Ami, a tiny cube on wheels that French 14-year-olds can drive(theguardian.com) |
Ami, a tiny cube on wheels that French 14-year-olds can drive(theguardian.com) |
On this quote, it should be noted this is for the Ami specifically, and not for the market it is targeting.
There are other vehicles already existing in this “less than a car, more than a scooter” niche, notably Renault’s Twizy, but also makers like Aixam who build “license less” cars mostly for elderlies, people who never bothered passing the driving license or lost it at some point etc.
Perhaps the Ami is just not competitive enough to take significant market share from those, and is pigeonholed in 18- market, but the whole targetable market is larger.
But I don't think there is much to do with design, I guess all shapes have been already designed for these cars, and they all invariably end up being a sort of caricature of a "real size" car, more or less the inside needs to be big enough to house the driver and passenger (that do not and cannot shrink) whilst the outside is reduced in size as much as possible leading to things that are "stubby".
The only two exceptions I know are (like it or hate it) the already mentioned Renault Twizy that has a somewhat unconventional design and the Microlino which is a sort of (good ol') Isetta replica:
The weird design is to cut down on costs: as mentioned in the article, the doors are identical, the front and back panels are as well.
A sleek carlet wouldn't have cost 6000€.
The kids will be fine.
What a waste of energy.
If batteries improvements aren't just rumors a v2 could work.
plus I know there is big kick here on HN for bicycles but it is wholly unrealistic to rely on a mode of transport that is not useful in all weather conditions. Hell the number of people who fall into the trap that a motorcycle will save them money and then don't ride it for the same reasons is legion.
They are fun, your chance of injury is magnitudes greater though, and they are not suited for all people. This can be based on needs to carry stuff, to being secure from the weather, or being handicapped.
Sure, if you're in Dallas or Phoenix or Atlanta, it's not going to work, unfortunately.
What would insurance requirements look like for this?
A large portion of the public opinion in those countries see those mini-cars as a safer 4-wheel alternative.
I'm not saying that those mini-cars are safe or that they are great for the environment, just putting things into perspective for people who are not familiar with the situation in Europe.
[1] I don't have official statistics but anecdotally I can say that as a teenager, almost everyone I knew had modified their moped or scooter.
I personally hate "unnecessary" noise, like a neighbour drilling on Sunday morning, but I don't mind big cities buzz.
In hindsight, I'm happy that I wasn't allowed to drive it at age 14 without a license; I'm pretty sure that I would have killed somebody...
I also don’t get how these are supposed to be safe for 14 year olds and pedestrians.
I had to get a license at 16 to drive a 125cc (both theoretical and actual driving test) and many of my peers had taken a smaller test (theoretical only) at 14 to drive their 50cc.
I am satisfied that such exams are now mandatory and helmets are mandatory too.
It's electric, the weight is likely due to the battery.
The tiny cube is still tiny - way easier to control (and avoid) on narrow streets.
I’ve heard this claim many times, but more often than not it was just a random mechanic who charged a few hundred euros to put a different speedometer with inflated readings.
I modded some of my own motorbikes to improve air intake, changing the exhaust, and other minor things but I consider those to be in the realm of “cosmetics” (audible cosmetics?) rather than real major performance changing.
I just don’t see how you could bore out an extra 50% of displacement on engines made so cheaply.
OTOH, a couple of moped accidents have quickly taught me to pay a lot of attention to other vehicles and to somehow anticipate their behavior. It's a risky but effective school.
As a parent of a current 14yo, I notice that her and her friends show almost no interest in mopeds or any form of autonomous transportation, while for us it was a must have - either you parents gave you one, or you kept relentlessly for fighting for it. I don't know what to make of it.
If anything, the enclosed body might make it more boring, and thus more likely to be driven slowly.
Edit: Ah, never mind. I just had a look around myself. I think what I've seen are Renault Twizzys, judging from the pictures I found online. There seem to be quite a few of them in Bologna, for some reason.
JFYI:
Anyway, 2 stroke motors were also easily tunable, and people used to change the escape, carburetor, even sometimes the cilinder was changed to have more power on those little machines.
Anecdotally neither me, nor anyone I knew, had their mopeds modded to exceed the limiter
I see a lot more of suits-on-a-tmax and deliveroo-like drivers these days. Oh, and quite a few of those loud-right-out-of-the-box cars and motorcycles.
There is a fair amount of difference even between various states in the US, and I imagine that the difference between European states is much more significant. Difficult to generalize.
"Seven countries require children to be 14 years (Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Portugal)"
and this is only EU members, other non-members such as Switzerland also have 14yo minimum age for mopeds.
In addition,
"Ten Member States allow children aged 15 years to acquire a driving license for a moped (Austria, Czechia, Germany, Spain, Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia)."
which is just one year older, so I would say it's a very similar situation.
Source: https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-ag...
Maybe 45kmh was the best trade off between lethality and speed?
