cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/17684914
Cycling would also help to reduce the amount of dangerously fat people. Which is an ever increasing problem.
It also help to just feel better in general.
And not just fat people. It helps prevent cardiovascular diseases.
For me the biggest benefit aside from generally increased fitness is how it helps with my mental health. It’s hardly a new revelation that exercising regularly is good for your mental health. But it’s so much easier to get yourself to move when you have to to get somewhere than it is if it’s purely for exercise. At least for me.
But it’s so much easier to get yourself to move when you have to to get somewhere than it is if it’s purely for exercise. At least for me.
That’s definitely not just in your case!!
We can keep going. Reducing the amount of fat people will ease the strain on hospital systems and health care expenses.
True story: I was just at presentation for cyclists… there were maybe 30 of us. Every single person, young and old, were trim and healthy looking.
Go to any car show, and let me know if you can say the same. LOL
I dated someone for a couple months who was really into cycling. Like, she’d ride from NYC up to Storm King (~75 miles) for funsies. She had the body of a greek god. (Was also super smart and pursuing an interesting career. I’m still sad she dumped me, but she was reasonably kind about it.)
This reminds me of a story of a guy that lost his license due to an accident he caused, he was extremely overweight and had heart medication.
His coworker asked what he was going to do about it and if there was a possibility of him quitting or getting fired because he couldn’t drive to work anymore.
The guy asked his coworker for a spare bike and started going to and leaving from work in a bycicle from that point on and about a year (or maybe less than a year?) later, the guy is already off heart medications, lost something along the lines of 100kg, something crazy, and he was as fit as he could be.
He got his license back and decided to not drive anymore unless absolutely necessary. They guy was essentially unrecognizeable.
As inspiring as that sounds, I wonder about how easy it is for someone facing obesity to ease into cycling. Their own machine and their balance struggle will have an uphill battle against that weight, and it may be especially scary if they live in a car heavy area.
Curious about this story, since I may know people who would benefit from such experience, both in terms of fitness and extra transit options!
I got you (apologies for the Reddit link)
https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1jl1l7h/mate_lost_his_licence_for_dui_and_its_been_the/
Fk yeah Jeff
dangerously fat people
This isn’t a particularly nice phrasing - I think the same meaning could easily be conveyed with some slightly kinder choice of words.
Threateningly chubby?
Problematically plus-sized?
suspiciously reddit-worded?
Venomously rotund?
Expensively not dangerously
In my country its not just expensive but also dangerous. Lots of health issues and lowered life expectancy
Increased exercise won’t reduce the number of fat people. Fat people are caused by hormone levels typically due to diet. If you increase calories burned and do not address the hormones, fat bodies will simply increase caloric intake to maintain the balance.
Cardiovascular health and strength improves with increased activity. And these are great health benefits. But diet is the way to reduce the amount of fat one is carrying.
Cycling and walking are also far healthier options since they count for the whole “if you walk at least 30 minutes a day your chances of heart conditions drop by 70%” thing.
Even better, the fewer the cars around, the better it gets for everybody who walks and cycles (due to decreased pollution and less danger on the road).
Even electric cars and even if 100% of our electricity was from renewables still pollute due to the micro-particles produced by the tires when rolling on the road (and heavier vehicles make this worse).
I think cardiovascular disease risk drops more than 70% if you dont eat meat, which is another critical requirement for softening climate catastrophe too
You can eat meat and stay perfectly healthy
to be honest; a factor of 10 seems a bit low
who do I need to kill to get the infrastructure going?
You can start with politicians like Doug Ford in Ontario, Canada. He passed bills letting him rip out fairly new bike lanes from Ontario’s largest city’s downtown, banning the entire province from building new bike lanes without his approval, and hidden in his bill is legislation that lets him build highways without doing any environmental assessments.
All while Canada is in a economic and housing crisis, a time where bicycles and bike lanes can lower cost of living and support denser housing developments.
he’s been on my list since that wind farm thing
Whoever rules Prague. I travel to a lot of European cities and that one is continuously throwing a middle finger at pedestrians, especially given the size and planning of the city center.
