I am new to FuckCars, and personally, I feel very much aligned to this ideology. Particularly, the amout of environmental damage the fuel consumption causes, concerns me.
However, sometimes, I feel like I am a hypocrite, because I drive a motorcycle, which again, causes pollution. But, in my defense, I always try to use my bicycle if I can, and use my motorbike only when necessary, because public transportation system isn’t great in my city. Also, the amount of pollutants my bike releases is way less when compared to a car, or even a small hatchback.
The bike in question is only 160cc, and does 30-40 km/litre (~18-25 miles/litre).
So, what is your opinion on all this, and how can I improve my situation?
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I think that sound pollution regulations should be enrforced fiercely.
Want to drive around on a motorcycle? Go right ahead. Want to mod the exhaust and create a multi km wide disturbance? Get your license revoked, get your vehicle taken away, get a mandatory rehabilitation course and community service.
I don’t understand why we tolerate the morons that think it’s okay to just straight up blast deafening noise at everyone and everything they happen to pass byThere was a study that “found that if 10 percent of all private cars were replaced by motorcycles in the traffic flow of the test area, total time losses for all vehicles decreased by 40 percent and total emissions reduced by 6 percent (1 percent from the different traffic composition of more emission-reduced motorcycles and 5 percent from avoided traffic congestion). A 25 percent modal shift from cars to motorcycles was found to eliminate congestion entirely.”
It’s way better than a car for most situations. I commuted on a motorcycle for over a decade. I was in California where lane splitting and filtering is legal, which made traffic almost disappear from my perspective.
Your comment ignores the safety problems, but otherwise good info.
I suspect the safety problem is mainly a car problem.
It’s all or something, not all or nothing. You do the best you can. Use as much public transport or eco-friendly modes of transport. Walk, if you cant walk, bike/scoot, if you cant bike or scoot, bus/tram, if not that, motorcycle.
You get the idea, sounds like you’re already approaching this the right way, doing what you can. Be safe, driving motorcycles is dangerous, especially in the US.
And fight for political change.
They usually are much noisier than cars which can be very annoying. But a big part of it is due to the type of people who ride them in my city, they usually really don’t care about others.
But if the motorbike is chosen and used correctly, they are better than most cars.
Riders don’t necessarily like their rides that loud either, and obviously they don’t need to be, except it’s their number 1 defense on the road.
Drivers do not pay well enough attention, and especially in America, aren’t used to having riders all around them, or even ever consciously looking for riders. If a motorbike isn’t heard, it isn’t seen, and that creates a scene.
Let me tell ya, after being almost hit 5 dozen times even tho my bike is the loudest thing within 100m I can come off not giving a single fuck about anybody on or near that road either, but it’s not out of some crassness, it’s about me not being murdered by every Lexus or Mercedes that’s too important to be bothered to use a turn signal or check their fucking mirrors.
after being almost hit 5 dozen times even tho my bike is the loudest thing within 100m
The term for this is “negative correlation”
But then it’s a shame that the ones that have to suffer the most from this are the pedestrians (and animals, my dog is petrified every time that a motorbike passes by). We don’t have an easy solution for this, but fighting fire with fire is definitely not the way to go.
I hate how loud the bikes gotta be. I’m right there with you, trust me. If there were more riders and people were just intuitively aware of bikes, like in SE Asia (it doesn’t need to be a river of riders, just more commonplace than now), then I think we could move past it towards something rational.
Currently it’s the best I can do. I’m a sub of this community, I fucking hate cars, hence, riding whenever possible as I don’t have the option of public transit to cover my bases in my area. I’ve been the guy trying to keep riders conscious as they lay in the pavement, more than a few times. It’s not a fond set of memories. And I really don’t want to take a turn either.
I truly understood Indian beeping when I was sitting in a car and realised I could perfectly track every single bike around me. They start beeping when they get close to a car, and don’t stop until they overtake it.
There’s no way to not hear someone constantly going BEEEP BEEP BEEEEEEP BEP BEP BEEEEEEEEEP. On the other hand, even obnoxiousously loud exhausts can partially blend in the background noise and music.
It’s just trading one set of obnoxious noises for another and we’d be in a thread about that instead, y’know.
Clearly ppl don’t like motorcycles here. Maybe they name should change to fuckcars+motorbikes.
No, surprisingly it’s not. My impression of beeping g in India was communication and coordination. Here in the US, it’s usually outrage, wounded pride.
I find that in myself too, despite advising my teens to watch out for it. When someone endangers you by doing something stupid, it’s easy to fall into that trap, and we have very little tradition of communication
There’s definitely a tier list, and motorcycles are overall better imo. They’re smaller and generally get better gas mileage. I can’t say for certain, but if I had to guess people driving a motorcycle are also paying more attention to the road and less likely to hit pedestrians.
My biggest complaint with them is the noise and the emissions. Ideally they will be replaced by electric alternatives in the future and that will resolve both issues.
It’s less pollution but you’d never see me on one in America. I used to be a daily rider in college and shit was so incredibly dangerous. Americans drive with abandon and cars are so huge now even with $1k+ in gear you won’t really be safe. I’ll take surviving an accident over a small change to emissions and size. You still need a space to park most of the time unless you want to flirt with tickets and curb parking.
While the pollutant volume is smaller, the exhaust is typically worse that a car/truck: https://gearjunkie.com/motors/motorcycle-vs-vehicle-emissions
- Don’t feel bad for using motorized vehicles, be it a car or a motorcycle. Do what is the most you can do personally. Of course, if you’re one of those big truck ppl then u’r a problem. Unfortunately, we don’t have infrastructure suitable for non motorized vehicles everywhere. Shifting the blame from governments to individuals in this case is comparable to the individual carbon footprint bs.