Used small cars are cheap and they come with all the safety features that have been around and mandated for decades. They are infinitely more safe than these plastic boxes. Just tack a safety triangle in the back of the car to warn others of the slow speed. When the young person turns 18 they could just have the speed limiter removed and continue driving the same car.
Sweden has a local exception that allows turning old cars into tractors that 16-year-olds can drive. There are other limitations and those are really slow, and building tractors out of old Volvos doesn't sound too unsafe.
Isn't this 16 in most countries?
> have post-market modifications installed, either at home or by unscrupulous mechanics, in order to go much faster.
Which is ridiculously stupid, as it voids any insurance you have (obligatory at least in Germany) and may prevent you from ever getting a driving licence if caught by police.
With 45km/h you are seen as an obstacle by cars and they overtake you in dangerous ways.
By the way in cities average speed is very low. For instance in London the average speed within a mile of the city center dropped 1.22mph from an average of 6.35mph in 2016 to just 5.13mph in 2017.
https://fleetworld.co.uk/average-driving-speeds-plummet-in-u....
speed limits is usually 50km/h and there are 30km/h zones.
These cars are not allowed on high speed roads, such as highways.
Ami has never been created for teenagers , it was created by Peugeot to compete in the 'Licence Free EV' space.
Most owners of those vehicles are adult living in Urban Areas, not '14 years old'.
It's sad people keep focusing on 'Headlines' these days instead of taking a step back and actually reading the article...
I think at one point in the past, HN allowed titles to be rewritten to reflect the actual content, vs. having to strictly stick to the original title.
While it was a bit controversial, as it left some trust to the OP, and sometimes resulted in debate, I do miss that it didn’t give clickbait titles the satisfaction of sensationalism, at least here.
I often wish we were still allowed to do that.
Quick facts about Paris:
- there is motorcycles and scooters everywhere
- most people make trips way superior to 5km to go to work or even to go out
- no one can really afford parking his car outside of it's own neighborhood, because you don't have discounts then => 35 to 50€ a day!
You can buy an 125cc scooter with heated grips and a nice warm rain cover for around 3000-4000€ (new) / 1500€ (old) with a 200-300km range and you don't need to pay parking anywhere (yet).
IMO French automakers are lost and this car has almost market. They know they can't compete with Tesla in the near feature on real electric cars. It's way too expensive, for sure it's not targeted at 14-18yo in Paris "intra-muros". Its only features are you don't have to wear a helmet / protects you from rain. It has almost the size of a gas Smart ForTwo without the speed and range to go on a weekend trip.
Only 250 parts are used compared to 30 000 for a standard car.
Source (in French) https://www.caradisiac.com/la-citroen-ami-la-meilleure-amie-...
They start selling it this year. How such a number could bring anything to the discussion ? We don't know if it will be 0 next year (if it's failure) or 200000 (if it's a success).
They're causing issues as you are allowed to park them on the sidewalk (which is already crowded by bikes).
https://setis.ec.europa.eu/system/files/Driving_and_parking_...
Price can be a significant step toward transport electrification.
I wished more people would understand this.
I can get work either via a highway, or by driving through the center of town. Besided adding to trafic in the city center, I’m also looking at an additional 30 minute drive.
In my mind by only designing these tiny city cars to urban driving, manufactures are limiting them to the extend that they are bound to fail. Instead, with minor tweaks, they could remove full size cars and help lower pollution levels.
There are other vehicles for driving on the highway, but in Europe they need crash protection and so on.
You raise a great point though, cargo bikes are much more expensive than conventional ones. I don't see why either as I'm guessing there would be a big market at a lower price point (£500 vs £300 for a conventional rather than £2500), hence the scale to make them cheap.
(Thanks for link BTW, not seen this bike before)
usrusr's comment in that thread: "And less obvious ones, like https://www.ellenator-gmbh.de/ which exists solely to exploit a legal loophole to get something that is arguably more dangerous than a car into the hands of people who are not licensed to drive a car."
But it's not only about the passenger, is it? It is also about the pedestrian. A cube might be safer for a kid but the same cube going 45 kmph driven by an unlicensed person can be lethal to others.
Nobody's buying a car on the merit that it will protect victims of a crash that aren't in the car itself. I think that's mostly due to the cognitive dissonance that people have where they think that they're not going to be the one to cause a wreck somebody else dies in. Because if you were aware of that possibility, you'd have to be aware of your responsibility to drive safely. But driving should be cool, fun, and maybe even practical, at least that's how car companies sell their product.
Safety is only ever marketed to the consumer as something that protects them.
You are required to have a class-AM driving licence to operate these. Unlicensed driving is a criminal offence in many countries anyway so it wouldn't matter if the person drove a little cube or a fully loaded lorry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric)
It doesn't seem to be for sale in EU :(
Not exactly true: by law, employers must pay half of that amount, so most Parisian pay €38/mo for that "all-zone metro and suburban rail pass". If you don’t work, that’s free. Pretty much nobody pays the full amount.
