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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

#191
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cycled for like 30 years before we had kids and needed a car. The ebikes that the post refers to are a menace and should be banned. Both as a cyclist and a driver. I've almost been plowed over by some idiot sitting on what should be a motorcycle but riding on the bike path. And I've almost had my kids run over. Also, as a driver you just don't expect someone to be going so crazy fast in the bike lane. I've had peop…

I find it hard to take the debate seriously because the default stance of everyone against electric 2-wheelers is not manual bikes, its cars. And, cars are multiple orders of magnitude more dangerous than anything on 2-wheels. I’m sure you’re right that theres room for improvement, but instead of building infrastructure (we literally shaped cities for cars after all)- we would rather ensure that cars are incumbent fo…

Are you replying to the right post?

My default is my manual bike.

No amount of infrastructure will make these electric motorcycles safe in bike lanes or pedestrian paths. They should be banned.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I heard from someone working at a big car producer that they force EV’s to use the mechanical brakes every now and then because if not, they rust away.

They rust away either way. They need to be occasionally applied so that when you use them, it doesn’t take half a block to grind the rust off.

The same problem occurs if you let an ICE car sit unused for a while.

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

#193

> with their increased weight and powerful torque, they produce a lot more tyre pollution than ICE vehicles. This has been shown not to be true in a number of studies.

Can you share them? Because physics says that damage to roads scales quadratically with weight. Not sure why tires would not experience a similar increase. At the very least, these tires are subject to higher forces due to the heavier weights of EVs. Intuitively, consistently applying higher friction forces to an object would cause higher wear.

I would imagine it's just tire formulation choices. Tractor trailers get extremely high mileage from their tires, but there is lots more weight on each tire. And train wheels... what is the load and mileage on those?

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

#195

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,…

Also in the UK and I certainly subscribe to r/fuckcars as I'm a keen cyclist and never got around to learning to drive. I find it annoying that media outlets (BBC - I'm looking mainly at you!) will refer to EVs as being car-shaped and then, as you said, demonise e-bikes by lumping them in with the illegal e-motorbikes (see the recent Panorama program for a clear case of not making clear the distinction between e-moto…

> However, if we get as many people to use e-bikes or e-scooters

Replacing cars with bikes/scooters is unrealistic and unreasonable. You're either ignoring or unaware of the actual dependence on cars that exists and that cannot be dismissed.

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

#196
This article is flat out wrong. The study they cite does not state the things the article says it states. And the study they cite certainly does not compare the harm from brakes to the harm from exhaust.

The study simply says that brake dust can cause asthma and hay fever in children. There is no comparison made to the harm from exhaust.

Exhaust is certainly more harmful than brakedust in the quantities one may encounter in the real world. Exhaust contains many chemicals that are actual poisons. Iron is not poisonous and copper can only be poisonous in large amounts. It is true that they can cause sensitivity and autoimmune diseases in the lungs especially in children, but this is much more remote harm than the actual poison in exhaust.

Nobody kills themselves by sniffing brakes but many people have done it by closing themselves in a garage with a running car engine. (They say that is harder now with catalytic converters but it still happens).

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

#198
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The safety is a function of the speed you are going. Legal ebikes in the UK are limited to 15mph which is normally survivable unlike say a 125cc scooter doing 60mph. I've got an ebike in central london and find it quite practical on the whole. For local journeys <2miles it's faster than anything else and you can go down mostly traffic restricted roads. For intercity you can put the bike on a train. Rain is a bit of a…

They can provide assist up to 15.5 mph IIRC, but aren't limited to a top speed apart from your legs and/or finding a big hill.

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

#199

Having lived next to a semi-main street through a smallish California coastal city without much rain it is pretty eye opening how much black dirt and junk just coat everything next to the road. Walk down the street and touch a bush or any plant leaf and get a nice black hand in the process. The plants are covered, parked cars get covered and the inside of my apartment was covered. It wasn’t until I moved out that I s…

I live on the second floor near a road and my balcony furniture is always covered in black gunk.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regenerative braking has much less tire wear than traditional braking because it's done much more slowly and smoothly. Also, none of these discussions use up-to-date information on EV tires. Consumers aren't willing to replace their tires much more often for an EV except at the high end of the market, tire manufacturers are already making tires last much longer for EV purposes. New designs are already shedding less d…

Teslas eat tires for breakfast. Instant torque and high weight - any benefit you get from regen breaking is not scratching that.

That’s nothing compared to an i3: I don’t even get 10K miles per set. Some people report getting as many as 12K with conservative driving.

Part of the problem is the instant torque, but the narrow geometry is a bigger issue. Also, they did something to the formulation that achieves less rolling resistance for increased wear.

I also don’t think the weight is the main issue. The i3 is a bit under 3000 lbs. That’s the same as a Volvo station wagon, and they didn’t have this problem. (If I remember right, you could get 50K mile Michelins for them.)

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