I was surprised to see even Berlin and Munich doing much better.
Yeah, but bicycles don’t have the same profit margins as cars
Edit: just gonna add that I was being snarky with this comment. I’m for walkable cities with quality public transportation infrastructure.
Might be less of a difference than we would think since every shared car would presumably become multiple bikes.
Eg: Family of 4 that have 1 car, turns into 4 bikes?
Of course big oil wouldn’t like that very much. Screw you big oil, you are a turd.
Around here families of four probably have at least two cars. I didn’t realise what ‘car-dependency’ looked like until I moved out of London. People tell me, “You don’t have transport,” but I walk, I have a bike, I get the bus or the train.
My $4k piece of carbon and $3k hunk of titanium would like to have a word…
I would bet just about anything that the only reason profit margins could possibly be higher for a car is due to volume — which, if everyone rode bikes, wouldn’t be an issue at all.
Absolute profit, sure — cars are more expensive, so they’ll win out.
$7k doesn’t get you much of a car. That’s the beauty of bikes, getting something that is basically professional-tier is still quite within reason to be purchased by an average consumer.
and yet people will be shocked that a decent everyday bike can cost as little as £500. For some reason they expect them to be practically free. For much less you can only buy a BSO (Bicycle-Shaped Object)
You can definitely get a good daily-driver for less than that if you buy used and aren’t scared of learning a bit of bike maintenance.
Alternatively, people should look into cycling co-ops. There’s one in my town that refurbishes old bikes and sells them for around $100 (Canadian)
I think maybe in total I’ve sunk ~$2k into my road bike, and that’s with upgrades for more than half of that figure. By being strategic (i.e making liberal use of AliExpress), you can get a very high quality bicycle for shockingly little money.
Lol $7K doesn’t get you much of a bike these days, at least if you’re trying to keep up with the lycra warriors. Meanwhile you can still get a top-shelf '90s era bike for $50.
Idk, I’ve built a very respectable bike for $2k. Sure, if you want to top spec absolutely everything, that will cost you, but you really, really don’t need it.
Bikes really are a downward spiral. First people don’t need to spend 20% of your annual salary into their car so they have all this extra money that they can use.
Worse! Since they are now traveling through their city in open air rather in a glass and steel prison they might start noticing local businesses and spend their money there rather than the billionaire’s owned giant box store.
And now that they arrive home on their bike they will stay to notice their neighbors, maybe even say hi and start building local communities. It’s also much easier to build a local community when you don’t have deadly machines that you need to avoid passing in front of your house all the time.
It’s worse for the economy if people have to buy and run cars because that’s money that could have spent elsewhere. It’s “lost opportunity cost” to have to have cars.
Bicycles also help reduce health costs. As does walking and good public transport.
have you seen the latest price of the most expensive bikes? Maybe not a car price of the last couple years, but the most expensive bikes are the same price of small car in the 90’s and 00’s.
And please also note, that people have more than 1 bike (but not the expensive ones)
People don’t buy carbon fiber bicycles for commuting and those who do tend to have them stolen unless the have a closed and locked place to but them at both ends of the commute.
If there’s one thing I learned from living in The Netherlands is that you want a bicycle for day to day commute which is impeccably maintained whilst looking like crap (which explains why most bicycles outside Amsterdam Central Station look shabby).
Fancy bicycles are for Sunday Cyclists.
Also park your shitty looking bike next to one of those fancy bikes.
👍
Modern bikes are beyond insane. Like, $10K to $15K is considered normal and appropriate - just to get disc brakes, electronic shifting, internally-routed cabling etc. Meanwhile I look for '90s era hybrids on Craigslist for $50 or thereabouts and get thousands of miles out of them - and somehow I’m still able to shift gears and stop when necessary.
Electronic shifting?
Yeah, like the derailleur is moved by a little electric motor instead of by cable. So you can control it with your phone - which is considered important for some reason.
