A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/34370513
Anon likes bikes
Not only are bikes one of the most efficient forms of transport, they might be the most efficient form of powered locomotion, period. A human being on a bicycle is far more efficient than anything in nature.
ETA: Unless you consider e-bikes a separate category, since they (in some cases?) add regenerative braking on top of everything else.
Yes, actually:
(Besides a 'velomobile', anyway ... which is basically just a bicycle with bodywork for better aerodynamics.)
Death sentence to whoever chose to animate a fake scatter plot over this thing. And yeah velomobiles are just speed-optimized bicycles.
Mice should be ashamed of their inefficiency.
e-bikes a separate category, since they add regenerative braking on top of everything else.
Actually, the vast majority of e-bikes do not have regenerative braking.
Because on a bike, you don't actually tend to use your brakes very much or very often. And even when you do use the brakes, you're slowing a smaller mass down from a lower speed (compared to cars with regen braking). There's just not much energy there to be harvested from regen braking. Which makes it generally not worth the extra money, weight, and complexity to include a regen braking system.
I don't think most e-bikes have regen braking... Maybe the really expensive ones might...
I recently saw a scatter plot somewhere, I believe it was ~~speed vs energy efficiency or something~~ body weight vs cost of transport. And all animals, as well as most modes of transport follow a roughly anti-proportional relationship on a log-scale. ~~If you're fast heavy, you use a lot of energy.~~ If I remember it right, the ~~fastest~~ most efficient animal was the salmon ~~(?)~~. There was one single outlier from that trend, an animal that is much ~~too fast and much~~ too efficient for its weight ~~at the same time~~: Human on a bike.
Edit: Found it: https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2025/12/31/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel/
I can't drive because I am neurodivergent and traumatized, so I get panic attacks when I drive. It's too fast, too much power and responsibility and my schizoautismo brain shuts down not knowing what to do. So I ride my bike everywhere.
i have adhd and i'm terrified of driving, well, i'm terrified of other people driving. if i knew everyone played by the rules that'd be fine, if i knew everyone didn't play by the rules i'd also be fine. but in my country i'm expected to assume everyone follows the rules and blindly trust people do as expected or i'm "disrupting traffic". fuck that! i wouldn't trust a random stranger with keeping an eye on pet rock let alone my life!
pretty much everyone in my life tells me i have to get over that fear but i'm not in a hurry, i've got my electric bike and i'm happy
Too scared of my ADHD to drive.. Too scared of my ADHD and other cars to ride a bike :x
Funnily, driving is one of the few things that keeps my ADHD at bay. Danger is immediate, reactions are required, action is mandatory. It's exactly what my brain needs. I usually need a 2 day warm-up to make a simple phone call but if somebody does an emergency stop right in front of me, I react like a cat.
Yeah maybe it would be fine, maybe it's just anxiety preventing me from doing it
Air conditioning.
Air conditioning is why the car is so popular.
It's all kinds of comfort. Comfort to only walk a little when you arrive. Comfort of being "safe" while others are endangered (by you). Comfort of only pushing a pedal with minimal force, instead of propelling yourself. Comfort of having all your shit with you, like a miniture house/oversized backpack. Comfort of keeping a distance to others, being able to hide all you flaws with your carry-on personal space while othering everybody else. Comfort of being sheltered from environment while driving (+ AC), actively worsening the environment.
There have been hot days where friends met me at a bar and asked me ”Weren’t you hot on a bike?” It was only then I realized the day was considered hot, because I had wind cooling, and they had a metal greenhouse with solar gain.
That only works if by "hot" days you mean "comfortably warm". For actually hot weather, it's gonna have to be evaporative cooling (sweat) and even then it gets pretty uncomfortable unless you're going at a leisurely pace IMO.
And if its hot and humid you're screwed. I love being physically active but i literally need to bring a second shirt if its warmer than 25C and even just a little humid. Especially if i have a backpack which i almost always do. I can wring the sweat out of the back of my shirt after 20 minutes on days like that.
Nah, I wanna ride a bike and get to work good and sweaty. It instills fear in my enemies
My wife likes to ride a bike, a lot. The more you get into it, the more expensive it gets. No those bikes and accessories aren't cheap. That thing getting stolen is a serious hit.
Simple general store ones are cheap, dedicated sports store ones are far from cheap.
Bicycles are great force multipliers, but legs are true symbol of freedom of movement. More versatile, almost everyone already have those, already using those is the maintenance required to maintain those.
Though yeah i absolutely can't understand how cars became a symbol of freedom.
Those are literally like a ball and chain around your legs.
The cost of maintenance, car itself and fuel, stress from said fuel price and then getting to sit in a traffic jam overwhelming majority of the time, while trying to memorize huge amount of road rules that many just ignore and which can result in death.
Yeah sure racetrack driving might be nice or going somewhere really remote, but that's so rare as to be a statistical anomaly, overwhelming majority of the time it's basic everyday driving.
You can cycle a lot without getting into racing bikes though.
Walking you are going to want shoes. Shoes wear through and actually cost more than a decent regular bike per km.
As a note about the "symbology of freedom" when it comes to cars it I think comes down to American centric shit again. When I lived in small town USA where there is nothing to do but meth and everyone knows everyone else's business the dream of packing your shit in a backpack and getting into the car and driving 4 hours away feels like freedom. You can go to a city or town and get away from it all.
Now you can do the same in Europe on a train but that won't sell cars so....
You can even see it in American car ads. There are two kinds of cars - the commuter, which focuses on luxury and style, and the "get away from your life" car, the SUVs you stick your camping gear in and go to the middle of nowhere to get away from your shitty life and experience nature in.
Cars are a symbol of freedom because there is no transportation options, so not having one feels like prison
cars require roads for the most part and that's a socialized freedom boats would be a better symbol of freedom
