This article was good.
Americans are shocked and terrified by the idea, I’m sure. “But they could be kidnaped.” That’s kind of a car thing. When cars dominate the world, there are fewer people walking and cycling. Streets are empty except for drivers. There are fewer eyes on the street. With fewer eyes, fewer people together, it becomes more dangerous for vulnerable people.
Jane Jacobs wrote about that in like the 1960s. It’s really infuriating how unsafe car-centered spaces is, and how people erroneously think it makes them safer.
You’re much safer on a street busy with a mixed crowd of pedestrians.
But, again, racism can’t have that.
I’ve had the kidnapping conversation a few times and I’m still deeply confused by what pro-car people are even trying to say. In a walkable area you’re at greater risk of someone coming into physical contact with you, yes, but then what? Are they going to run down the street with you on their shoulder? Maybe two cyclists could carry you together on a line? If they’re dragging you into a building that’s begging to be caught. Meanwhile, in car land, someone can grab you from your front yard and be be off to parts unknown in seconds.
“The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created. Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.”
- Bill Strickland
Nice
It gets better: a human on a bike is the most efficient mode of locomotion there is in terms of mass moved per unit of energy invested.
It’s always funny to see people die a little bit on the inside when you point out that the overwhelming majority of the energy their car consumes is spent on moving it around, rather than them.
I get that that grabbing a bicycle just isn’t an option for a lot of distances but if everybody just moved to a motorcycle or legitimately small car in the cases whey they just move themselves around, this would already solve a non trivial amount of problems we currently have in terms of resource usage and traffic density.
In the case of cars with infernal combustion engines, it’s even worse. Even for very efficient road car engines, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel is expelled as waste heat, through either the exhaust or cooling system. Of that smaller than 50% fraction, indeed most of the energy is spent overcoming aerodynamic drag of the car body, and friction from the tires.
Sidenote: F1 made headlines a while back they had achieved >50% thermal efficiency, with an incredibly complicated hybrid system that recovered excess exhaust energy from the turbo.
cars with infernal combustion engines
Talk about hell on wheels!
Link to source?
everyone wants cheap oil
Uh, no.
One of the best things Trump did was increase the price of oil.
And by cutting off oil to Cuba, he’s making them one of the least oil dependent nations in America.
We want oil prices to go up so high that it effectively becomes unavailable.
You and I agree. Everyone on this sub agrees. I think it’s becoming a more popular opinion, but I think we’re still a bit on the edge.
Electric cars need to be charged for long periods of time, leaving more vulnerable people trapped and isolated in predictable and low security locations. It would take a man to not see the problem here.
I dont own a car either, but my understanding is that >90% of the time, usually that charging happens when the car is parked overnight while you sleep.
My mother-in-law owned one. Before we got her a charger for home she had to go to a charging station. Also, if you’re on a roadtrip you can end up charging while you’re out. Most of the time you would be charging overnight, but not all the time.
Newer “level 3” chargers can charge newer batteries from 20% to 80% inside of 20-30 minutes now. It’s pretty impressive!
I kinda hope charging rest stops that run on solar and have cafés and stuff where people can chill a few minutes and stretch their legs become a thing. :)
Edit: I realize the thread I’m in, and I just wanna say: Hooray, love bikes! Love riding my bike. Which I could get more places on it, honestly.
Electric car was next best thing because I gotta commute like 40 miles each way to my job here in the USA, and it hits 105ºF pretty often. Also: Nice for road trips. :)
Would love to be free of it though. . .
Edit edit: Love the writeup, BTW. :D Good stuff!
Thanks!
Their kids bike home on their own. By 12, kids are expected to generally handle their own travel
…
Americans are shocked and terrified by the ideaDepends where you are in America.
I used to take the bus to school most days, because it was just faster. But on days where I woke up early enough and the weather was good, I loved the freedom to ride my bicycle to elementary school in the US.
Unfortunately the middle and high schools were too far away to do this, but people weren’t worried about kids being kidnapped in the 90s in the US, and I’m sure that’s not an issue in dozens of cities in the US today.
I’m just going to trust AAA on that, rather than launching into a rant about how they destroyed mass transit. The premise of Who Framed Roger Rabbit came from something real that actually happened. I’m just gonna leave that as homework
Guess I have to watch that movie again
Mods, we want more content like this.
