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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

#391
post #379
post #158

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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; creatin…

I used to be an EMT in the US. I also was an avid motorcycle rider for many, many years. And an avid bicycle rider for even longer. It is dramatically easier to screw yourself up on bicycles and motorcycles than cars. It’s frankly shocking how stupid someone can be in a modern car and survive. It doesn’t require another car to kill someone on a motorcycle or bicycle, but the squids tend to filter themselves out prett…

> If everyone had to ride instead of drive (including drunks, soccer moms, burnt out graveyard shift workers, medical workers on their second 24 hour shift, retirees, etc), you’d see a lot more dead folks overall.

That's rubbish as cyclists/bikers are not the cause of most collisions. Once you remove the majority of car drivers, the number of collisions will plummet along with the severity of those collisions.

(Sedentary disease such as heart disease and type II diabetes will also reduce if more people are using active travel - not so much if they're motorbiking).

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

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and you can do engine breaking and do milder acceleration curves in ICE car and that will significantly reduce the pad/tire wear. But if you drive like, I would speculate, most people do, Tesla will go through tires like a track car (half joking)

Sure, but the same can be said for a performance ICE car.

Agreed, the only thing I would say here is that electrics kind of give you this torque/weight combo for an every day car so I would guess in the real world electric cars end up being worse on dust production. Hopefully tires can get optimized for this as well.

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

#395

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> However, if we get as many people to use e-bikes or e-scooters, then the size and weight issues pretty much disappear. I still don't understand how they expect to solve the occupant safety issue though. Cars travel at high speeds but have crumple zones and airbags. E-bikes travel at the same speeds but if you crash, you die. And 2-wheeled vehicles are easier to crash. The fatality rate for motorcycles is astonishin…

> I still don't understand how they expect to solve the occupant safety issue though. What issue? I would regularly go 50km/h down hills on my road bike. That was completely my choice and if I came off I'd suffer the consequences. The problem isn't the occupants. Nobody is forced to travel at high speeds (except on motorways). The problem is the people around and the environment. I definitely would not ever go that f…

> I definitely would not ever go that fast in town, even down a hill, because it's generally not safe for the people around me.

If you're on a bike, then you should also prioritise your own safety as you're likely to come off worse even when colliding with a pedestrian.

Anecdata time: my brother (over 60 years old and a very experienced cyclist) was heading down a hill, presumably at some speed and a young boy stepped out in front of him. They collided and my brother came off and ended up with a broken collar bone, broken rib, collapsed lung and minor concussion (he's fully recovered now). The kid received no damage apart from bruising AFAIK.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plumbers and firefighters have stuff to haul and long distances to cover. They need to do 40/50/60mph on the freeway, and 15/20mph on local surface access roads where they're mixed in with light vehicles. The whole light-vehicle thing is predicated on low speeds and relatively short distances (up to about 15 miles). Most urban areas, even fairly sprawling ones, that's enough to cover a pretty substantial % of trips.…

> as soon as you get to about 25-30mph you need impact protection, and the design constraints quickly escalate to "absolutely no smaller than a Fiat 500". The real problem here is that as soon as you need impact protection, you get four wheels, and then it's classified as a car instead of a motorcycle and the government safety standards for cars de facto require "absolutely no smaller than a Fiat 500". What would be…

This is the case in France & some other EU countries (light quadricycles - Renault, Citroen and so on) and Japan (Kei Cars).

The problem seems to be that for most people who can legally drive a full-scale car (i.e. they're not too young or too old) getting a do-everything vehicle on finance is more attractive at that point.

They're somewhat popular with youngsters in rural areas (cheap to insure, minimum driver age is 14 I think, whereas for cars in France it's 17) and with frailer, older people who can't walk or cycle very far and don't have the stamina for longer drives, they just want an inexpensive little runabout to get to the village shops, nearby friends and appointments.

But they're expensive enough (about $10k) that you're unlikely to buy one in addition to your regular do-it-all car, where you might buy an ebike, pedal bike or motorcycle. Maybe as a second vehicle in a childless couple where one partner does almost all the driving, but unless heavier vehicles are highly taxed or restricted (city low emission & congestion zones), there's not enough advantage in one of these for mass adoption.

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs can be pretty bad for tire wear, not just due to vehicle weight, but the amount of torque available (and consistently available) that leaves most ICE vehicles in the dust. Depends on driving style of course

If you have an EV and you care about health and the environment, use regenerative braking as much as humanly possible. Hint: driving fast or tailgating both increase the odds you'll have to use the friction brakes.

FWIW, I took my EV in for a maintenance interval (waste of money BTW - this thing is indestructable), and the mechanic remarked that the brakes looked new. It's 1.5 years old, with factory brakes.

Single-pedal mode does the rest. Not only does this make the car easier to drive, but you can hit a sweet spot where you never really use the brakes.

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

#398

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This is why Tesla’s are best selling EVs. Only cynics and idiots buy anything else. Either way I am deeply sorry for them.

Thanks for your deep sorrow for this idiotic cynical nissan leaf owner. Love you too

Same here. To be fair, we do have to put up with charging compatibility shenanigans. But that aside, I love this thing.

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

#399
post #388
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be an EMT in the US. I also was an avid motorcycle rider for many, many years. And an avid bicycle rider for even longer. It is dramatically easier to screw yourself up on bicycles and motorcycles than cars. It’s frankly shocking how stupid someone can be in a modern car and survive. It doesn’t require another car to kill someone on a motorcycle or bicycle, but the squids tend to filter themselves out prett…

my perspective is someone where the city has been largely built for cycling, which leads to less deaths overall. Population of Malmo is actually higher than Orlando, FL for example. Yet, for Skåne (the region where Malmo is; pop: 1,421,781), 25 traffic deaths were recorded in the year 2019[0]. 173 road deaths were recorded in Orange County (where Orlando is; pop: 1,429,908), during the same period.[1] That’s a differ…

So if everything is different, everything is different?

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

#400
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we have both? Until we do convince uncle Jack and his friends to stop voting for things against humanity, at least those things could be made less harmful

Why do we think we can convince Uncle Jack to vote for mandatory regenerative brakes?

Because it's less invasive (from their point of view) than sitting on a train with, eww, other people

I'm genuinely thinking of a particular person in my family who was one of the first to have a regenerative brake (for financial reasons, probably a tax reduction by going hybrid idk) but will also be among the last to do anything for the greater good

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