273
The world's 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
273 points (97.6% liked)
Fuck Cars
9801 readers
9 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
-
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
-
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
-
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
-
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
-
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
-
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I ride from -20 to +35C in basically any weather and since jackets and shorts exist that's all that's needed. My friends have their own bikes they can ride...
Not much good if you've got to take the kids shopping though.
What? Why? I biked since I was like 5 with my parents to wherever including supermarket. Not sure what you mean honestly.
People be growing up knowing nothing but absolute car dependency and the infrastructure that comes with it. They cannot fathom any other way of existing.
People be privileged and not realising that their way of life is not suitable for everyone. Bikes are not the answer to every question.
I should have been more verbose. We as a society (in North America especially but also elsewhere) have suffered through decades of redlining that has resulted in racial and economic divides.
The wealthiest suburbs are being subsidized by the poorest neighbourhoods with all the money being funneled into infrastructure that directly supports car dependency.
In order to participate in society, you are now required to own, maintain and insure your own vehicle(s).
I am suggesting that we've been robbed of a way of life where cars are not necessary to survive. Where your kids can hop on their own bikes and safely take themselves to where they need to go without worrying about if they'll be struck by a car.
I'm talking about active transport not as a hobby for the privileged, but as a normality for all.
Where I am there are hills everywhere. You know that old joke about walking five miles uphill to school in the snow, and ten miles uphill to get home? That's here. Plus, it's the UK, so when it snows, the roads and pavements are lethal.
Plus, some people have kids under 5 😉
More seriously though, because of the amount of hills, and the fact that most people work all day, bikes are not the best option here. The nearest supermarket is several miles away with a lot of hills in between. If you've got plenty of free time, riding to the shops with the kids could be fun, but for most people public transport is the answer. It's just a shame that it's terrible here .
Well I live in Sweden and we have snow here too buddy. Lousy public transport sucks though, but that's what you get in a carcentric society, no options...
Exactly, you live in a country that doesn't shut down because of half a millimetre of snow. We genuinely get public transport shutting down if there's snow, and we've infamously had trains stop running because of the wrong type of leaves on the line. For a country that mostly has adverse weather conditions, we're absolutely useless if the weather's anything but dry and sunny.
I honestly don't know what we can do here to get better public transport and encourage people away from cars. Once you're further down the valley, there's enough room to build other transport methods alongside the roads to allow a transition, but further up, there's barely enough room for cars to pass each other in some places, which means that buses would struggle too, and there's no room to make a one way loop to free up space either.
Yup, that's us. We walk, use transit, or the kid rides on her bike child seat.
E-bikes exist if you don't have the legs to tackle those hills yet.
I'd love to get an ebike, but at the moment the price is too high, from what I've seen. The cheapest ones seem to be over £1,000, unless you get the little fold up bikes, but they don't look like they'd be comfortable for a long ride where you're pedaling lots.
A gravel bike style would be better here too, simply because we're in the valleys, and lots of the trails are a bit rough.
Back to the point though, getting to the shops and carrying a week's worth of shopping on a bike with young kids is impractical here. It would be great if it was practical, but other than the hills, we don't have the infrastructure for the most part. The roads have to be shared, even if it's just for now, and there are lots of stretches here where there's not the room for bikes with motor vehicles, and especially not on the pavements. This time of year is even worse - it's dark in the morning and night, and the weather is usually crap. All of it increases the risk of accidents, and that's the last thing any of us want.