this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Unusable by almost everyone that's disabled, most of the elderly, and cannot carry any significant amount of goods.
Difficult to impossible to carry more than a single passenger as well, which reduces range and energy efficiency steeply when it is done.
You can negate part of those difficulties with variations on the bicycle, including tri and quad bikes, but you still run into range limitations that are incompatible with living anywhere but a city.
The posted text is yet another example of someone with a narrow view of how life actually works outside of their own situation. I used to love riding a bike. Can't now because of disability, but it also would have made my main job impossible back when I could still work. You can't ride a bike thirty miles across mountainous terrain in snow and ice to get to a patient's house. You simply can not do it with any regularity at all, no matter what condition you're in.
Even in cities, you're still limited by weather and time.
This can be applied to your own comment.
Going out of your way to find exceptions doesn't make the idea wrong, nor make you right
Damn, I should call my 80 year old mom and tell her to stop doing her shopping on her bike. She'll pass it along to all her friends of similar age when they bike to the community centre together, I'm sure.
Damn, so it only works for 274 million Americans and 555 million Europeans who don't live rural.
Oh no, it doesn't work for everyone all the time everywhere. Since this isn't a perfect solution for everything always, we should just completely ignore it and never use it.
I do 90% of my trips by bike, but sometimes I have to work at a construction site or a factory complex or some other middle-of-nowhere place, so I go by car. But when I go grocery shopping, or to a cafe, or out for dinner, or to my friends nearby, I go by bike. Most of the time I go to the DIY store, or clothes shopping, or just for fun, I go by bike.
And when it doesn't work, I take the car, but it's by far the minority of trips.
I completely agree with your arguments, but may I kindly ask you to not use such aggressive tone? This place is generally very kind, and it is saddening to see aggression coming from seemingly nowhere. The same arguments can be listed politely.
Their tone is downright pleasant compared to much of lemmy
Wanna some good old Internet toxicity?
:)
Most elderly people can at least easily ride electric bikes. At the point where they can't, they also shouldn't be allowed to drive a car anyway.
You can haul anything you need for daily life with a cargo bike (or even a regular one depending on your circumstances). When you do need more you can just rent a car for those rare occasions.
Disabled people yes but they don't need anything as big as current cars either.
if an old person falls, they will likely be injured quite severely. it's also likely that they won't heal quickly or properly.
this is going to be compounded on an electric bike, due to the fact that they will be able to reach higher speeds than they would on a conventional bike.
much like cars, the addition of extra power will keep them riding long after they should've hung it up.
My dad is 75 and rides an ebike. He wrecked a few months back going about 20mph into a costco parking lot. He strained a groin muscle pretty bad. But he healed up and was fine 1-2 months later, and you know why? Because he wasn't a lazy fat ass his whole life.
A car crash would injure an elderly person just as much. Cars claim they are safer by just getting bigger. But when big car hits big car, injury and death will inevitably happen
As a disabled person, I am lucky to ride my bike. I know other disabled people who can't. But I know plenty of disabled people who can't drive too. When people advocate for human centric cities instead of car centric cities, disabled people benefit the human centricity. Less cars on the road makes it convenient for other disabled people to get around in their cars. Also bike lanes are wheelchair accessible.
You've (potentially accidentally) made a great comment in support of bikes. You've listed some pretty specific and niche situations which I don't think cover 99% of car usage. If those are the sum of the exceptions, we can advocate for reducing car usage to 1% of what it is today.
You will never get rid of cars entirely, because of course not everyone can cycle. Reducing it by a factor of 100x benefits everyone, even those who still need to use one for disability or work reasons.
First of all, google cargo bikes for significsnt capscity
Second of all needing capacity is a Us thing because you only go shopping once a week because your wallmart is 30 minutes away and you dont want to do that every day or two days