But the target of younger people generally pay a reduced/student price anyway, which is low too.
That is not true, if you don't have the transit pass (eg. you only take your car) you are not paid 38€ more than your coworkers.
Personally, I didn't feel more in danger compared to other cars when they're around.
[1] https://www.renault.fr/vehicules-electriques/twizy.html [2] https://www.automobiles-chatenet.com/accueil.html
In fact, most of Europe for a long time had multiple tiers of licenses for "regular" cars. It's my understanding that part of the popularity of the three wheeled Reliant Robin was caused by the fact that until 2001 you could drive it with a Motorcycle license, which I presume is much easier to get than a full car license. Also, I believe it was cheap.
This can be a game changer in urban set up especially in my part of the world where it can protect the occupants from the weather that is either rain or hot.
I'm involved in an IoT project where we have a few Toyota EV COMS cars (2nd generation) that is similar in size and purpose to Ami [1]. It's a joy to drive and convenient to use if you want to travel from A to B in urban environment.
[1]https://www.newlaunches.com/archives/toyota-releases-ultra-c...
Then I saw this article and followed it up: "More disposable cars: Ignoring unintended side-effects" https://joshuaspodek.com/more-disposable-cars-ignoring-unint...
I started by saying:
> Walking around Manhattan, with many people moving out, sidewalks are overflowing with what they don’t value enough to keep. What are they disposing? Sofas, mattresses, shelves, chairs, books, televisions, printers, scanners, lamps, mirrors, plates, toasters, silverware, . . . I could go on.
> Notice anything about them? All those things used to be once-in-a-lifetime purchases. Some were high-tech wonders when introduced—now disposable. We don’t value them as much as the effort to maintain them. We turn them into pollution.
> Our market system has shifted from creating value to creating craving. People like novelty, I guess, so marketing engineers figure out how to generate craving so they can temporarily satisfy it.
> Meanwhile, markets motivate people to figure out how to deliver with lower cost. The result? Everything becomes disposable—food, plates, furniture, silverware (now plasticware), clothing, everything.
. . .
and ended with
> We don’t lack comfort and convenience. We’re choking on waste.
> We like comfort and convenience, but our world doesn’t lack it. On the contrary, we’re drowning in it. Our lack of physical activity and feeling entitled is making us depressed, obese, and sick, lacking resilience, discipline, or initiative to respond.
> History implies people will buy this product in droves, competitors will match it, the market will keep driving down cost and durability, increasing landfill waste. We will increase total waste and lower quality of life, meaning, and purpose.
The windows are a nice touch, and the identical doors and interchangeable panels are, frankly, ingenious!
Something I didn't see mentioned in the article was the range - as a city car, I guess it's not that important, but does anyone know what it is?
You can fit two such pods side by side in one of the tunnels of the Boring Company. If they run at 2 second intervals, one after the other, with an average occupancy of 1.5 people, a single tunnel can provide a peak throughput of 90 people per minute or 5400 per hour. That's about half of what a subway can handle. You could also create "formations" of pods even more tightly packed for longer cross-city links. Full computer control requires much less safety devices such as airbags - like in a subway, the crash is ruled out by proper management of trafic.
Outside the tunnels, they can blend in easily and provide a sane mass transport alternative, as opposed to congesting the city with more full sized cars. An existing row of paralel parking spots is all of a sudden a mass transport station where pods dock perpendicularly and await commuters; no need for fancy elevators, just an steep slope to the tunnels below.
I keep wondering how you are supposed to charge a car in an (un-specially-prepared) city if you can't afford a place in an indoors lot. Do you just throw an extension cord out your window? Do you book lamppost electricity from the local authority?
Though I guess Paris is not a place with this problem.
I've taken the bus for years at that age (10-18 years old) to go to school, I regret so much not using a bike, I could have woken up later and have more freedom (not have to wait for buses)
> ..., two young women stared open-mouthed. “How did you manage to get hold of it?” asked one. “ ... it’s environment-friendly"
Part of its appeal is to the lazy and stupid.
OTOH, riding a bicycle in Paris is not ideal, although the safety of this thing doesn't convince me either.
Meanwhile a kilometer of driving this vehicle in France has a footprint of ~7g.
The battery's manufacturing footprint sits at around 450kg of CO2 - and this is something that has to be "paid off", but it's entirely possible within the car's lifecycle.
Basically unless you're vegan, it's likely more environmentally friendly in France to drive this.
Luckily, it may not be true that this is more environmentally friendly than cycling. I would think this 485 kg car uses more road space and causes more wear and tear on roads than a 25 kg bicycle. That must count for something.
You also have to take the health benefits of cycling/the effect of more car driving on obesity into account.
We call them mini car or micro car.
A popular brand is Ligier.
The solution for traffic jams have always been mopeds here, but given their higher safety, and the price tag that was very close to a modern scooter, parents have started buying them for their children.
