$20 gas gets me much, much, much further than $20 in eating high carb prepared food when riding my bike between point A and B. Not fuel efficient, in fact, energy expensive, but it is over all cheaper than a car if you can handle the potential physical abuse of riding a quarter mile up hill to your house. I did this last year while my car was in the shop, I learned I lived at the top of a hill, in the middle of a valley. Lost around 14lbs in a week just running errands, and I was carb loading like crazy. Carbs, meat, sugars, and tons of water. Riding a bike is all laughs and giggles until you’re doing it to get meat and milk to fuel your required errands and despite eating everything in sight you’re still losing weight at a shocking pace… They had my car a month, I was able to hold out on most errands until around just before the final week, went from 179, to 165. Kept eating as I felt I needed and was back up to 175 in about a week after getting my car back, and with recent exercise and pushing myself I dropped to 169 while increasing my max weight, it’s really only surprising when you find I was 280ish lbs just 6 yrs ago… I digress, bikes are tough on the body.
Because people with disabilities and chronic illness exist, and because depending on the distance it’s not possible to go by bike and depending on the terrain it’s also no possible. Oh and the weather I forgot the weather… oh and in some roads, like highways, for example, these can’t even drive there:…
Bikes aren’t the perfect transportation method for everyone all the time but they are a good option for most people most of the time. Also, I have a chronic illness and I ride year round in a place that regularly hits -40
Make no problem with bikes in Florida, when you arrive you are so drenched in sweat you are no longer presentable and stink to high heaven.
Biking to work if you have an office job is out of the question.
Biking to my gym or KungFu school… Perfect.
Just need the right tool for the right job.
Anyone who has ridden in rain and adverse weather would know one reason cars are more popular.
Picking up a week’s worth of shopping for a family, whilst taking your baby with you, in the pouring rain, and you live up a steep hill, and you have joint pain, and a sudden work meeting across the other side of town in an hour…
I’d love a city designed round bicycles (Cambridge, UK is quite good like that in the centre) but man, despite the downsides cars are amazing things.
car go further faster, and car more useful when not in big city.
For this, bike friendly cities have good public transport (bus/tram/metro) and bike shares
Not probably, a human riding a bicycle is the most efficient way to convert energy into movement. No other vehicle or animal can be as efficient.
Thats why I have a bike-sled team to pull my horribly inefficient sled across the asphalt
Someone can probably do the math, but i have a hunch that humans are technically not very fuel efficient if you look at calories burned pr the total mass being moved along.
But whatever it is biking is awesome, but being technically correct is even better.
Humans are actually unusually energy efficient for mammals when walking and even more so when cycling. Here’s a little info graphic showing a breakdown.
One thing to keep in mind if you have a dog is they’re less energy efficient than humans. While dogs can run faster, a reasonably fit human can easily out distance an equally fit dog when walking or distance running.
Also, I love the units. Using miles on one axis and km on the other.
This is very useful. My four friends and I will have to stop swimming to work, and take the car instead.
Nice graphic.
But it seems like it doesn’t factor in kg of mass moved. A human and a bike is a lot lighter than a car or a horse. You could also argue that the vehicle weigh should be ignored but then again you could easily argue back that weight of goods move can possibly be a lot higher with a car if you load it up to capacity. Ignore that. I did not see it said 5 riders for the carI’m back with better data. I’m assuming the travel path is perfectly flat because I don’t feel like modeling elevation changes. I’m being energy efficient (read: lazy).
For cycling, I’m using the global average human weight of 62 kg, assuming the cycle is 8 kg, and the pace is 10 kph, which is pretty relaxed.
For walking, I’m using the 62 kg person walking at 4 kph.
For driving with petrol, we’ll use the same spherical 62 kg human and a 2024 Toyota Prius with a fuel efficiency of 4.8 L/100 km and a mass of 1570 kg. One liter of petrol is approximately 8174 kcal. Double the energy expenditure for an estimate for your typical SUV.
For electric, I chose a 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N with an energy efficiency of 21.2 kWh/100km and a mass of 2235 kg. One kilowatt-hour is approximately 860 kcal.
Walking: 0.74 kcal•km-1•kg-1
Cycling: 0.34 kcal•km-1•kg-1
Driving(p): 0.24 kcal•km-1•kg-1
Driving(e): 0.08 kcal•km-1•kg-1It still doesn’t give us kcal•km-1•kg-1 (or an equivalent), which is what I was looking for. We could do some math to get us some loose estimates, though. I’ll do exactly that and report back shortly.
I feel like ‘total mass being moved’ is irrelevent if most of that mass is useless (car motor/metal frame/plastic/etc).
Even if a car motor was more efficient per kg, most of the work is wasted on moving the actual car itself, regardless of the passengers & cargo.
Bikes clearly use less energy to displace ‘useful mass’ than a car, so they are more efficient in that sense.
Quick math shows I am quite a bit more efficient than a Nissan Juke traveling 150 miles at 19mph. About 50kcal/pound for the car and 8kcal/pound for me+bike to travel the distance.
I’m disabled in a way that means I can’t use one, but can use a car, which kinda sucks.
Fortunately bike infrastructure usually helps me in my chair, so I’m all in favor of wider bike adoption.
That blows. Glad the infrastructure helps your chair get around, though. Also, every biker not using a car gives you more space, so that’s an additional plus
Enables people with mobility issues
Allows people to move about farther than just a few miles or so
Allows people to transport a lot of goods (and/or heavy goods) easily
Doesn’t make you exhausted if you have to go up hills
AIR CONDITIONING/HEATER
Fuck your walkable/bike nightmare “utopia”.