As I understand it, the gears always being perfectly indexed is the big selling point for electronic gears.
I wouldn’t know since I run mechanical, but this is what I’ve heard.
I mean, in 40+ years of bike riding (always mechanical) I’ve never had a problem with the indexing on shifters. At most I occasionally have to click a lever twice instead of once, or twist the handlebar a bit more. It just seems like a (very expensive) solution in search of a problem.
You’ve never used the barrel adjuster in 40 years of riding?
Oh my god
Wow. I bought my city ebike for about $2K and it’s served me fine. I’ve maybe spent $50 in maintenance in the year since, and $200 in cycling gear.
Agree. I saw a review of an e-bike that could ring using an alarm if you didn’t find it or something. Why?!
We need to develop e-bike and cargo-bike vehicules to be fully inclusive to people who can use regular mecanical bike but why make it full of electronics and computer? They only needs lightings and a motor, that’s not rocket-science.
I used to cycle 7 km to work, but now, after moving to suburban village, there is no way to go other way than car. Especially with small kid. Unless you are fit enough to do 25 km every day by bike and risk your life (and potentially kid’s) on the street between cars. So no, there is not realistic to “fuck cars”. I am speaking from European perspective, probably US has the car things much more fucked up.
risk your life (and potentially kid’s) on the street between cars
I dunno, boss, seems like a plenty good reason to say “fuck cars” to me.
Did the 2x12km for theee years, only got ran down once.
I did have beast legs though :-)
I have an EV and I still agree with this. An EV is better than an ICE vehicle but it is no substitute for designing cities around people - footpaths, cycle lanes, recreation, public transport etc.
what do you use your car for? like piano transportation?
To do things. Drove my kid to school 8km at 0610 today for a school trip, then a 20km drive to work, then later to get groceries etc. I wish I could cycle but my personal circumstances don’t allow for it. Doesn’t mean that my situation applies to everyone or that towns & cities shouldn’t be designed with cyclists & pedestrians first, cars second to lessen the need for cars because I think they should.
Smh I put my piano on my bike racks. It’s the timpani that go in the car - the rain ruins the skins.
I am actually considering getting an EV for transporting my Cello :/
It’s unfortunately not possible to reliably transport it by bike (strong winds, icy conditions on my rather hilly ride to the city). Makes me miss out on re-joining an orchestra.
Everything else (groceries, work,…) would still be by bike, just… That.
What you need is a trailer that you can attach to your bike when you need to haul something large. It works great. I use one that even folds and doesn’t take much room when not in use (it can also be used by hand by adding a little wheel at the front).
I just want cheap and reliable mass transit.
Yes! Fuck this individualistic “you should cycle instead of taking the car” language. We need collective investment in mass transit, because not everyone can bike to work, and even less people want to do it in the rain.
I used to cycle out of necessity but after a while i just got sick of it from either not wearing enough and being too cold, wearing too much and being too hot, and having to guess correctly whether it’ll rain or not but be miserable even if I prepared for it.
Yes, I will cycle 15 miles (one-way) to the nearest produce section.
I’m all for bikes in sufficiently urban areas, but they are never going to be reasonable for 90% of America (by land mass, not population).
We need passenger train service (or other mass transit) that can cover lower density areas and still be reliable. (There’s active train tracks within 100m of both my driveway and the produce section, so for me a passenger train would be ideal.)
It really seems like your phrasing and tone indicate you think your views are incompatible with the thesis of this article, but they aren’t
Sorry, my bad.
If we had passenger trains with bike storage, I would never need a car again. We will never see that in America though. We can barely get infrastructure built. We have no national impetus to get it done.
I would love to be able to ride trains to get places and not have to drive everywhere.
I don’t dislike driving, but if I could fit my schedule around public transit, I think I’d prefer that, most of the time.
Good public transit would be so frequent you wouldn’t need to fit your schedule around it. I live in a place with passable public transit and I never check schedules before leaving the house. I wait 10 mins max (I’m still annoyed sometimes tho)
So the tracks are already there they just don’t run passenger trains on it?..