But they have soon become a status symbol for rich kids, the prices went up considerably (between 10k and 15k but up to 30k) and now they usually rally in some of the popular high end neighborhoods (such as Parioli) and act like gangs.
They fight for territory with those coming from other neighborhoods, spice up the engines and make a lot of noise.
To the point that they have become a nightmare for the residents and for the police.
If you are interested there are is a news video reportage about the "rich babies" generation in Rome, it's in Italian but auto generated English subtitles are not bad
Around minute 23 they talk about the mini cars
So much so that the car I drive the most via car sharing and that I'd like to buy is a smart fortwo.
And I rode a bicycle at the same time - me and my friends used to cycle 2-3 times per week, 100-120km per day, just for fun. But that's not a good option to go with friends to a cinema, when the nearest one is 45 minute bicycle ride away along major roads. A scooter improved that ability immensly, and I'm sure a small car will as well.
45 minutes doesn't seem like a big deal, most people, especially in cities, probably live a lot closer to a cinema, and the main issue is dangerous main roads without sufficient cycle infrastructure.
Taming car traffic in cities and providing easy to use cycle infrastructure would be enormously more beneficial across the board that a competition for "fast as legally possible" mini cars and scooters, even electric ones.
I didn't get my drivers licence until I was 23 and I didn't miss out on anything, because I could (and did) travel the whole country via train and bus - despite growing up in the countryside. The train station was just under 2km away and that helped immensely and had regular service (2 times an hour) to the nearest cities.
People forget that bike riders, once its past a certain amount of distance will sweat + are exposed to the elements. Sure ebikes help with this. But nobody in my country is going to go to work in a full suit + on a bike.
When considering what the right direction is, you should consider convenience, but also environmental impact. It's a trade-off to be made.
Driving home yesterday in a light rain I saw a gentleman in a bright yellow soccer shirt riding a bicycle slowly on the sidewalk. A wide stripe of dark brown mud ran up his back and onto his helmet! As I drove past I just had to laugh and wonder what the front wheel was doing to him!
No one owned a bicycle without fenders when I was young; today finding a bike with fenders is difficult. And some of today's aftermarket fenders are ridiculously flimsy.
I do not understand the absence of fenders on today's bicycles.
I know not all offices have showers, but it was something I looked for when I was deciding on a coworking space a couple of years ago.
Don’t present your opinions as facts.
Not everyone is fit to ride a bicycle, and riding a bicycle where there's cars on the road is a lot more dangerous than being in a car.
And let's stop using the word "should" for every problem out there, people are free to make their own choices.
This is true. Nor is the climate suitable everywhere, etc. However:
> riding a bicycle where there's cars on the road is a lot more dangerous than being in a car.
This is a problem that absolutely can solved by more "should". The police should police more, and the courts should be strict about endangering others with deadly weapons, even if those deadly weapons are on wheels.
> people are free to make their own choices.
People are "free" to speed, or to drive drunk, or to otherwise endanger others "where there's cars on the road". Looks like these "own choices" aren't a terribly good fit to many of the problems posed by cars.
As long as it doesn't impact too much the rest of society. For instance, people aren't free to drive a tank on the highway.
If we believe data on global warming, and if we consider it's an issue to be addressed (and most people believe both), some choices which are available now should be restricted in the future.
That doesn’t seem like a good comparison, perhaps the tweezy would be closer (smaller/easier to park while a tad less comfortable, still electric and “two-wheel” category)
Con: On main arteries vehicles definitely move faster than its speed limit. I'm thinking University Ave or Spadina in Toronto.
Pro: 50 km/h (30 mph for Americans) is already the speed limit in most neighborhood streets. It would be interesting to see an Ami cut across 4 lanes to turn left on a multilane boulevard. :) But then again, Paris has tons of these multilane boulevards (like the Champs Elysee) and it seems to work there.
Con: An Ami would be treated like a bicycle except one that takes up the full width of the lane, which might annoy drivers who can't pass it.
Pro: ... which the regulatory framework technically already allows for (bike riders can take up the full lane, and motorists are supposed to allow a 3 ft buffer if passing).
Con: Canadian winters. In Southern Ontario, winter temperatures hover around -10 to -15°C (-30°C wind chill on some days).
Pro: There is a heater, and since it's an enclosed space, it should be fine if one bundles up.
Maybe it could work in denser cities like Toronto and Montréal...
Cities should subsidise these services, or at the least not charge sales tax on them.
Marketing it as a city vehicle, especially in dense Paris, seems strange to me. The only people who are going to be attracted to it in that setting are those who really hate public transport.
Many cities lack appropriate and affordable public transportation and force folks to buy a car. If you live in a town large enough to have shopping centers and you work in that same town, this car would fit well.
