Picture ain’t mine but in the last decade in my country, there’s more and more motorcycles than ever before, mostly because they’re cheap and plentiful, and while they supposedly level the playing field in terms of private vehicle ownership, they also affect other people like cyclists.
You must log in or register to comment.
It’s like vegans asking if they should hate pescatarians.
Let me give it the good ol’ “it depends”.
The main problems with traditional motorcycles are that they’re louder and dirtier than cars, but both things could be solved with electric motors.
But aside from that, they’re basically better - or less bad - cars. Granted, I’m not in a scooter city like those in south east Asia, so I might be missing something, but I believe 1-2 Scooter parking spaces per household is more realistic than 1-2 car parking spaces and 50 people on scooters can move through an intersection quicker than the same people in cars. In a crash, they’re way more likely to kill or injure their driver than a car, but less likely to do that to the other parties.
I think they’re fine.
dirtier than cars
modern ones have catalytic converters but use far less fuel than any car. 100mpg is normal.
By the time I left r/fuckcars, people were asking this question several times per day, or every 15-20 minutes at peak times. I recall that the moderators had an auto-mod bot that would respond, and my paraphrase of it is something like this:
We don’t hate the cars, per se, but rather the physical, environmental, and social destruction wrought by designing all aspects of daily life around their use (to the near-exclusion of anything else). Small, cheap, utilitarian motorcycles are better than cars in a lot of ways (space, cost, fuel economy), and worse in others (noise, pollution). They’re fine, as long as the riders aren’t demanding that the entire landscape and society be structured and built to cater to their machines.
TBF: the term “bike” is kinda ambiguous…
Like with everything else, it comes down to individuals.
Some motorcycles aren’t any better than cars in terms of fuel efficiency. Some motorcyclists are also total a-holes towards everyone around them.
In my experience, so far, as a motorcyclist of about 2 years - I’ve yet to see a motorcyclist behave as badly to bicyclists or e-scooter riders as car drivers. It’s much easier to share the road on a motorcycle.
In my experience over the past 5 years and change as a bicyclist and e-scooter rider as well, I’ve seen many more bicyclists and e-scooter riders engaging in dangerous behaviors than not.
It’s common to see people riding against traffic or riding on sidewalks, even where there are good protected bike lanes. Most doing full speed on e-bikes and e-scooters, being a danger to pedestrians.
Ok i live in a country where around 50% of all registered vehicles are motorcycles, and it’s as chaotic as Jason Slaughter highlighted in one of his video. It’s the most hated mode of transport by basically everyone, even motorcyclist, simply because it attract the kind of person that will be reckless regardless. It’s being parked everywhere, even the walkway and blocking people’s path, though not fully their fault for the lack of motorbike parking spot.
BUT, the hate i feels like is most of the time unjustified. While it’s true that some will ride dangerously as this country allow lane splitting(ride between car with speed over 30kmph) and i’ve seen more motorcyclist running red light more than car do, most people i see riding a motorcycle will follow rule and ride defensively as possible, because all they want to do is get to their destination safely. It’s also a preferred vehicle here because you’re allow to filter to the front of the traffic junction, and no issue navigating traffic jam.
But one thing i can be sure is, motorcycle culture and bicycle culture does not mix well. The reason people doesn’t ride their bike to work as much here is because motorcycle have the same advantage of bicycle but the speed of a car, and people will just ride their bike for leisure. And it’s also hard to justify having a bike path to the public if the motorcycle culture is this strong, it will likely left unused and people will just ask it to change into motorcycle lane afterward(it happened recently). If you’re bicycle advocate in one of such country, you will have a really tough battle ahead.
A small percentage of humans are knobs, so if you split into drivers, bikers, cyclists and pedestrians, then within each one there are knobs. I regularly see all go through red lights, go the wrong way up a road, don’t give way etc.
The impact of these are different though. Drivers kill, and can kill other drivers and anyone else on the road. Motorcycles can kill cyclists and pedestrians but are more likely to be killed themselves by drivers. Cyclists can hurt and even kill pedestrians (although lower chance), and can be killed by drivers and bikers. Pedestrians are just exposed as fuck.
We should design the roads to reflect that - pedestrians first, [transit maybe here?] cyclists, bikers, then drivers.
I think bikers should be factored in and in some cases fuckcars includes them as victims of car brained culture (and acknowledge they are smaller, less harmful up the environment etc) and in some cases say fuckbikes (they can kill you and do emit green house gases).
I think the biggest issues with cars are they are big, fuel-inefficient, and demand a ton of space because of their size (think how much land car parks take up). They’re also incredibly deadly to pedestrians.
Car drivers don’t really care if they hit someone (not really), cars are so big and so safe that deep down they know they’re likely safe. A bike rider does NOT want to hit anyone because the bike rider knows the result is disastrous, so bike riders pay way more attention and are far more aware of their surroundings.
You can park 3 bikes in a single car park space, the fuel used to get those 3 bikes there is similar to what a single car would use. But those bikes moved 3 people instead of 1.
Motorbikes are far superior to cars on all these metrics. Obviously nothing is going to be better than mass public transit, but in the real world where a lot of places have really bad public transit, I think motorcycles are a better alternative to cars.
Most motor bikes produces more noise than a full sized truck or bus, that alone makes them inferior
Motorbikes are far superior to cars on all these metrics.
Wait until you try visiting Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam at daytime. Crossing the street there can be a very chancy thing.
Malaysia sees one scooter death every two hours.
… Kick them over like dominoes.
You can keep a [motor vehicle] as a pet, but you don’t want to live with a [motorbike], okay, 'cause the noise level alone on those things…have you ever heard a [moyorbike] up close?
