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Dust from car brakes more harmful than exhaust, study finds

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

#151
post #99
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A normal driving test was (famously [1]) done to measure the effect of axle load (vehicle weight per axle) on road wear. This is where we got the “fourth power law” of road wear. I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear, given the same tires on each vehicle. From this, I would expect car makers to use larger, thicker, heavier tires on heavier vehicles…

> I think as a starting point, I would expect that tire wear should remain roughly in proportion to road wear IMO this would be a suspect assumption to make w/o data to back it up. You've got two dissimilar materials interacting (in very different modes). E.g. rolling a metal ball bearing on a wood surface would obviously cause the wood to degrade far more than the ball bearing, (and even a wooden ball rolling on a w…

You quoted me out of context by cutting off a very important qualification to my statement:

given the same tires on each vehicle

I don’t endorse the broader statement which would imply the same wear regardless of tire material. That claim is clearly false.

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

#152
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cities such as Copenhagen, it's very common to see parents transporting small children (and a large number of pets from what I saw) using cargo-bikes. Not having universal healthcare seems like a strange argument against active travel as it's well known that active travel can drastically improve people's health and reduce the need for healthcare - it would seem more important to choose to look after your health if…

Small children and 2 weeks of groceries for a family of 4-5? For 10ish miles one way? On the low end? The healthcare point is because it means that a lot of elderly Americans have medical conditions that are unattended to, injuries that never healed properly, etc. It's common, particularly in the working class, to have your body be functionally wrecked by the time you're 55 (particularly for men). If we want the elde…

Only the most rural americans live 10 miles from a grocery store. They are distributed like every two miles in the suburbs. Every half mile in the city.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key is to make a class of light-weight EVs with smaller, lighter batteries for life around town. Most of us rarely drive more than a few dozen miles a day. But then there are those weekend trips.

For the weekend trips you could put in an engine with a power splitter Oh what's this, turns out the ideal car was already invented twenty years ago, it's the Toyota Prius Casually gets 50 mpg city and highway Small, lightweight battery Not a super expensive status symbol The plugin models use very little gas for the daily commute, but you can always drive it like a pure ice car if you need to flee the country on zer…

Prius is just doing what a 90s civic did but with more onerous maintenance due to complex powerplant over dead simple 4 banger and manual transmission.

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you include e-bikes and e-scooters as EVs, sure. If you mean cars and trucks, the F150 Lightning, the EV6, the Ioniq 5, the EX30, and every other vehicle is heavier than its ICE counterpart. The motors are inherently torquier too. disclaimer: I drive an electric car but would sell it in a heartbeat if I could use transit or bikes to safely and efficiently get to work, the grocery, and the doctor.

They aren't inherently torquier. That's a design point.

If they're heavier, they inherently need more torqure to have acceleration competitive with ICE vehicles.

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

#155
Related. Pretty sure there have been other major threads - if anyone can find more, let me know!

Tire-related chemical responsible for salmon deaths in urban streams (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41450563 - Sept 2024 (37 comments)

EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after partial ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39746806 - March 2024 (393 comments)

Vehicle brakes produce charged particles that may harm public health: study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39683351 - March 2024 (302 comments)

Car’s tires are swirling donuts of pollution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36660138 - July 2023 (28 comments)

Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22517621 - March 2020 (319 comments)

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

#156
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure he's sarcastically talking about trains existing

and bikes too for that matter.

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

#157
post #88

The Yale article and the paper both highlight the fact that EVs use regenerative braking and produce less dust. I was worried that this was a rehash of the astroturf campaign from a few years ago focusing on EV weight and how that was so bad for the environment because of tire and road wear. Unfortunately you need to read through the whole thing (instead of the headline and a few paragraphs) to see that information.

Has someone actually measured that tradeoff (weight versus regenerative braking) to determine where it is an even tradeoff? And surely regenerative braking has its own shedding of particles from all the moving parts.

Regen braking uses magnets and takes place inside an encased and oil-cooled motor which should eliminate airborne debris.

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

#158
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’d appreciate it if there was an attempt to actually engage here, this is hardly the gotcha you might think.

Most fatalities of motorcycles are due to collisions with cars, not other bikes nor pedestrians.

Diligence won’t save you if a driver unexpectedly swerves into you.

Undoubtedly there are stupid people and people who are more likely to take more risks will be more likely to engage in motorcycle riding; creating an additional selection bias.

But, we’re talking about electric scooters, e-bikes and so on, the core issue remains to be that mixed use-infrastructure will have a loser. Letting cars drive on pavements isn’t permitted for the same reason e-bikes shouldn’t be in traffic (or on the pavement).

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

#159
post #88

The Yale article and the paper both highlight the fact that EVs use regenerative braking and produce less dust. I was worried that this was a rehash of the astroturf campaign from a few years ago focusing on EV weight and how that was so bad for the environment because of tire and road wear. Unfortunately you need to read through the whole thing (instead of the headline and a few paragraphs) to see that information.

Has someone actually measured that tradeoff (weight versus regenerative braking) to determine where it is an even tradeoff? And surely regenerative braking has its own shedding of particles from all the moving parts.

surely regenerative braking has its own shedding of particles from all the moving parts.

It adds tire wear, but no more than traditional friction braking. I can't see how there would be any measurable wear from any other moving parts, since it's just using a magnetic field for resistance. There are moving parts that touch, but modern, sealed bearings last a ridiculously long time.

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

#160
post #88

The Yale article and the paper both highlight the fact that EVs use regenerative braking and produce less dust. I was worried that this was a rehash of the astroturf campaign from a few years ago focusing on EV weight and how that was so bad for the environment because of tire and road wear. Unfortunately you need to read through the whole thing (instead of the headline and a few paragraphs) to see that information.

Has someone actually measured that tradeoff (weight versus regenerative braking) to determine where it is an even tradeoff? And surely regenerative braking has its own shedding of particles from all the moving parts.

Anecdotally, it’s very dependent on driving cycle and driving style, but EVs use their brakes much less in general. It would be interesting to measure the total mass of brake pads sold per vehicle mile for different vehicles, though this would likely be more challenging than it seems.
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