Unfortunately, living in a rural area actually makes these cars more difficult, at least in some places in the US. There are roads you couldn't drive on due to speed, and your commute would be longer. Unfortunately, the roads you need to take are also the roads that get snow cleared less often and seem to have a higher rate of disrepair.
We don't own a car, and used to just get everything done by bike and public transport.
But we've stopped using public transport. We do more by bike now, and use car sharing wherever that would be impossible.
In university and since, I lived in many different countries. I haven't had a long-term visa. Currently I'm in New Zealand. Here it takes 2 years to get a driving licence. If my residency visa is approved, I'll be able to start learning to drive. For now, I use an old rusty bicycle that I bought from a scrapyard for $20. It would be nice to have a vehicle like that in Paris, because it would cover my head when it rains.
Legislation was intended to educate and protect people, and that is good. The problem is that the educators realised they had a captive market, ramped up prices, and now entire market segments (foreigners, young people) are excluded. Compared to the dangers of other mobility options (e.g. scooters), I think the Ami is much safer. It would be interesting to see how it is treated in other areas of law (parking fines, collisions) compared to bicycles.
Right now, I would prefer to have this over my bike or a scooter because Indian roads are such a hell. Many people here don't even have driving license and jaywalking is common. A new emerging trend is people sticking to their phone while driving.
I would feel much safer. Even my dad get into almost accidents a few times monthly. He has been driving for decades and always maintain a stable speed of under 45kmph.
I envy countries that have driving as part of the school curriculum. I was in the same boat as you, and it's an incredible PITA to make the required logbook hours unless you have a partner or very patient friend.
I'd suggest looking into a 150cc motorcycle license, for some reason the regulations are less strict. Still won't keep the rain off your head.
If you do an advanced driving course it's 3 months
but possibly less dangerous than a moped/moto-scooter, which is what most 14 year olds drive in many European countries.
I like optimism in general, but think about that for just a second. At the vehicles' top speed of ~45km/h, 2 seconds translate to an average distance of just 25m.
This leaves very little room for error and isn't enough of a safety margin.
Then there's the obvious thing which renders this idea completely impractical: have you ever tried to stop a car going at 45km/h, get out of it and have another person enter the vehicle in well under 2 seconds?
That's practically impossible.
Also, it's time to rethink cities instead of regurgitating failed concepts (e.g. individual transport within densely populated areas) over and over again. A liveable city should be made for people, not cars (no matter the size). Going through the insane effort of stuffing individual traffic underground wouldn't change anything - you'd just have your congestion during peak hours underground; it wouldn't go away, though.
Clearly the stopping and picking up of passengers is not gonna be done on the main lane. Just like with regular cars, pods exit the speed lane, enter a deceleration lane, then stop into the actual station - a series of parking spaces - where people can embark and disembark at will.
Btw, using the same optimistic math, mass transit can do 90,000 pphd (2k ppl every 90s), in reality the max is around 40K.
Also, there is a more fundamental problem with reaching high thoughtputs with mass transit: you need to force people out of optimal routes from their distributed destinations and origins, into enforced stations. This makes sense for point to point links like LA to SF, but it's very inefficient when trying to cover a 2D city: the more routes and stations you add, the less you are likely to reach peak capacity of any one link. If you are going for city-wide subway, you will pay much, much more to build large, expensive tunnels that will stay mostly idle at the perifery of the system.
Counting cars instead of people again. You should work for the department of transportation.
At peak, the 1.5 occupancy rate I factored is achievable and quite typical for car commuting.
You could get replacement cylinders and everything. According to what I heard if you upgraded everything you could get about 16hp out what used to be one of these underpowered machines.
It's a shame scooters are illegal in NYC, it seems like it would be a great place for it.
Edit: looks like NYC legalized in July 2020
When I used to ride a MB in London I did not hug the gutter that's asking to hit a grate or debris - I rode in the lane 1-2 feet from the kerb just like your supposed to.
oh and I didn't not undertake other vehicles that's just asking to be killed (90%) of bile deaths are undertaking related in London
As a parent of kids a bit younger, I aspire to help them avoid this sort of thing entirely
Cargo bikes don’t have to be expensive (Yuba Komba is 999€) except that they are, in the long tail format, 50 to 100% more steel, and because of the weight, drivetrain and brakes have to be good as well. A 250€ cargo bike would be an injury waiting to happen
As it happens, the bike I linked is a nice Chromoly frame, disc brakes, hub gears etc. If you look at other bikes with similar components you’d be hard pressed to beat the price.
I bet the insurance for that car is much cheaper.
With the right roads and equipment it's not that bad, but you really have to be in shape for this.
...not to mention they focus on 14 year olds (like they're marketing to parents?). The idea that children should be driving around in vehicles that are the result of millions of man-hours of engineering and thousands of man-hours of labor (adults and likely other children in other countries in the supply chain)... well, that's intensely luxurious. End-of-days luxurious, in my opinion.
Just 4 years later, that child will likely go to university that costs on average $30K in the US.