Yep. Passenger service stopped in my area before I was born, but my father remembers being able to use them that way.
Freight trains run through multiple times a day, still.
The “old train depot” meuseam / visitor’s center is literally across the street from the grocery store w/ produce section.
worse, a lot of places have “rails2trails” programs where they rip out old train tracks and put in bicycle paths instead.
It makes more sense to put trains there and convert old car roads to bike paths
I like “rails2trails” bike paths because they tend to be flat (since trains can’t handle steep grades unless they’re a funicular or cog railroad), but I agree that running passenger trains again would be even better.
There’s no reason we can’t have more strict requirements of grade for bike roads.
I’ve been in bike roads that ran parallel to car roads. The bike road went up and down while the car road was at a better grade. So I got off the bike road and went on the car road. Its like these idiots think were out riding for fun on weekends or something.
The solution is regulations.
Why the fuck is the nearest produce section 15 miles away? That’s a major planning failure. Most trips that Americans take are less than 3 miles, so planning by population would be a lot more sensible than planning by land mass.
Thats more a problem inherrent to how america builds its cities than it is a problem inherrent to the bicycle. I agree we still need to buld rail, but you would likely still have to increase density to get good ridership. Otherwise you start to sacrafice speed for frequent stops serving low density. A problem many buses already face.
15 mile with an electric bike and good infrastructure that let you go fast is doable. And electric bike is already so much better than a car because it weight much less and as such consume much less. But I agree overall it does not replace a train because people won’t cycle when it rains.
I’d rather cycle when it rains than get a train, assuming it’s not like 3 hours in a freezing temperature watching cars go by while I’m stuck at cyclists-only red light.
That’s still almost an hour each way with the US class 1 ebike limit of 20mph. Not really doable for me or most people purely from a time usage stand point, not to mention 2 hours in the weather if it’s poor.
An electric motorcycle would be a lot more interesting to me, because it’s not held up by the stupid US ebike laws with such low speed limits.
45min-1 hour for one way to work is already what I do with public transport and it considered kind of standard time of commuting in Paris. In bike it is harder I have to admit you have to be willing to spend the time and have the physical condition to do it. The pro of taking public transport is also you can do other things while transporting even if limited but it is less tiring than driving a car or bike :)
Well sure, but if you add another 2 hours to get groceries on top of your commute that becomes kind of difficult right?
I’d be willing to take longer, but I wouldn’t want to do the trip uncovered in the rain. Also, the highway doesn’t have a shoulder in one section, so I’d have to route around that to be safe on the bike, and I don’t know how much length that would add to the trip (and it would probably involve adding travel on unpaved / dirt / gravel roads…)
For what it’s worth, US limit is only 20mph with full motor. Class 3 is allowed, with 28mph (45kph, actually) when using pedal assist. I threw a larger chainring on my eBike to make maintaining 28mph easier and I just pedal everywhere.
Most bike paths are class 1 at least where I am, I don’t think I’m going to pedal faster than 20 especially with a load of groceries.
Even 28mph isn’t that fast when the roads I take to the store on a motorcycle are 45-60mph limits.
State-bound, but this.
people who live in 90% of the least densely populated land on earth are… not that many people in the grand scheme of things.
And if you live close enough to civilization to have utilities like power maybe it’s possible to also have a grocery store that’s closer than average distance between towns in germany. Might even be beneficial idk.
My father used to run the grocery store in town. My brother ran it for a bit, too. I don’t know the ultimate reasons it ahut down, but Dad wanted to retire and brother decided it wasn’t worth it to run.
There’s a dollar store in town, and an another 5 min north, and another 10 mi. south, but no produce at any.
I want to move back to a more urban area and be able to walk to a grocery store in 15 minutes, but Dad needs someone to live with him since he is now disabled. (Brother died.)
I remember there was a problem getting wholesale deliveries at the small scale needed to serve this town of barely 300 people.
