Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds • Hacker News Board

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#141

Post by tomcam » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

homebrewer wrote: post #109

marcosdumay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exhaust used to be really nasty until just a little while ago. Nobody was focusing on the less harmful emissions. Now we mostly fixed it, so it's time to look at the other stuff.

> Now we mostly fixed it Only in developed countries. The age of a typical car in my region is over 15 years. Basically, most of what you bought in 2005-2010, drove for a decade or more, and then sold for scrap eventually ends up in countries like mine. Moreover, most people take catalytic converters off their cars and sell them for $80-100 for platinum recycling. I think most "developing" countries have the same pro…

None of my business but I’d love to know why your English is so good. Mind saying what region or country you live in?

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#142

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #7

I think this is missing out on the big issue - tyre pollution which contains really nasty chemicals that inevitably get washed into rivers and waterways. Also, car-shaped EVs often use regenerative braking which will reduce the amount of brake dust pollution, but with their increased weight and powerful torque, they produce a lot more tyre pollution than ICE vehicles. https://earth.org/tyre-pollution/

They reduce it relative to an automatic ice car but not a manual one. On a manual car you can engine brake and achieve similar brake pad savings.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#143

Post by NegativeLatency » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

FreebasingLLMs wrote: post #61

digdugdirk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great idea. And since it'll be limited to in town use, something narrower might be useful - maybe give it two wheels instead of four? That'd be huge for reducing weight and increasing range. And for suitable geographic areas, it might even be possible to make one light enough that it could be powered by the rider, no external power source required! Then, with the reduction in width required for these futuris…

You have a weird dream of how people should use transportation. People like what they like. They like individual cars with 4 wheels. They don't want to share transportation with random people.

People like what they’re told to like by mass media and advertising.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#144

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

Moto7451 wrote: post #90

bluescrn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that nobody every talked about tyre/brake dust until it became clear that cars aren't going away as we phase out fossil fuels, they're just going electric. Is this a serious environmental concern compared to the climate/emissions issue, or just the 'r/fuckcars mentality'? Meanwhile, here in the UK, one of the more interesting alternatives - personal light EVs (ebikes/scooters) are being utterly demonized,…

It’s also the reward of increased regulations on tailpipe emissions. We now have a new target to clean up. It’s not as if this is new, it just used to be we had lead fuel, poorly burned fuel, tire dust, asbestos in brakes, and many other problematic forms of pollution. We’re just going down the list. Also, what you’re looking at is an overweighted responsibility on people/consumers to own the solutions to pollution.…

Tell that to a 90s honda with a 5 speed and 50mpg from technique over any hybrid technology that it pollutes more than a car that doesn’t achieve that mpg and hasn’t paid for its production carbon footprint in hundreds of thousands of miles driven yet.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#145

Post by YZF » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

hansvm wrote: post #103

foobazgt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fake news. The backing study for this claim did all sorts of wonky unrealistic testing to come to this conclusion. If you own an EV, you viscerally know it's BS given that you're the one paying for the actual tire replacements on your real-world driven vehicle.

Maybe, but the average Tesla tire lasts half as long as my tires typically do, and the extra weight from the battery combined with the high onset torque are likely culprits (the former of which you can't fix with current battery technology when comparing otherwise apples-to-apples ICEs vs EVs if the EVs have non-negligible range, and the latter of which would require artificial limiting on the electric motor (which c…

What specific tires do you have on those vehicles? Performance motorcycle tires wear much faster than non-performance (or your average car tire). Sportier car tires generally have softer compounds that wear faster. How you drive your vehicle also has an impact. Tire pressure.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#146

Post by NegativeLatency » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:08 PM UTC

mezzie2 wrote: post #49

amazingamazing wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You show me one of these that can be ridden [comfortably] in 2 degrees Fahrenheit with snow and ice everywhere and you have my money!

Or by people who are disabled/elderly. I have MS, cycling isn't really going to work on a regular basis because between heat intolerance and cold making my leg spasticity worse, I'm not going to have a good time. I can drive just fine, though. While yes, a lot of the elderly continue to cycle in countries where the infrastructure exists (e.g. the Netherlands), those places also have universal healthcare. You can't ju…

You should check out electric Bakfiets, they solve a lot of the problems you’re talking about for having kids and hauling groceries. I’ve even made trips to Costco with mine.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#147

Post by nntwozz » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

There's a simple solution to this, just don't brake!

With AI we can use predictive acceleration to stop the car just in time.

Thank you, I'll show myself out.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#148

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #135

bfgeek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, (from what I remember reading the study at the time) it was basically racing a car around a track (think lots of tyre squealing around corners), and found that the tyre wear was very high. I haven't seen a study which actually simulates somewhat "normal" driving (presumably because the wear is so low driving like that it's difficult to measure). Also didn't factor in a bunch of different stuff - tyres…

I'm surprised there isn't more info available to compare vehicles/tyre wear. There's plenty of real-world driving going on, so you'd think someone would have measured tyre replacement frequencies.

Tires and driving styles vary a lot, so it would be really hard to come up with some aggregate numbers. Maybe you could compare the same very popular tire on different cars that still have enough data points to average out differing factors?

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#149

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #136

lazide wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are far less dangerous for occupants than 2 wheeled vehicles.

Perhaps there is less incentive then to drive dangerously.

That hasn't shown up in the fatality statistics for motorcycles. Sometimes more dangerous is just more dangerous.

Re: Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

#150

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

mezzie2 wrote: post #49

amazingamazing wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You show me one of these that can be ridden [comfortably] in 2 degrees Fahrenheit with snow and ice everywhere and you have my money!

Or by people who are disabled/elderly. I have MS, cycling isn't really going to work on a regular basis because between heat intolerance and cold making my leg spasticity worse, I'm not going to have a good time. I can drive just fine, though. While yes, a lot of the elderly continue to cycle in countries where the infrastructure exists (e.g. the Netherlands), those places also have universal healthcare. You can't ju…

You are an edge case though. Feel free to continue driving. If we get the common case on a bike for a few trips out of the week however, that saves a lot of carbon. When people worked from home in the peak of the pandemic in socal the air was never cleaner; 50mile crystal clear visibility.