901–910 of 969 posts
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I like profound isolation... what's the bandwidth like? (The other thing that ties a lot of us to cities).
It's excellent. Gigabit fibre. I mapped out the rural fibre routes (along with other infra) and current real estate listings. Threw it up at gaffologist.com if you're curious. Note that I am not a front-end dev and it shows.
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Don't have to worry about theft?! Wow, Europe must be so different than North America. I'm much more worried about my biker being stolen (has happened about a dozen times in my life) than my car. If the former happens you get absolutely zero support, while if the latter happens the police will actually try to do something.
A dozen times? Damn, where do you live if you don’t mind me asking?
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what do people do that have kids between the "too big for cargo bike" and "too young to drive their own car" category? I used to take my kids all the time on my e-bike with a burley bike trailer. Now I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. I'm pretty sure the middle schooler would get made fun of if his friends saw him showing up to school or soccer practice in the cargo bucket of my bike. For people that have hit th…
My 11 and 13yo happily ride on the back of my cargo bike (Extracycle). Some of their braver, bike riding friends, do ask "Why don't you ride by yourself?" I used to have a burley before the cargo. I think the cargo upright position makes it feel a bit more grown up. Plus, it is so fun. The highschooler absolutely refuses to ride the back of the cargo, and insists on being driven by car. It takes so much longer with a…
Also, do you really consider 11 and 13 year olds brave for riding a bike? I'd say that is a pretty normal thing to do at that age.
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London has really good public transportation and, as this article mentions, lots of people in London do cycle to work (half of all the offices I’ve had in London has had an on-premises bicycle “shed”). In fact I’ve met so many Londoners who never even bothered to learn to drive. In my experience, it’s generally American cities that require a car rather than European cities. Generally speaking of course, you get good…
European cities only don't require a car for those lucky enough to live in the city center of major capitals. The further away from city suburbs, one might get a lucky 1 bus per hour if at all.
I live miles out of from London and get the train in. Almost nobody I work with live in the city and none of them drive in. In fact you wouldnt want to drive in London.
This has been true for so many European cities, Cambridge, Chelmsford, York, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, etc. all are very accessible for non-car owners.
Anyone who claims you need a car to live in a European city is someone who hasn’t experienced many European cities ;)
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Correction: it's illegal to bike when very drunk. In the moderately drunk range, German law is surprisingly reasonable in acknowledging that drunk driving would have been much worse.
Where I live the amount of alcohol allowed in the blood is less than is allowed for driving in the UK
But the "folk wisdom" of drivers completely ignores that threshold and only considers the next stage relevant (BAC 0.5+, used to be 0.8) and this only applies to motor vehicles. For cyclists, the next threshold does not happen before BAC 1.6. I suppose that wouldn't exactly be allowed in the UK either?
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Farms aren't sub-urbs, farms are rural. Suburbia "lesser-urban" is housing estates. Nothing productive happens there. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suburbia - " the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large shops, places of work, or places of entertainment "
People live there. And they create business nearby. And those business are closer to the rural areas than the cities are. And also, there aren't really any places with just houses and no places of work, that doesn't really exist.
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Why is no one talking about the safety of hauling kids on a bike? It's incredibly dangerous compared to a car. In my city, it's not if but when you'll get hit by a car on a bike. Yet I see parents increasingly think it's okay to haul their children on their bikes.
Because it should be okay, and it's a societal failing that it currently isn't as safe as it should be. Cars are always safer for their occupants, but using them puts vulnerable road users at greater risk of serious injury or death. In my city I love to see more people on the road with their kids on e-bikes. It shouldn't be a moral failing on part of the parent to be doing that. OTOH, just this morning one of the A*H…
But it isn't. End of story.
Happy to support people who want to make biking safer. Happy to support politicians who want to build protected bike lanes.
But you can't just make up a fairy tale land and pretend it's safe. Bring yourself back to real life, and your children are in danger.
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Why is no one talking about the safety of hauling kids on a bike? It's incredibly dangerous compared to a car. In my city, it's not if but when you'll get hit by a car on a bike. Yet I see parents increasingly think it's okay to haul their children on their bikes.
I hope this is meant ironically. Cars regularly mount pavements/sidewalks as well, and kill pedestrians who are not even in the road. The correct response to "cars make cities unsafe for everyone" is of course to ban all but the most essential cars from cities. It is not to suggest that the _other_ forms of transport (including walking on the pavement/sidewalk!) are so unsafe as to be irresponsible, in the presence o…
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Why is no one talking about the safety of hauling kids on a bike? It's incredibly dangerous compared to a car. In my city, it's not if but when you'll get hit by a car on a bike. Yet I see parents increasingly think it's okay to haul their children on their bikes.
So it’s not the bikes that are dangerous but the cars around them. Shouldn’t the solution be about how to keep cars away from bikes, not ditch bikes and drive cars?