And no more fucking memes, for the love of god. Ban posters of low effort crap, so that we can maintain a minimum level of quality for authors like OP.
every time I get my partner oat milk.
You’re amazing
This alleged overproduction drove down the price of oil, which Iraq called “economic warfare.”
Woah, didn’t Hegseth use this term to describe Iran recently?
I thought it was crazy, because it’s literally describing the opposite of war: sanctions are not warfare. They’re diplomacy.
Sanctions are war in the sense that war is killing people. And they’re certainly not diplomacy in the sense that diplomacy is a two way negotiation of relations. You might see a problematic power imbalance when discussing the U.S. sanctioning Cuba, for instance.
No. Sanctions are literally the opposite of war.
Yes, sanctions can kill people.
Sanctions are not peace. Or at least I certainly wouldn’t die on that hill
Nobody said Sanctions are peace.
The opposite of war is peace, QED, thank you
Yes, peace is an opposite of war.
The world is not a dichotomy
That’s interesting conceptually! The word “right” has opposites in both “left” and “wrong”, but each one only applies to one meaning of the word. Do you have any examples of what you’re talking about aside from the one we’re currently disagreeing over?
places that are less car dominated, like the Netherlands, have bike lanes. Mobility devices like electric wheelchairs and scooters can use those bike lanes.
That doesn’t seem safe. Do sidewalks not have curb cuts? Seems safer for both the wheelchair users and the cyclists if the wheelchair users are with pedestrian traffic
Depends on the wheelchair. The manual spinny with your arms ones, sure. They should be on the sidewalk. But there’s plenty of options that have no problem moving at a pace that makes way more sense on a bike path than on a sidewalk and this is plenty safe.
Any freedom that comes at the expense of someone else’s freedom is just a from of oppression
I don’t know if I agree with that
I find it hilarious for a cyclist to be an anarchist. What do they think would happen without bike lanes and laws against hit-and-runs? Chaos and death.
Anarchy does not mean “no rules”. It means “no rulers”.
Also, in your interpretation of anarchy, there’d be no car drivers, because the infrastructure necessary to keep a car running wouldn’t survive in such an environment.
Also, I think they just described a normal day in the US. Cars can only exist because governments massively subsidize them. The highway system was a massive project that a lot of people didn’t want. Chaos and death is the system. People don’t have to run away when they hit a cyclist, because drivers are often not even held liable. There being no consequences for killing people on bicycles is exactly the system we have now.
Edit: Cars kill at least 120 people every single day, and maim or permanently disable many more. HOW IS THAT NOT CHAOS AND DEATH?
You don’t need stop lights or signs at an bicycle intersection
What?!?
If it is bike traffic only, stops signs or signals are not needed.
Strong disagree.
Cyclists going 40 are going to hit other cyclists unless there’s a stop sign or traffic light.
Not to mention that cyclists will hit pedestrians unless there’s signage for them to slow down and stop for traffic at cross walks.
Only a very small fraction of cyclists can sustain 40kph on a flat, certainly not your daily commuters. And in dense areas I doubt anyone can get up to 25.
And like the other commenter says, people follow traffic rules despite the lack of signage and signals. It flows much better without having to stop and go for signals
There aren’t any basic traffic rules that apply in the absence of signage where you are at?
Where I live people know what to do on an entirely unmarked road and/or intersection just by what they are driving/riding on.
Most of these rules just boil down to not being an absolutele prick by the way. Doing 40 on a bike lane unless stopped by a sign, and not, say, situational reality (like seeing a crossing coming), would be exactly that.
Bicycles aren’t just “fun”
People use then to get places. Like to get to work, to make deliveries, to pickup kids from school, etc.
You need to plan for people traveling on bicycles at traveling speeds. And that includes signage and traffic lights so that cyclists don’t have to brake at every intersection.
Accelerating with a cargo bicycle full of groceries every block is a huge decrease to efficiency
Bicycles aren’t just “fun”
People use then to get places. Like to get to work, to make deliveries, to pickup kids from school, etc.
Where did I suggest otherwise? I commute over 200km’s a week on a bicycle myself.
You need to plan for people traveling on bicycles at traveling speeds. And that includes signage and traffic lights so that cyclists don’t have to brake at every intersection.