Is this a broader thing? Are kids just not as interested in getting out of the house as they used to be? Less interested in being independent? Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and they're just more interested in being on TikTok.
That's a thought that often crosses my mind, but I try not to say it out loud because it makes me feel like an old fart.
Public transportation was non existent for the parent 30 years ago. If you look at cities all around the world, most tubes and overground lines were constructed in the past few decades.
If this is accurate, those 40% under 18 are driving, but not buying. It's probable that parents are buying those cars for their teenage children.
1. half of all Ami _buyers_ have one car and will continue to drive their existing car
2. half of all Ami _buyers_ have at least two children, and those children will the ones driving the Ami
3. 40% of those _driving_ Amis are under 18
4. 60% of those _driving_ Amis are over 18
But yes, you are closer to a car. if it's truly 500kg.
Taking my quote out of context? It's pretty clear I meant that they are free to decide to have a car if that is best for them. Nowhere did I encourage speeding.
I do not live on flat land and I live in a place with winters. I, in fact, live in a mountainous area. Riding a bike is not an easy feat here - I've been testing this summer. Short slight inclines aren't too bad: The occasional steep hill isn't so bad. 15-30 minutes uphill, however, is too much for me. All uphill one way isn't easy. I'm not the only person that struggles with this: Biking forums are full of folks that struggle with uphill, and it takes time to get fit enough for this.
I found it's easier to just walk (with the bike acting as support) :D
I've been commuting by bicycle for years, not for ecological reasons, but because it's convenient and healthy. That being said, I wouldn't do it if the roads weren't safe enough. To me, this is the main limitation. Bad weather and hills can be overcome, but I don't want to compromise with safety.
It will be easier to make people make these choices if they look attractive ways to go forward rather than blaming them about using what is available for them to live their lives.
[1] https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/...
On a modern bicycle unless you're racing (and even then sometimes), fenders are a necessity, not an option.
For example, how many motorcycles don't have fenders? Cars?
Humans are terrible at turning food into energy, and only the most efficient (vegan) foods have a footprint below 1g CO2/kcal.
Your typical vegan on a bicycle has a footprint of 22g CO2/km and that's the best you can get with human-powered transport.
The Ami has a driving footprint of 7g / km in France, a 5.5kWh battery, which has a one-time impact of ~450kg, and seats two.
Long term it's the less impactful opttion really, especially if you take into account that only 2% of the population is vegan.
> Humans are terrible at turning food into energy
Electric bicycles come to mind. They would provide a more direct comparison with the Ami, but being 50 times lighter, I don't see how the Ami could compete.
> a one-time impact of ~450kg
This amounts to 20000km! That's a lot of cycling before the Ami becomes less impactful. Also a battery lifetime is about 5 years.
> Your typical vegan on a bicycle has a footprint of 22g CO2/km
I didn't find this number. "CO2 emissions from the average European diet, which is another 16g per kilometer cycled" [1]
With this number, that would be 30000km of cycling before you even drive one meter with the Ami.
> in France
France electricity production generates very little CO2. In most other countries, the footprint would be much higher making the Ami an even worse option.
It's hard to argue that a 500kg vehicle can be more efficient than a 10kg one (or even 20kg for an electric bicycle).
That being said, it'd be great if Ami could replace more polluting cars for people who dislike cycles
[1] https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/how-much-co2-does-cycli...
True, but the level
This amounts to 20000km! That's a lot of cycling before the Ami becomes less impactful. Also a battery lifetime is about 5 years.
A lot of cycling, but not a lot of commuting. Could be done in 4 years.
Also the most significant factor contributing to a battery's degradation is not age, but the number of cycles. Even at the low estimate of 500 cycles(consumer grade battery), it should be good for 35 000km. But since it's likely an automotive battery, one could expect for it to withstand 1000 cycles or 70 000km.
I didn't find this number. "CO2 emissions from the average European diet, which is another 16g per kilometer cycled" [1]
I've read the source and it says:
"at 16 km per hour, a cyclist is burning about 4 kilocalories per kilogram per hour, while the relative metabolic rate of “driving to work” requires no more energy than somebody going about their daily activities: 1,5 kilocalories per kilogram per hour8."
It takes this from * the Compendium of physical activities, 2003* where it's written that:
0101014.0Bicycling<10 MPH, to work or for pleasure
The updated source(2011 Compendium of Physical Activities) says:
01010 4.0 bicycling, <10 mph, leisure, to work or for pleasure (Taylor Code 115)
01011 6.8 bicycling, to/from work, self selected pace
01013 5.8 bicycling, on dirt or farm road, moderate pace
01015 7.5 bicycling, general
01018 3.5 bicycling, leisure, 5.5 mph
01019 5.8 bicycling, leisure, 9.4 mph
It's hard to argue that a 500kg vehicle can be more efficient than a 10kg one (or even 20kg for an electric bicycle).