Okay, so counterpoint: In a lot of ways, the EU is like a country. And it’s a large one - maybe not quite the US’s size, but big. And much of it is bike friendly.
No, people don’t traverse the mountains in their little hand-me-down red bike. But they don’t often traverse those mountains every month anyway. And when they do, trains exist for that.
So this exposes not a landmass problem, but an urban planning problem. It is the easiest thing in the world to stand in the middle of an 8-lane stroad in the boonies, where people are waiting 5 minutes to traverse two blocks of traffic lights to get to the quarter-square-mile parking lot outside their coffee shop, praying you’re not killed as you wait for the walk signal, and scream at the top of your lungs “What in the everloving fuck is the point of all this?” And it would be a family-friendly exasperation since it would be drowned out by engine noise.
We can build about 8 new walking-friendly cities in the space taken up by one goddamn McDonald’s parking lot.
If you think urban planning has anything to do this how I get to the grocery store, you aren’t facing the problem.
The population density of the EU is 106/km^2. The population density of my county is 22.4/mi^2 (8.64/km^2).
The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with zero-carbon alternatives will **not **feed in **fast enough **to make the necessary difference in the time we can spare: the next five years. Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions.
Ah thank god we still have 5 years. Now the climate scientists just need to advise the general public to start shooting all the cars through the motorblock because it has been scientifically proven that is the one way we’ll make it.
Published: March 29, 2021 10.59am EDT
OH MY GOD!!! WE ONLY HAVE A YEAR LEFT TO MURDER ALL THE CARS??
@LarmyOfLone @grue Shooting the engine block draws too much attention. Home made spike strips and caltrops, on the other hand, can have a chilling effect on drivers. When you never know if the highway is going to be shut down because 30 cars all got flat tires in the same spot, and the devices that caused it are attached to the road with epoxy or JB Weld.
Haha well that could cause serious accidents. And I sort of expected like two decades ago in my naivete that we’d see “electric car conversion shops” spring up. Take out the motor block and tank and replace it with standardized electrical motors and special adapters and just put some lithium battery block in the trunk.
Roads and highways would be perfectly fine cycling infrastructure, if we just got the giant motorized death machines off of them.
I liked your comment, but there is a lot more space that could be regained for pedestrians as well if we cyclists took only the space we needed. Car infrastructure is easily converted into one, but not into the other and asphalt causes heat islands.
Plus, roads are important for the people who can’t walk or cycle as well as for emergency services. Goods can’t all be transported by bike, either. Of course, that doesn’t require multiple lanes. Part should be kept, part turned into small green spaces to compensate for the environmental effect of the road, and part should be used for separate cycling and walking spaces. It becomes a bit more complex with streets that aren’t big enough for all that, of course.
And with decreased car use comes increased accesibility and speed for emergency vehicles and essential transport. And if we remove street parking, there will easily be enough space for cycling and walking space. Did you know all parking spaces in the US take up the same surface as the whole of connecticut?
Sure, but I was replying to a comment thread about replacing roads and highways with cycling infrastructure.
They were piggybacking off you, saying there’s even more space to be gained once the usage of cars goes down
I’m autistic and always grateful for comments like this, thanks! Sometimes I genuinely don’t get it.
I can’t see this taking off in my city. It’s tropical here and during the colder months it’s in the 80s.
People are not going to cycle to work because they will be drenched in sweat by the time they arrive.
Given how popular bikes used to be in Vietnam, which is positively scorching most of the time, I don’t think this narrative had any credibility.
Besides, with e-bikes being a thing, this take is even less valid
Just going to point out that it’s kind of an unreasonable expectation that people will not be sweaty when it’s that hot outside.
There’s probably a balance somewhere. When it’s that hot, you can sweat walking, but sweat only a little more when biking calmly because you get an extra breeze while doing so.
I’m not a smart person though, maybe theres a place on earth where you wouldn’t feel any breeze while biking.