My ebike has enabled me to take 40 mile round trips, saves me on hills (though honestly once you’re fit it’s not a big deal anyway), helps me carry lots of goods, and since I’m usually going fast the wind cools me down (though a little spray bottle helps keep me cool when it’s really hot). I’m usually warm enough from enough from physical exertion that I don’t really need a heater (unless it’s so blisteringly cold that the fog of my breath turns to ice in my balaclava, but that’s way below freezing.)
The only thing that really stops me is ice. Any other weather I can handle, but when there’s ice my bike goes inside.
The more people on bikes, the better it is for drivers as there’s less car traffic. People get stuck in traffic jams in their car for hours, yet if they get stuck behind a bike for 10 seconds they lose their shit
I agree with your points, trains are fucking awesome too.
Welcome to the Netherlands. If there’s anything that fills me with pride it’s our cycling culture. Most people have a car too, but I don’t, and I do everything by bike and public transport.
Denmark checking in. Not unusual for people in the city not to have a car. I’m happy with my bike that I use every workday to cycle into the city centrum in all weather - I love dressing myself up in rain boots, rain paints and rain jacket and be on my way in heavy rain or snow, feeling like I’m in an episode of Deadliest Catch
I dream of immigrating there.
“Just leave it anywhere there is a secure structure” - Yes, I see this regularly when I have to maneuver around bikes carelessly “parked” in the middle of the pedestrian walkway…
Arrive to work soaked in sweat because it’s been 100+ degrees every day for the past 8 weeks.
You lose the benefits of it being cheap, but an ebike is a decent solution
I rode one for a while in college.
Didn’t really help with the sweat problem between April and October in Texas. Or was less work than pedaling, but nothing aside from air conditioning helps with the sweat issue in Texas summer heat.
Being cheap is the entire benefit. Everything else is just a plus. If you lose the cost it’s not worth it at that point.
But somehow 20k plus for a vehicle with the added maintenance, gas, inspection, and registration is. Gotcha.
Never said owning a car was cheap. I said if I have to shell out 5 grand for a bike that I still have to drive without ac/heat in the summer and winter it defeats the purpose.
Well, that is largely caused by cars.
Workplaces that require employees to be presentable then offer locker rooms, showers, and enough reasonable time to get ready to accommodate the fact that everyone who works a service job arrives soaked in sweat.
Rain, ice and severe cold are a removed. I like bicycles, but driving to work in a heated car looking at that poor cyclist riding somewhere at 6 in the morning at -6°C, sorry, no, I’m gonna go with a car.
If it’s me on the bike, know that I’m pitying you. -6°C is nothing. I drove a lot of miles as a delivery driver, and saw a lot of faces behind windshields in that time. Very few happy faces. Driving makes people miserable.
are a removed.
Bro, it might be time to leave .ml lol
I disagree cycling in winter is nice. Just get some warm clothes and good tyres. A car is also really expensive to own in the city. Why pay for a car and parking when the alternative is almost free and arguably more fun.
It was minus seventeen degrees celsius when I got up yesterday. In the time it would take me to bicycle to work on clear paths/roads - assuming no accidents - I would have frostbite on all of my face unless I was also wearing a full-face helmet.
You should check out Oulu in Finland where kids bike to school in cold weather. Not a problem apparently. If that is too far fetched, you should visit Bozeman MT where people bike commute in the winter quite often.
If a full-face helmet works why not use one? You can also just skip the extremely cold days and use public transport instead. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing decision.
Could probably rock a balaclava in those temperatures. I bought one in anticipation of winter riding, but the coldest I’ve ridden this year is -11 C and it wasn’t quite necessary yet at that point, but I was debating trying it out.
Climate change is basically killing most of the cold days we have where I live so this is a problem I’m long-term apparently not going to have to deal with. Instead I will have to deal with the way worse type of weather - wet weather.
I’m less likely to sweat profusely in winter
If the cities are built for it, cycling doesn’t become something where you’re doing it for extended periods or distances. Neighborhoods that are setup for bikes means everything is local area, or mostly.
If the weather is bad enough, I will take transit instead, but cycling down to -10 C is doable without any problems.
I will be far less inclined to bike if it’s raining, that I do hate with a passion. Of course, I could just work from home in that scenario as well, if I don’t feel like taking transit
Was the removed word bitch (female dog) by any chance I wonder?
Because lemmy.ml is run by a bunch of pearl-clutchers that think profanity is a tool of the capitalist oppressors.
Why did you ask if the removed word is removed?
Looks like they shadow-remove the word
Me logged in (via Sync): —
Me not logged in: —
It was a little joke.
For some reason your comment appears uncensored to me, but the top commenter’s is censored.
Probably because the uncensored comment isn’t being posted from lemmy.ml, unlike the first post. Posting and viewing from the instance in question will probably censor every occurrence.
all of this is wild and i have no idea what’s real anymore
Ice and snow are difficult. But I don’t give a shit about the rest. It’s still way more fun than sitting in traffic.
I used to love to bike but I moved to an area with steep hills and it’s too high effort. Maybe fine for exercise but I always used them for transport and you can’t arrive at work or a music lesson drenched in sweat. Wish they would install those hill lifts some countries have. I walk now. Would love an electric but the expense makes it much more painful when it’s stolen (and every one of my regular bikes has eventually been stolen).
The one downside is that a lot of people I know have had some nasty accidents and broke a bone or something. Sure, in cars you are also at the risk of kissing a tree at highway speed, but bike accidents feel a lot more common and have a lot less protective metal involved
I’ve wiped out a bunch of times on my motorcycle, never broke anything. I wiped out on my bike, broken arm.
The solution is clear: mandate motorcycle jackets and helmets for bicyclists.
I’ve known a few people killed in car accidents. I know lots of people who have had bike accidents, but none of them died, and the only ones with serious injuries were when they got hit by a car.