Problem is, the 10kg one is powered by a ~70kg biological machine, which isn't very efficient - that's my entire point. Also the 500kg one seats two and can sustain 45km/h for probably 50km or so - not an easy feat for your average cyclist.
But I agree - pedelecs are the most efficient as personal transportation.
With bicycles it makes even more sense - since the reality is that despite what the law says, many people ride them on pavements - so the speed should be limited to what is safe for pedestrians.
Also, if people are riding bikes on the pavement, it's a clear signal that they don't have a safe alternative.
Wait, I'm confused now, are you arguing for or against this thing then? You do realize that the Ami is made by Citroen, which is a car company, right? So....which way is this alleged bribe supposed to flow, exactly?
And really, like you can't see any reason at all? Just off the top of my head - legislators say, for the sake of safety, that if a vehicle of any type can reach 50km/h or higher, it's a car. That's a car speed, therefore it should require a car licence. Because of that, manufacturers artificially limit the speed to 45km/h, so you don't need a licence to drive one of these. I'm not sure how would the car manufacturers bribe here - for? Or against this law? Because honestly, I can make an argument for either.
>>Also, if people are riding bikes on the pavement, it's a clear signal that they don't have a safe alternative.
You're stating the obvious here. Equally obvious is that the councils "should just build more bike paths". But in reality there is no money to do this. Local councils have barely enough money to clean the streets and patch the worst potholes, and building new bike lanes is a far higher expenditure than this. The problem might be solved with time, or it might not. The law should reflect reality(and it does), not some made up utopia that doesn't exist.
In Auckland there's a busway with regular services to the city every 5-10 minutes. The connecting bus to the house goes once every 30 minutes. By bike it takes 10 minutes.
To go from the house to the office would take 1.5 hours by bus. By bicycle it takes 20 minutes.
Similar story in Kaohsiung: the MRT wasn't near my house, so I'd ride a bike to go to it. Other people there drive motor scooters (also dangerous) to and from the MRT. It was somewhat romantic to ride on the back of my girlfriend's scooter, hugging her from behind. I know we would've appreciated the privacy of an enclosed Ami though.
Penalties will take care of most of the tuners. For exampple, if you get caught with a disabled speed limiter you will have your license suspended for two years and your real full-power driver's license postponed by two years. Also insurance companies will impose hefty penalties if you're driving something else (more powerful) than what you've insured. If you crash, the insurance company will be charging you for the damages.
Here's a light-weight minicar after collision: https://is.mediadelivery.fi/img/1920/2965ca321c7a47758ca5a81... -- I'd rather have my kids take that hit in a passenger car, even a small one.
And if you don't upload, the car won't start and you get a call from a friendly community officer to find out what went wrong.
Unfortunately Covid-19 kept me from going to Bologna this year, bloody thing, so it's been a year since I last saw the vehicle I'm talking about.
Basically the twizzy was 18k usd for an electric two setter. wheread I bought a Dodge Attitude 3 pistons, extremely fuel efficient 4 setter. for 9k usd.
I couldn't justify to my wife to buy half the car in twice the money... I tried
I've owned several cars, but the most expensive, shiny, sexy one cost $2.4k.
The idea of being a child having $10k spent on me just for summer fun is mind-blowing.
That feels luxurious to me.
I am under the impression that most parents who send their children to university in the US have to scrimp and save to pay for it. Like it's a really big deal. Sometimes only one child of two can go, because there isn't enough to pay for both. So it's not likely there's a lot of cash readily available for summer fun for each child in the years leading up to it.
It didn't cost $2.4K new, did it?
Now your car likely wasn't a luxury car, and likely cost way more than $6K new.
Source https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/36714/umfrage...
In France in 2019 2.61 used cars were sold for each new car.
This would be 85% used cars, 15% new cars.
The average age of a bought used car was 13.3 years.
https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/uutta-dataa-kaytetyn-auto...
Under EU regulation these count as light vehicles (class L; Mopeds, Motorcycles, Motor Tricycles and Quadricycles - L6 to be specific), not cars.
You need a class-B driving licence to operate cars (i.e. age 17+), but these vehicles can be operated with a class AM license (i.e. age 14+).
The first one is rarely voided.
But in many cases there was no actual need to increase the size of the engine bore, as more often than not the original engine has much more power and it is limited by external devices (once - think of the '70's/*80's it was common to have the same engine 50 cc with 5-7 HP reduced to 1.5 HP by using an undersized carburetor, a smaller exhaust and even - in some cases a simple washer with a smaller hole in the intake).
I remember how (again this is the '70's) most "legal" mopeds in Italy had a carburetor (a Dell'Orto 14/12, meaning 14 mm diameter engine side, 12 mm air filter side) that was often drilled to 14/14 or replaced by a 18/18 or a 19/19. That was enough, without any other change to go from 1.5 HP (the "legal limit" at the time) to 3-4 HP, then changing addtionally the exhaust it went to 5-6 HP, then lightly enlarging the intake opening and "transfers" in the cylinder (remember these were two stroke engines) and adding 2-3 "transfers" was what made them reach 7-9 HP.
