501–510 of 618 posts
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Phones? I've seen cyclists using laptops. Some of the most oblivious and entitled vehicle operators on the road.
> I've seen cyclists using laptops. How? That seems like it would be rather mechanically challenging.
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These things take both time and massive political will. As somebody living in a city that's quite bike friendly, all things concerned, but still not close to Dutch or Danish levels of biking safety, I'll take any "technical solutions that try to solve social/political problems" I can get to make my commute safer. Also, anything that makes biking feel safer will make more people try commuting by bike, which in turn in…
I agree you need to get more people commuting by bike. This is in itself creates a virtuous circle of safety. More cyclists means everyone pays more attention to them, meaning it becomes safer to cycle, meaning more people will cycle, repeat. (And ofcourse more political will etc.) This is btw also why cyclist's rights organizations (e.g. fietsersbond in NL) should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make…
Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO, but as a simple thought exercise on your argument, answer me this: if a car hits you on your bike or another cyclists knocks you off your bike and your head hits the concrete/kerb, are you gonna escape better off from the accident with or without wearing a helmet?
Spoiler alert from my GFs sister who works at an ER in Austria: helmeted patients walk away without permanent brain injury which she can't say the same for those involved in accidents without helmets. Helmets saving lives isn't a lobby issue, it's a medical fact.
People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts. That's like saying governments should be against mandatory seatbelts and airbags in cars because their added safety encourages a cycle of unsafe driving leading to more accidents, and that without them divers would be forced to drive more carefully and lead to more safety.
It's perfectly fine to militate for the utopia of building of safe cycling infrastructure everywhere for everyone, but please let's not unnecessarily put people's lives at risk by promoting this FUD that helmets don't increase safety, just so people can literally die on this hill.
By all means, each individual should do of course as they see fit according to their desired risk profile of where they live and how they want to live their lives, just don't ask others to put their lives in danger in order to emulate the lifestyle where you live where the risks for not wearing a helmet are much smaller.
This seems to be part of a type of brand marketing where a brand claims it has invented something, but the only thing that ever exists of significant economic value is the attention raised by the promo video / article. Not the thing/service. Examples: - Samsung safety truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNGfse9ZK8 - Citroën motion sickness glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco63dlq_WE - Amazon Prime Air http…
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That’s a crappy pressure vessel holding 350ml of 80psi air, for about 100J of stored energy. I’m not entirely sure I’d be comfortable with that, especially anywhere with my face in the line of fire it it fails.
It's a soda bottle - it fits in your water bottle holder, and you can replace it for a couple of bucks if it fails. 80 psi is pretty low pressure (typical narrow tires are 100-120) and the bottle itself is very low mass, so the fabric around the bottle should ensure safety if it bursts. IIRC these came out in the early-mid 90s; a bike messenger trick at the time was to fasten the horn to your handlebars with velcro,…
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> I'm just trying to offer the perspective from a situation where the root cause as I see it has been fixed (to a high degree). Your argument was not a solution. You just said, "NL fixd this, why haven't other countries?" which doesn't add any value. Have you considered that other cities/countries can't just add infrastructure that hasn't been designed from the start to accommodate bikes the same way NL has without t…
I was not trying to offer a solution, as this will be highly specific to the situation in your locality and pretty pointless for me to spend time on. I am merely identifying this as a root cause, which for some reason strikes a nerve. Why does Skoda, a car manufacturer, care so much about interactions between cyclists and pedestrians? As you say, a bell that penetrates the car enclosures would be much more useful. I…
Which was my entire point. City wide infrastructure rehauls were massively easier and cheaper back then than today. The amount of nimbyism and red tape has ballooned exponentially in that time span, let alone the cost. Even NL wouldn't be able to do that today if they wanted to had it not done that in the 70s.
Coincidentally, I bought a 12v car horn yesterday with the intent of wiring it into my ebike's power supply with a little button on my handlebars. Not because of other cyclists or pedestrians wearing (anc) headphones but because modern cars are so heavily sound-proofed they don't hear a bicycle bell anymore. A recent incident with an inattentive taxi driver in a brand new EV nearly flattening me prompted me to want t…
Agreed. I had a supercharged V8 Jaguar that I could barely hear.
And my Audi has a system that actually pumps engine noise into the cabin, so you can hear that, but not the outside world.
The Fire Department I was at was looking at "thumpers" - augmentations to sirens that make cars in front of them vibrate (a la those people playing too much bass too loud).
Not just sound proofing, but inattentiveness. I've been behind people on semi-rural quiet roads with my 40,000lb fire engine behind them, lights, sirens, and airhorns, and they've driven for a mile or two completely oblivious.
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Pedestrians still exist in non dense zones. It seems there's no way to win. I've been told that I should use a bell because vocal addresses are too startling. Now if there's not enough room to pass safely and silently I completely slow to the pedestrians speed and THEN calmly say excuse me. But I'm convinced that there is just no universally correct way to do it. If you pass people in any way whatsoever, sooner or la…
> Now if there's not enough room to pass safely and silently I completely slow to the pedestrians speed and THEN calmly say excuse me. But I'm convinced that there is just no universally correct way to do it. Anyone who is mad that you politely passed them at a safe speed is just too sensitive about these things. You're totally fine there. But "room to pass safely and silently" could still piss people off depending o…
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Those two pressure vessels are highly engineered and are wrapped with materials with pretty good tensile strength. Also, they’re made out of materials (fabric and rubber) that absorb a decent amount of energy when they tear and that don’t fragment. And the whole assembly usually depressurizes slowly. Having personally blown up beverage bottles by overpressurizing them (be very very careful doing this!), when they go,…
I've blown up beverage bottles for fun. Hooking an air compressor to a 2L bottle and exploding it makes a satisfyingly loud boom. *We had a valve on the air line so we could be at a safe distance when pressurizing. Be very careful. It's unpredictable exactly at which point they'll blow. Sometimes they hold full pressure for a couple seconds and then go.*
This seems to be part of a type of brand marketing where a brand claims it has invented something, but the only thing that ever exists of significant economic value is the attention raised by the promo video / article. Not the thing/service. Examples: - Samsung safety truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNGfse9ZK8 - Citroën motion sickness glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco63dlq_WE - Amazon Prime Air http…
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The ultimate cyclist killer: those stupid extending dog leashes.
Back when I roller skated, the ultimate question: you see a person and a dog, several meters apart. Is there a leash between them? :-)
I’ve had a dog on my heels doing doing 40kmh.
They were at my heel, past the back of my rear tyre. I was briefly a competitive sprint cyclist.