 20mph. That way the gps only tracks you on the highways or between cities.
But in general, driving a car is not a good option if you don’t want to be tracked, because you need to display an identifying number at all times. It’s common for police to use automatic license plate readers, and who knows how that data is stored.
The acoustic bicycle has been for a long time, and probably will be forever, the preferred vehicle for trouble making revolutionary types
I have a bicycle and use it more than my car but I still need a car and I don’t want my car to also be a computer. There is no way a feature explicitly restricting your behavior is going to be designed in a way that respects your privacy, most new cars already store all data and phone home unaccountably, and they’re obviously going to want to remotely upgrade where/what speeds are allowed in real time. Yeah there’s license plate trackers and those suck too but they aren’t always present everywhere or recording fine grain data to the same extent.
Until the people controlling the software can be trusted or the software/hardware is made entirely transparent IMO computers in cars beyond abs/transmission is bad and should be resisted.
They’re obviously going to want to remotely upgrade where/what speeds are allowed in real time
Thats a good point. I guess it would be a sacrifice to need to do an update every time the map changes. And probably cities will want to expand their slow zone and not want cars to speed. So an internet connection is probably necessary, at least to update the maps each time you turn on the car.
There is no way a feature explicitly restricting your behavior is going to be designed in a way that respects your privacy
I don’t see why this would be the case. Either way, you can think of this feature as a smart override to a dumb speed governor. Therefore, the software exists to expand your behavior.
I don’t want my car to also be a computer
That is a big ask. Particularly given the fact that the market inexplicably wants their cars to be a computer. It seems to be the case that people who want their privacy respected need to sacrifice some conveniences. So you probably will either have to struggle to maintain an old car, do a lot of modifications to a new car, or not drive a car at all, if you want your privacy respected in the near future, regardless of whether speed governors become mandated.
Given that this is c/FuckCars, i’d recommend not driving a car at all. Perhaps a DIY ebike is a good car replacement.
You acknowledge that an internet connection would be needed. There’s no chance these companies willingly make their software open source and if they did it wouldn’t help with the user adversarial goal of speed limiting so that’s an extra reason not to. So you’ve got an unaccountable black box with free reign to connect to company servers from your car, how do you expect that to go?
i’d recommend not driving a car at all
Yes, great, I’d love to, please give me the public transportation infrastructure I would need to make that happen. In the meantime let’s do the speed limiting low tech and outside of my car with bollards or whatever instead of making the experience of needing to drive even more hellish and dystopian.
Even if you try to simplify the system to “20 mph limit in the city, and no speed limit outside the city,” you still need an internet connection to tell you where the city limits are. This is especially true since they can change due to annexations.
Speeds should be set using the 85th percentile rule: the speed limit is whatever speed the 85th percentile driver goes.
The thing, though, is we should work backwards from figuring out a desired speed for pedestrian + cyclist safety and then build a road with the desired 85th percentile speed.
Absolutely right. My town just made every road 25mph. Great. Unfortunately nobody gives a fuck. The road out in front of my house just got repaved. It’s beautiful. I love it. Pulling in and out of my driveway has never been better. People also blast down it, mainly because I think they perceive speed differently on a nice smooth tarmac versus what was a cratered surface rivaling the moon. My suggestion to my neighbors is we just keep cars parked on the street all the time. If folks in opposing directions need to stick to a side to let others pass, it will naturally cause them to move more slowly.
Edit - Forgot to add, I listen to traffic engineers testify pretty regularly and consistently get mistreated, so I just want you to know that I appreciate what you’re saying and what you do.
My house is on a residential 25mph street with a slight S curve. There was a car parked at the end of the curve and a reckless driver managed to plow into it and flip their car. It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen. You would expect something like this on an interstate highway, not a tree lined street with little kids playing.
You seem to be under the impression that changing the speed limit sign is “better than nothing.”
It’s not.
It is, in fact, worse than nothing because having half the drivers comply with the lower speed limit and having half not creates a mix of speeds that’s even more dangerous than if everybody just drove at the same higher speed.
I’m dubious and don’t care enough to take the time. whatever mr traffic engineer, I guess we just can’t have nice communities because it’s even worse to TRY.
do you have any idea how pathetic it sounds? like a cult of apathy, doing anything is GOING TO COST MONEY genius… and even if it doesn’t work perfectly, it’s still better to try than throw your hands up in the air and accept dead pedestrians all the time.
oh now they’re scientists? even though they’ve referenced no facts, zero studies, but hey, let’s just make shit up ffs
I can’t decide which is more pitiful - him lying about being a traffic expert, or your blind assumption that he’s RIGHT because he’s lied about being a traffic expert.
fuckcars
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.