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Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

thedrive.com

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Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#121

Post by d0gbread »

avalys wrote: post #106
bedobi wrote: post #34

Typical hackernews to have threads full of well meaning but ultimately misguided people saying ah we have some technological solution for this. The solution to this problem and every other problem caused by driving is not driving . Period. Not driving doesn't require any new technology, it just requires getting serious about alternatives to driving. (safe, separated bike ways, ebike and micromobility subsidies, rail,…

Not driving is not a solution. The reason zoning in the US requires developments to take cars into account, is that people in the US want cars. And if someone builds a new residential or commercial development that doesn't recognize this reality, it creates problems for everyone as people have nowhere to put the cars that they definitely want to use. Yes, there are some people who live in cities and are happy to have…

Chicken and the egg. You can't really make people not want cars without better alternatives, which requires investments that aren't being made.

I want a car, because I need a car. But put in a few bullet trains and offshoots, a business model for vehicles that enables access to a $100/month consumer fleet of shared vehicles so I can grab a truck, minivan, whatever as needed, and I will happily skip ownership.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#122

Post by swores »

CableNinja wrote: post #80
undersuit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should walk as far as they are willing to walk.

As i mentioned in my other post. Thats not far for most people. More than 1/4 mile and people will not hesitate to get the car

I'm sure there are many people for whom that is true, but there are also many people who would laugh at the idea of driving two miles instead of walking, or laugh at the idea of driving six miles instead of cycling (even with a bag or two of shopping).

I think a lot of the difference between people comes down to their childhood - what they learned as default behaviour. Though obviously people can change as they grow up too, either personality wise or having health/physical reasons they either can't walk far or can't drive at all. But my point is that just because some people feel that 3 minutes is the maximum time for walking before a car should be used instead it doesn't mean that short distance is an immutable fact, and many people could get used to walking slightly further distances and discover that no only is it not the end of the world, but it's even a good way to stay or become a bit fitter and healthier!

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#123

Post by highwaylights »

dragontamer wrote: post #25
audunw wrote: post #7

It’s great to bring this problem up. But the focus on EVs is a distraction. > EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weight and high torque compared to traditional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. It’s covered in this panel discussion on Fully Charged: https://youtu.be/LeHakmL6eEc?si=ebBAn8RSDhmmLfHI Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. E…

> EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man Its not torque that matters. Its simply friction and normal force. And that's directly caused by weight. Tire Wear is something like (weight^4), so small increases in weight will have huge increases to wear-and-tear. --------- I think the real issue is that 3000lbs to 4500lbs, while a significant increase in tire wear, is still small comp…

Or people just get their groceries delivered. Way more convenient, not expensive anymore (I get unlimited deliveries for a fairly paltry annual fee), and saves on journeys as the truck just loads up on lots of people’s deliveries all at once.

It also scales better - if more people are having groceries delivered then each trucks stops become more closely clustered (unless the computers involved are just doing a poor job).

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#124

Post by corethree »

dragontamer wrote: post #71
undersuit wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck?

My overall point is that the "last mile" we're just screwed unless we fundamentally redesign our neighborhoods and shape of our cities. Its pretty damn obvious that as the USA is laid out right now, we don't have any good last-mile solutions outside of 100x different people driving to the same store and picking up what they want. And its not like houses are going to pick themselves up and move to a store, and given z…

infra is not going to change in the US. Too much individual ownership at stake.

For example I care about the environment but not enough to throw away a one million dollar suburban house for it.

Basically to fix this problem is essentially to cause current suburban housing to depreciate in value until the property has become essentially worthless which is against much of the populations self interest as many people own homes. Either way, this kind of thing has sort of already happened in Japan.

That being said in CA there are measures to combat this problem. ADUs and SB-9 to increase density, but adoption has not yet been that wide spread.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#125

Post by [deleted] »

audunw wrote: post #7

It’s great to bring this problem up. But the focus on EVs is a distraction. > EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weight and high torque compared to traditional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. It’s covered in this panel discussion on Fully Charged: https://youtu.be/LeHakmL6eEc?si=ebBAn8RSDhmmLfHI Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. E…

[deleted]

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#126

Post by xyst »

I’m not surprised. Americans alone traveled a staggering 3.26T (yes, TRILLION) miles (5.24T km) in 2022. [1] That’s a metric shit ton of tire wear particles leaking into the environment.