- While motorcycles are much better than cars, they’re still bad. They cause air and sound pollution. Because of their ability to go higher speeds, they make cities unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists (basically humans). Essentially, they do all the bad things that cars do, but just with a lower magnitude.
I only barely survived an unavoidable and unpredictable crash on a road bicycle with 2 cars. I’ve had 6 crashes with 7 cars in 170k miles on the bike since 2009. Only 2 of those crashes were bad. However I only barely survived crashing at 30mph where the weight of the bike was insignificant. I wouldn’t have survived that same crash on anything more significant or at any higher speed. I had the critical damage of C1 and a fracture at the base of my skull. I was told if I hadn’t been knocked out completely, I would have died if I had moved before the swelling could keep everything together.
I wouldn’t recommend motorcycles until humans decide to replace driver’s side airbag covers with daggers. People drive like fools and since their incompetence is nonlethal to them, the culture of incompetence is unavoidable.
You likely think you can avoid anything by just being careful. This is not the case. I was ultra cautious and went out of my way to avoid hazardous areas. Most of my hits were from illegal U-turns. If you can predict a random vehicle parallel parked on the side of the road will try and make an illegal U-turn suddenly without warning, directly in front of a large SUV that is passing them, you can avoid the crash that almost killed me. That is the level of stupid that finally got me even on a road bicycle.
The human body is not capable of handling the forces of collision. It doesn’t matter what kind of armored jacket you wear, it will never compare to a car’s tolerance. I’ve seen a lot of people die on bicycles including 3 people I knew. My cousin died on a motorcycle last month.
Glad you made it out relatively unscathed. My old man got killed when a negligent driver crashed into him while he was riding his bike at night. Motorcycles are death traps and I’m always uncomfortable when I’m on the road and one gets near my car.
I like that they’re more fuel efficient than cars, and they’re a thrill for the rider, but the inevitable incompetence of other drivers, or just plain bad luck like blowing a tire, has such a high mortality rate for bikers.
One of my dad’s old biker buddies got hit by a teenage driver who’d just gotten their license. I’m not gonna harp on the kid too badly cause when you’re a new driver, you’re gonna make mistakes. Just sucks that one little mistake can cost someone so dearly. Dad’s friend survived, but he’s never been the same due to brain damage sustained in the crash. He wasn’t wearing a DoT approved helmet at the time, though, so it’s partially on him. His fake helmet snapped in half like a twig.
Biker culture (at least in the US) also has the unfortunate undercurrent of macho shit like “I don’t wanna wear a helmet cause that’s for sissies. I’ll just die like a man.” Helmets are mandatory in my state, but it’s seldom enforced.
Biker culture (at least in the US) also has the unfortunate undercurrent of macho shit like “I don’t wanna wear a helmet cause that’s for sissies. I’ll just die like a man.”
This is parts extra odd to me because the heavy leather jackets and clothing that are also part of that same culture are actually meant to be a form of light armor should you find yourself in a crash
Man everything you wrote here sucks and I’m sorry you’ve had to experience all that. Riding isn’t a “if” you crash, its a “when” you crash thing.
Even still, I find it preferable to being in a box isolated from the environment. Then it’s just more detached television. Being a part of the environment helps me feel alive.
Grandpa told me: if you ride it isn’t if you have a crash, but when and how bad
Better than a car, worse than a bike.
Better than cars for sure. An electric bike is even better.
Better than ICE cars. Way more efficient and doesn’t take up as much space on the road. As long as it’s not one of those deafeningly loud ones, I wouldn’t worry about it. If you’re using your bicycle when you can, you’re already doing more than most people. If money’s no object, you could get an EV motorcycle, but don’t feel like you need to change. I am personally in the same boat as Neato though, I’d never ride one in the US, but that doesn’t really matter for your question.
Personally, I live in suburban hell. Public transit sucks here, there’s nothing in walking distance, and incredibly narrow bike lines (if any at all) to get anywhere useful. I switched to an EV (car) because there’s literally no other way to commute where I live.
Better than ICE cars. Way more efficient
Not necessarily.
Just compare fuel consumption figures, and bizarrely a small car can consume less fuel than a relatively modest bike. Especially if you factor in hybrids or diesels.
And that’s for a car that hopefully transports passengers at least some of the time.
Obviously, I am talking as someone who lives in Europe. While I assume they still sell plenty of small, underpowered and very efficient cars in Asia, I suspect there’s less market for those in the Americas.
I had scooters, powerful scooters, motorcycles and very powerful motorcycles.
In the end I gave up that noise of transport
I love the front when being on two wheels, but there’s no way I can continue doing that in America.
Its just ridiculously dangerous with the way drivers in the US are
I think overall they are better than cars but still have issues. They are smaller and less dangerous to other people (though far more dangerous to you). However, many models can be quite polluting in spite of their fuel efficiency because of lesser emissions controls. And they are often extremely loud. This one makes me the most angry because lots of riders tend to be really dismissive of the real harm that their noise imposes on the community.
But if your motorcycle is clean and quiet then I think it’s relatively fine. Even if it’s not, an awareness of the harms you are causing and active efforts to minimize them and transition to other modes of transit is all we ask. I still drive a car when I need to. It may not be the maximally ethical decision but I think some people underestimate the difficulty of the total transformation our society will need to undergo. I applaud anyone who is taking large and serious steps in the right direction even if they are not all the way there yet.
I am in a city where a car is almost mandatory. I can still push for change, while having to drive daily to pay the bills and such. I think your thinking is logical for your situation. Similarly, I chose what is, to me, the least bad option - a small, affordable EV. Over 50% of the time I have a passenger. I try to work from home. I charge on my home solar as much as I can. Fuck cars. Fuck unsafe drivers