People aren’t walking instead they are stepping out of their homes with AC and riding in cars and busses with AC to their jobs which have AC…
Biking is reasonably strenuous exercise. Breeze or no breeze if its hot outside you are going to be sweaty as fuck and after you marinade in that sweat you are going to stink.
Thats why we need EVs…
Electric bikes are a big help on hilly or hot commutes
The problem with that is they are pretty expensive for people in third would countries.
That’s why there is electric scooter.
Well, we’re comparing them with (electric) cars here, which are much more expensive.
Been there, done that. Only time I actually sweated was when waiting at intersections, rest of the time the wind from riding kept me dry.
That’s why you need it in combination with public transit. Even if it’s 90-100 degrees I can go for a bike ride for at least 10 minutes as long as I can keep moving and keep the air blowing on me. And I’m not even really in good shape. So as long as you can bike to a bus or train stop in a fairly short time, then hop on that where there’s air conditioning, then ride for a while, and eventually take another short bike ride to your work, then it should be fine. Of course during heat waves having a car as back up is definitely good or just to use during the hotter months also works and would go a long way to reducing green house gas emissions from either driving an ICE car or from the energy you use for your electric car.
If you are going to be on the bus you mostly need more busses not more bikes
But bikes solve the last mile problem that people tend to have with busses and trains. Plus they’re useful for shorter trips that wouldn’t really make sense for a bus or train. So giving better infrastructure to encourage that would definitely help even in a situation where you’re taking other forms of transit. As well as with how suburban America is it allows people to get out of the suburbs at a fairly good speed to get to public transit hubs or to stores.
I used to live in a county that solved that problem by having in effect a connecting bus for rural riders it operated a bit like a free taxi you had to schedule. Unlike an uber there was a longer wait as it had to serve many folks so you had to plan on leaving early and waiting but it did work out pretty well and it was anything but a rich county.
Yeah I think they have something similar where I live but I think you have to be an older person or have a disability to be able to use it. Which I think is great for those groups as they are the groups that would have more trouble with biking. But I feel like for a lot of other people if you’re not in super rural areas biking is probably a better solution both for the environment and for your own health.
Most places I worked at had showers available for those who cycled a long distance or enjoyed a lunch activity such as running.
Sadly that’s not very common in the country where I live.
when you cycle regularly, a commute doesn’t make you sweat.
This depends on ambient temp and humidity
When it’s that hot, just existing makes me sweat. It’s barely 15°C in the UK and I’m down to shorts and T shirt already.
It depends on whether you know how to pace yourself, which I seem to never be able to learn. I can only go full blast every time, and hence I always arrive sweaty.
Luckily, I only have 5.5 km to go to work, and with my current speeds, that doesn’t get me sweaty enough to be unable to air-dry out. Previously, when I had a longer commute of 14 km, I was luckily able to use the showers offered at work.
This is not true in my experience cycling in 32°c to 34°c and 75% to 90% humidity environment. 😅 I used to commute daily to school at early dawn and i drench in sweat everyday.
But there’s way to avoid that and people tend to commute to work in the morning and evening, where it isn’t as hot as noon.
Lol no
It’s the same everywhere though, and people who commute to work tend to have facility in their office(if they work there) to help with that. Else i heard some people wipe it down with baby wipe. If they work blue collar like me then what’s to worry?
Also ebike(class 1) help tremendously and also help keep you healthy.
Unfortunately I live where its cold and raining 99% of the time. They are trying to build a line from where i live to where I work though so it might be bearable to bike the distance to the station in the rain
I live in Denmark and despite wind and horrible weather still we manage to bike everywhere for most of our needs.
The netherlands, a huge cycling country, is also known as a dreary place where it rains more than the sun shines. You just put on a good waterproof outfit and you’re good. Cycling heats you up as well, so as long as you have good clothes I would say its doable up to and including freezing temperatures, depending on the road surface.
It also helps when your office has showers and indoor parking. This is part of bicycle infrastructure that is normalized the more we ban cars.
Where I live it’s either cold and burns my lungs to do any outside exertion or hot and saps all my energy, with a brief tolerable window between.