This is a direct result of how shitty our cities are designed. Single zoned swaths of land. High dependency on car centric transportation. None to minimal alternatives for anything else. Massive subsidies for various road infrastructure across all levels of government. Billions of dollars of handouts (sorry, “subsidies”) for O&G industry which generates trillions of profits collectively…

There’s only so much a single person can do. We need regulation at all levels of government. O&G and auto industries need to start paying reparations. Producers of plastics need to be taxed, regulated, monitored. Cities need to be redesigned/rebuilt.

[1] https://afdc.energy.gov/data/mobile/10315

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#127

Post by fnordpiglet »

kmeisthax wrote: post #98
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words: you're proposing to replace a set of possible, if difficult, technological solutions, with an near-impossible social solution. I'd call that misguided. Technological solutions tend to be discussed because they can be implemented. Social solutions may work better, but only in imaginary la-la land where they can actually be put into practice. In the real world, you can't " just " get people to not drive…

Automobile dependency is not a technological problem, it is a social problem. Enormous sums of money were spent on lobbying, laws, and infrastructure, all just to make driving tolerable . The cost of this social experiment was that walking was made miserable and dangerous. A century ago people were saying, "in the real world, you can't just get people to not walk". But they did. We coined the term "jaywalking" to ref…

“We” is not nearly as many as you may believe. I would say most people don’t want to give up their car. That’s why people spend so much time maintaining their cars, polishing them, buying nicer ones, etc. Some people want to give up their cars, but you need everyone to want this, and they don’t. A technical solution is more likely to work than a mass social upheaval.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#128

Post by rafram »

xyzelement wrote: post #109
demondemidi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we need to focus on is infrastructure for walking, biking and public transportation And busses, light rail, intercity trains. But America associates one-car-per-person with all kinds of twisted politics and self-esteem anxiety. We need a psyops program to wean people off cars, and it will take a decade or more. Just look at the anger in any HN thread that is critical of cars, it runs deep.

// But America associates one-car-per-person with all kinds of twisted politics and self-esteem anxiety. America offers various lifestyles, from big cities like NYC, Boston, etc where a car is a liability, to near suburbs that are well served by transit (eg, NYC tri-state area) where you probably need a car but your daily commute doesn't involve it, to more spread-out and rural living where car is absolutely necessar…

But we can do better. 92% of Americans own a car, only slightly higher than the rate in France, but the average American drives twice as many miles in a year as the average French person does [1]. There are a lot of trips that will always need a car. Lots of people still want to own a car, even if they live somewhere with a good rail network. But they don’t need to drive it as much. It’s not that they’re being forced not to drive, it’s that rail is such a great option for getting around that there’s simply no need to use a car for most trips. That should be our goal in the US.

[1] https://frontiergroup.org/resources/fact-file-americans-driv...

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#129

Post by swores »

Stinky_Lisa wrote: post #39
dragontamer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man Its not torque that matters. Its simply friction and normal force. And that's directly caused by weight. Tire Wear is something like (weight^4), so small increases in weight will have huge increases to wear-and-tear. --------- I think the real issue is that 3000lbs to 4500lbs, while a significant increase in tire wear, is still small comp…

Last mile can be resolved with drones and bikes. I wouldnt even be opposed to consider going back to horses.

Are horses actually environmentally friendly? I know that having a pet dog can be one of, if not the most, un-environmentally friendly things a person can do due to the amount they eat, so I could imagine horses having the same problem and not being as good as electric cars yet alone electric bikes, but I don't know anything about horses so maybe they're very efficient eaters?

I do know that back before cars, places like NYC had many tens of thousands of horses working in the streets, leading to huge amounts of horse shit everywhere (so much so that even though it does have industrial uses, it's value was practically zero), plus something like half a dozen horses dying on the streets every day and being left to putrefy - so some logistical improvements compared to last time needed at the very least, though 120 years ago people weren't caring much about the fuel efficiency comparisons.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#130

Post by seanp2k2 »

avalys wrote: post #100
undersuit wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're going to drive a multi-ton vehicle instead of bringing a folding cart?

Yes, because we're a wealthy and productive society and the fruits of human progress in the past 300 years have allowed us to build a civilization where nearly everyone can afford to use a multi-ton machine of nearly incomprehensible complexity and sophistication to carry them around, instead of pushing a cart like a peasant 5,000 years ago did.

Check out eg https://youtu.be/hmk5cxpAfcw where he’s flying by all the cars stuck in traffic on his human-powered peasant wheels.

Auto companies lobbied governments and put out propaganda to get cities to rip out street cars and rail in the early 1900s. They did this to sell more cars, so this is what we get.

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