cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/34370513
Anon likes bikes
Air conditioning.
Air conditioning is why the car is so popular.
I can wake up in Utah in the morning, and be at the beach in California in the afternoon. I think that's freedom. Google says that same trip on a bike is 3 days. Through Vegas and the Mojave desert. If you don't die.
It might not be a bad idea to get some kind of insurance in the alarmingly likely event some jackass hits you and drives off either oblivious or indifferent.
What kind of insurance is available for a bike that would cover collision.
Also the transmission lasts between 2 years and forever. Probably also depends on how aggressively you use it.
Well, the bicycle I use now is actually somewhat decent unlike the one I had as a child (so maybe that's why it doesn't have many problems).
Checkmate:
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/
Too bad trains and boats are missing from the graph.
I agree. To my surprise, human on a bike still seems to win out, though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AEffizienzLeistungFahrzeuge.png
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
That is interesting! Looks like that table is for passenger transport specifically, not energy per mass. People don't pack nearly as densly in transport as heavy cargo does. Not safely and willingly anyway.
There's also a table in that Wikipedia article that breaks it down for a few real world train services with percent capacity ranging from 27 to 65% (in different networks / on different trains, though). But yeah, humans like their personal space, even in trains, those wasteful brats.
What if we gave a salmon a bike
Then we could judge a fish on it's ability to ride a bike.
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 add regenerative braking on top of everything else.
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.
Interesting, didn't realize.
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.
This is so cool. Why do I intuitively expect the efficiency should increase with the Y axis instead through? It feels somewhat upside down?
The Y axis is cost of transport, low cost = high efficiency.
cars require roads for the most part and that's a socialized freedom boats would be a better symbol of freedom
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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