I found masks can help with the cold air if you don’t have a scarf
The Netherlands is also flat as fuck.
Hills are why bikes have gears and there are plenty of chilly hilly places with strong bike infrastructure and culture. Not Just Bikes goes off on this subject frequently. Check them out on nebula or youtube for a laugh and some good information.
Netherlands also has constant eleventy mph winds that try to blow you back to where you started, so there’s that.
Maybe
I get mild frostbite super fast though because my circulation to my fingers are nonexistent
I also unfortunately live in the lands of cars, in the part of the washington where theres no real bike lane and I have to share the road with cars
Please think of putting pressure on your local councils to improve bike infrastructure. GCN recently mentioned that more people are in favor of increasing bike paths (in uk and us studies) but carbrains complain louder, so let yourself be heard!
Bicycles just aren’t suitable for cold places. They only work in places with warm, sunny weather. Like Norway.
I saw a lot more electric cars than bicycles in most of norway.
I live in a similar climate and use rain pants.
Rain pants and rain overshoes. It’s a bit annoying to take them off after you arrive, but that’s a small
Although I am privileged enough to just take the bus or WFH if the weather is truly terrible (like freezing rain).
Good luck. I hope there isn’t too much wind. I find it the worst part of bad weather cycling
Summer was unbearably hot, and I decided to commute via a bus with AC instead of a bike, but in september I started using a bike and didn’t stop unless there was pouring or there was snow on the ground.
I even in mild rain I just took my bike. First winter season I used a bike at all, not to mention riding in a full face cover, leather or ski gloves with a ski jacket.
I also researched some motorbike rain pants but we’re in a decade long drought, so far didn’t need them.
One thing tho. If it’s raining you better have disk breaks, the clampy ones just slip on wet wheels. I had to re-learn how to stop safely.
Being waterproof is probably the biggest thing I miss from upgrading to an ebike from an old acoustic bike
Acoustic bike sounds so wonderful.
It makes pleasant sound when you pedal it.
Ebikes should handle rain just fine though (I know mine does). Just don’t ride it into the river.
Riding into a river isn’t a great idea on an acoustic bike either, of course. The main reason is that you don’t want to be swept away by the current. The secondary reason is that you’ll have to clean and re-pack your bearings etc. (especially axles and bottom bracket) afterwards.
Kinda depend on the manufacturer, but the motor should be waterproof. Throttle, the screen, and the connector though, might not. I’m using a conversion kit on my bike and the equipment is those no name cheapo one, but other than the screen condensation after riding through heavy rain, it’s still going strong. You could identify the stuff that need waterproofing and do it yourself though.
I have the opposite problem. If I tried to bike home from work in the summer, I would literally die of a heat stroke. I biked to college and even when I had a 7am class, I would arrive drenched in sweat and have to do a paper towel bath in the restroom.
Even if you need/prefer an ebike you get about 85 ebike batteries out of one Nissan leaf not even a powerful e-car the most pedestrian one.
removed by mod
Bicycle commuting reduced all-cause mortality by almost 50%. All-cause. That’s with the risk of getting murdered by a driver priced into the figure.
Source? Notably bike enthusiasts are self selected from those willing and able to do what they do. It is notably not useful to say that a 20 year old commuting 10 miles a day is more healthy than grandma in her walker.
https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001295
I encourage you to save methodological speculation until you’ve actually read the study
On the narrow roads where I live in the UK I also doubt the number of cars having to slow down and then accelerate to overtake is saving energy. I’d love to see a study that looked at the rural roads in the UK because I’m sure it’s less efficiebt and more polluting.
Obviously this changes if there are dedicated cycle paths, but they are a rare thing or here in the sticks. Also there idiots on road bikes who refuse to use cycle lanes when provided. I think the highway code needs updating to stop this.
I’d also ban racing bikes from the road, if you can’t cycle over a drain or a pothole then your bike isn’t built for UK roads.
I’m sure I’m going to get down voted to hell and back for this post.
