371–380 of 969 posts
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Just as there is the law of conservation of energy, there is also the law of conservation of momentum. Both explain it equally well IMO.
How can mv and mv² explain the damage "equally well", when one is linear and the other is quadratic with respect to velocity?
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> - might be impossible depending on work or children; The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car. Have two kids seated in the trunk of the bike and drop them off at kindergarten, then continue biking to work and pick them up on the way home. Those are a bit on the pricier side, though. Still cheap compared to a car, but people often look at them as something "extravagant" or "in addition" to…
Unfortunately the big front-loaded cargo bikes are, well, big. Almost as long as a car, if not as wide. You need to park them somewhere and they're definitely too big and heavy to carry up any stairs. They're also expensive, like mid 4 figures USD. This starts to look like a similar problem to car ownership and parking. (I say this all as an avid cyclist -- my household has four bikes and one car.) Rentals seem like…
My bike is an urban arrow, so one of the bigger two wheelers. ~7500€ new with all possible add-ons and a €150 annual insurance that covers the bike in full if ever stolen or damaged in an accident, so I also feel safe parking in rough areas with it.
Somewhat unrelated to the article, but I live in a mid-size EU city and dumped my car for an e-bike a few months ago. Surprisingly, it hasn't been that hard (my GF kept her car, and I have a car-sharing subscription): Pros: - Immediately stopped having insomnia. Better feel overall; - about €300/month in additional disposable income. That's basically a free lunch everyday! - significantly faster if parking is taken i…
> you will not kill someone if you ride after a night drinking; Wow. After a family member of mine being injured by a cyclist crashing into them, reading something like this is quite infuriating. If you drink, don't drive, even if it's a bicycle.
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Some time ago I was surprised how fast these e-bikes are compared to my motorcycle. In Belgium we have plenty of roads where bikes can go but not cars & motorcycles. One morning I overtook a colleague on an e-bike (max 45km/h) with my motorcycle. A few streets later I overtook him again, since he took a shortcut that I was not allowed to take. A bit later I overtook him again, since I had a red light and he again too…
Are you sure your friend was actually allowed to take that shortcut with an e-bike going 45 km/h? AFAIK, these are considered "light motorbikes" (or something) and require the same paperwork (aside from an "easier" license) and gear as regular motorbikes. More importantly, they are specifically not bikes and aren't allowed to ride on bike lanes any more than a fat liter+ bike is.
If it looks like a bike and you ride it like a bike, you're not going to have any problems riding it where bikes are allowed. It sounds like you envision this person riding at absolutely maximum possible speed at all times.
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To quickly do the calculations: Walking: 5 km/h * 70kg = 97 kgm/s e-bike: 20 km/h * 90 kg = 500 kgm/s car: 50 km/h * 2000kg = 28,000 kgm/s
Energy is proportionate to the square of velocity. So it's: Walking: 5 km/h * 70kg => 875 (although this is a very slow estimate for a walker) (please ignore the non-canonical units) e-bike: 20 km/h * 90 kg => 18,000 (I think your estimate for ebike mass might be on the low side at 20kg, but whatever) car: 50 km/h * 2000kg => 2,500,000 (and that's a fairly low speed for cars! Drunk drivers often drive faster than is…
Walking: 6kph, 70kg => 100J (0.02% of car)
Analog bike: 18kph, 80kg => 2kJ (0.36% of car)
E-bike: 25kph, 100kg => 4.6kJ (0.82% of car)
Car: 50kph, 2000kg => 560kJ (100% of car)
Somewhat unrelated to the article, but I live in a mid-size EU city and dumped my car for an e-bike a few months ago. Surprisingly, it hasn't been that hard (my GF kept her car, and I have a car-sharing subscription): Pros: - Immediately stopped having insomnia. Better feel overall; - about €300/month in additional disposable income. That's basically a free lunch everyday! - significantly faster if parking is taken i…
> - might be impossible depending on work or children; The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car. Have two kids seated in the trunk of the bike and drop them off at kindergarten, then continue biking to work and pick them up on the way home. Those are a bit on the pricier side, though. Still cheap compared to a car, but people often look at them as something "extravagant" or "in addition" to…
Magical thinking will not make it so. My partner and I moved further away from the city where she works because we wanted to move in together and we can't afford rent or property where either of us used to live.
I work from home so most the time my car sits charging the driveway. However, all of my doctors are at least a half-hour drive away, my dental clinic is a 50 minute drive, my hobbies are anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour half drive away. The rest of my family is an hour away so no amount of moving will change these things without making the rest of them worse.
But bicycles will work fine for 10% of my travel except for there being no infrastructure supporting bicycling.
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The concern I have (in NYC FWIW) is that someone will see they can’t steal the bike and will instead just trash the thing while it’s still locked. Maybe I’m too pessimistic.
That's pretty much my experience in the city where I used to live. I'd regularly pass bikes securly locked to some post or other but with the front wheel stoved in and bent. I always assumed a would-be thief had done it in a fit of pique, after failing to get the lock open.
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See my other comment: he pulled out without looking because he was in the middle of cutting up other road users (me in this case). That’s driving without due care and attention which is a traffic violation in the U.K. The police don’t care. What mechanism will put him in jail?
"Driving without due care and attention" sounds like a statute that has a much more specific interpretation than you think, and the police probably aren't the ones who misinterpreted that here. "Careless driving" and "reckless driving" are against the law in many states in the US, but both actually have very specific interpretations that are not entirely contained in the text of the statute. This is the joy of living…
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Or, you know, we can do both at the same time? Also, once police are no longer occupied ticketing motorists, I hope cyclists are prepared for actually being held accountable to laws. The police budget isn't going to refill itself.
> Or, you know, we can do both at the same time? Or maybe we prioritise the class of vehicles responsible for almost 5 fatalities and 75 serious injuries a day[1]? For comparison, [2] says that 30 pedestrians were killed and 1093 serious injuries involved cyclists in eight (8) years. In 416 weeks, that's less than one (1) week of car deaths (0.2% ratio) and two (2) weeks of serious injuries (0.4% ratio). Anyone that…
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Meet Oulu, the winter cycling capital of the world. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/01/22/meet-the-bike-... https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what-on-earth-winter-biking-...
Fascinating How do Europeans keep ice off bike lanes? Salt?
Salt only works until ten below zero. After that it only makes things worse.
When it works the result can be magical if combined with sweeping. Trashes the drivetrain real bad though.
There's a nice big picture how Oulu does it, halfway down the article.