What difference does it make braking for lighting or signage that orders you to do so, or an unmarked intersection?
Accelerating with a cargo bicycle full of groceries every block is a huge decrease to efficiency
I do weekly groceries on an unassisted cargo bike and this really just isn’t a real problem. The stopping an starting.
Oh man, this author didn’t even cover one of the major ways that cars are racist, but did hint at it in other sections. The car-dependent design of suburbia that we have today was explicitly racist in intent. After the US Supreme Court ruled that housing discrimination was unconstitutional, local leaders had to figure out a different approach to enforce segregation, and they did it by using wealth as a proxy. Under the new zoning and building codes, they made minimum lot sizes big enough, and maximum occupancy low enough, that poor people couldn’t afford houses in the new subdivisions. The need for a car to get around further added to the cost. Then, they offered subsidies (like the GI Bill) to poor white people, and not to poor Black people. Voilà! “Natural” segregation.
The handful of Black families that managed to amass enough wealth to move in anyway could be dealt with by more direct tactics.
Oh shit! I knew I was missing something. Thanks. I’ll add that in.
Oh, you’re the author! Thanks for writing. Just to be totally clear, I wasn’t criticizing, but sharing more, because even after 8,000 words, there’s plenty more to say on the topic. (e: Now I see the [OC] marker, which had wrapped to a new line in my browser.)
Oh no, that was great. Do you mind if I just pull quote you into the article? I think you said it all as well or better than I would.
Sure! I’d be honored.
Awesome! Added. Lemme know if you want to be cited in a different way. Thanks again!
Looks good! I like the comment about being able to write a whole book on it. Richard Rothstein did write one: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America I found it a disturbing and very enlightening read.
Then, they offered subsidies (like the GI Bill) to poor white people, and not to poor Black people.
Wait… what? Is there some racist BS baked into the GI Bill that I’m not familiar with?
As much (and it’s a fuckin lot) as the military gets wrong, the GI Bill always sounded pretty cut and dry: do your time and don’t die, fine, we’ll pay for school.
But do school me if there’s more going on here.
Here’s one article on the topic: How the GI Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans
Oh, WWII era was pretty fucking dismal for civil rights. And as unacceptably shit in that regard our systems still are, we have made some decent progress, largely at the hands of minorities showcasing the best people our military has to offer - i.e., groups like the Tuskegee Airmen who were treated like shit, but proceeded to kick ass and take names anyway.
The effects of all that shit still lingers, and we’ve got a lot of progress yet to make… but idk that today’s GI Bill is a worthwhile target. Unless I’m missing something and it’s still being used as a tool to fuck over minorities today.
…course, we do still have 2 years of Trump, and if the GI Bill being used to level the playing field in today’s world makes it into his radar, I’m sure it will be revoked or just overtly made white only, cuz it’s not like laws mean anything nowadays.
But, I guess before I cling to it too confidently, I’ll reiterate: Is (not was) some racist BS baked into the GI Bill? It (today’s) still looks like an equalizer to me, despite its fucked up history.
Also to be clear, I’m talking historically as in the time period in which car-dominance got baked into policy. And like Humpty Dumpty, when I use a word, it means precisely what I wish it to mean.
Kidding! I’ve only ever heard “GI Bill” refer to the 1944 legislation, which sunset in 1956. I wasn’t aware that people may use the term to refer to subsequent bills. TIL.
Got it! That makes much more sense - we’re talking about two very different things. Or at least, two very different states of the same thing. ‘The GI Bill’ in modern context just means that scholarship troops can pay for school with.
Right now there are two iterations I’m aware of - the Montgomery GI Bill which you don’t automatically get, but have to make deposits to that are deducted from military pay… making it extra fucked up if troops did that and were still denied the payoff at the end of the tunnel; and the Post 9/11 GI Bill which doesn’t have a deposit, but carries some trade off that I don’t remember.
I believe they do require an honorable discharge, so if that’s still being weaponized against minorities then access to it is at least partially locked behind a race gate, which stands out as the highest potential for abuse today.
…oh, there’s also the “Forever GI Bill” but iirc all that did was knock a time requirement off of the other two - used to have to use with 10 or 15 or something years of separation; now it’s good for life.
cities skylines taught me more lanes isnt the answer, even if you want cars