Note sure why this would be downvoted
I’m not surprised. It shouldn’t be controversial. We have similar rules for cars in relation to the tyres to ensure minimum data braking distances in various weather conditions. It’s common sense that you shouldn’t have to swerve into traffic to avoid getting a puncture. It’s something the should be discussed in a civil way
The efficiency part is just logic when every 4-5 seconds during rush hour a car is overtaking you. That has to be more poluting than just having another car on the road.
I’m a cyclist, I’ve only ever owned mountain bikes as racing bikes are too dangerous and slide too easily in the wet. I used to cycle 10 miles to work every day and I hated how cars would accelerate past me and I always questioned how much pollution must be created when they do. I didn’t have a car and had no other option at the time and I’m surprised that I’ve never seen this considered.
My opinion changes massively when there are dedicated cycle paths.
Yep, meanwhile my country built bike highways. I’m at work after 35 minutes of cycling. (15 km)
I live outside of a city, so I can choose between multiple cities where I wish to work. It’s pretty convenient.
I simply don’t feel like accepting a job offer that has a bad commute.
The biking is a huge stress reliever, I come fresh at work and freshly home.
Seems it works out great for you but I don’t think it is a great solution for Americans who on average live far further from their work in inhospitable climates and are less healthy.
Often times being pushed so far from their work because their city downtown is 60% parking lots and it illegal to build any new buildinga unless they are luxury condos or mcmansions.
If the city still had decent density, they could easily live closer to work.
Precisely. Claiming that biking is more dangerous than driving because car-supremacist land use patterns force cyclists out into suburban sprawl is essentially disingenuous victim-blaming.
@grue @FireRetardant
I live in the suburbs of Tokyo now but I grew up in Michigan in the middle of nowhere. 7 miles to a town with a traffic light and 3 miles to a town with a post office smaller than a convenience store. The town with a post office had passenger rail service 100 years ago. My grandpa told me about it. Guess what happened? The automobile manufacturers bought the line and shut it down. I rode my bike to both towns all the time and in all weather. #FuckCars
What is such a inhospitable climate? They should aim to be healthy
I suppose you felt like sharing this information because it confirmed whatever weird biases you have but you’re obviously wrong but you still haven’t deleted your comment so I think you are a republican
I think if you think that saying that US needs more remote work, affordable housing near where we work, and investment in transit makes one a Republican you must not be very familiar with Republicans. I think you should probably rethink your entire perspective on life.
Yeah biking is extremely deadly where I live. You really don’t see bikes at all. Sometimes they’re left on the roadside where someone died on one. You can’t walk, either.
The government should ban cars to make cycling safer
…yet city in the US been looking at this and found out biking is not as dangerous as people think, and facilities being build for cyclist is increasing.
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2025/03/19/traffic-safety-2024-pedestrian-cyclist-deaths
It is exactly as dangerous as people think as you can clearly look at the miles biked and driven and see that the deaths per mile are massively higher. What you are posting is that its possible for it to be less dangerous than before mediation not that it is sanely possible to make mixed use as safe as cars.
as you can clearly look at the miles biked and driven and see that the deaths per mile are massively higher.
Two thing:
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so does walking. Pedestrian death is significantly higher than bicycle death in US. Does that mean you should stop walking? :D
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cyclist doesn’t ride 200miles to visit their grandma, and more often than not the trip tend to be short per day. Car driver tend to live further from everywhere(look at suburb), that mean in a single day they travel more, so of course car could rake up more non-incident mile than pedestrian and bicycle. Even in Netherlands, the cycling haven, in 2023 the death per billion km is 15.6, despite having 270 cyclist death in the whole country, and despite cycling being a part of their life there.
It looks damning if you only know how to take the statistic on face value, but in reality? It’s not. And let’s not talk about where the danger come from.
What you are posting is that its possible for it to be less dangerous than before mediation
DUH, you’re the one that saying bicycle is a laughable solution, yet city has been trying that way, so let’s not shift the goal.
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