The best (in the sense of funniest) performance kit[1] was one for the Ciao (and similar Piaggio light mopeds that originally mounted an even smaller 12/10) that added a second carburetor (not particularly uncospicuous), example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCenA3H9siBLrpRUWCiLlWHw
[1] intended for circuit racing only ...
Back in the early 90s when this was something my friends were into, several of them had Yamaha 4 gears capable to going over 100kph (60mph) while the legal limit was 30kph (~19mph).
In the end, it cost me all the money I had saved, but was a fun and instructional experience nonetheless, also for teaching me that some friends when things go wrong often stop being such.
This is even more impractical. Just to be clear: impractical doesn't mean impossible - it just means that there's no way this can be as economical, safe, and efficient as existing concepts.
An actual station or "a series of parking spaces" as you put it, has no advantages over a traditional subway/people mover station in terms of efficiency, cost and space requirements while offering significantly less throughput.
I just don't see how any of this would be an improvement in any way.
When you fan out throughout the city, you can build, for the same price of a single subway tunnel, multiple links, and you can build much more micostations, close to where people need to go, with very short ramps and deceleration and acceleration handled cooperatively with the other vehicles, since throughput is no longer critical.
And finally, on the last mile, the vehicles goes outside and drives to your suburban home on the existing road network, in areas of low density where no people mover will ever make economic sense.
It is this flexibility that makes self driving vehicles a very practical proposition for future cities.
And then again, I'm always amused when visiting Americans think Dublin's awful public transport is good :)
Sure it did. What kind of power does a 15 year old have, exactly, to influence it though? A scooter has improved my mobility when I was 15. Going on the internet and saying that the lack of public transport is at fault would have not.
Besides, we do have really good public transport! It's just that even with buses running every 30 minutes it can still take a long time to get anywhere if you live couple towns over from where you need to be. So it's like.....45 minute bike ride, 15 minute scooter ride, or 1.5 hour bus ride because you have to swap buses twice? Not everything works for everyone, not everyone lives in the major cities. I didn't live out in the countryside either, but in a collection of smaller towns 4-5km apart, 10k population each.
True, of course.
But it's not about the individual 15 year old scooter owner who makes an individual decision to get a scooter, when they live outside the city, in a situation where it benefits them greatly, etc etc.
It's about the systemic impact of legalising a class of vehicles and thus adding hundreds of thousands more vehicles to the road network. People in situations where they could have happily stayed on public transport instead move to driving these small vehicles, which aren't as bad as full-sized cars but still consume resources and occupy valuable road and parking space. Fewer public transport users means fewer voters who care about public transport, and more who care about roads. That's not a step in the right direction.
(I grew up in rural Australia, I understand why you need private motorised transport to get around - but plenty of the customers who are going to be buying this Ami vehicle are going to be in extremely dense urban areas.)
If you want public transport adopted, make it effective and reasonably efficient and people will use it. Crimping people’s mobility in the meantime to garner support for better public transport at some time in the distant future is not likely to work well.
This is an extremely good point.
The city where I live, Milan (Italy) has truly exceptional public transport, accessed via a single cheap monthly pass (39€/month, includes all subways, trams and buses).
It's so good that my gf got her driving license at 27 and she didn't even had to do it, she got it "just in case", and to occasionally use the car sharing services available in the city.
Her mother has a driving license but never drives, and despite this has been going to work and has been doing her things without a car for the last 32 years (!!!)
Once your population density goes below a certain threshold, individual traffic isn't a problem anyway. This isn't the case, however, with most of Europe.
Yes, and this would be an even bigger problem for your proposal, that's the point.
> Also, there is a more fundamental problem with reaching high thoughtputs with mass transit: you need to force people out of optimal routes from their distributed destinations and origins, into enforced stations. This makes sense for point to point links like LA to SF, but it's very inefficient when trying to cover a 2D city: the more routes and stations you add, the less you are likely to reach peak capacity of any one link. If you are going for city-wide subway, you will pay much, much more to build large, expensive tunnels that will stay mostly idle at the perifery of the system.
You're hugely exaggerating the problem. You get some inefficiency yes - if we imagine a grid system then many journeys require a change of line and the average journey is 1.27x longer than an ideal path between two points, assuming people don't change their actions at all (e.g. living on the same line where they work). But that's outweighed by the efficiency gains of mass transit - in a city with a decent subway system that longer journey with a change will still be significantly faster than driving.
As for tunnels sitting idle at the periphery of the system, in the real world that's really not the issue you make it out to be, for a number of reasons; housing concentrates along commuting corridors, the places where the population thins out are, by the same token, the places where land is cheap and the train line can run on the surface, and if necessary then trains can turn short or split/join. If you look at the usage levels that subways actually achieve, they're incredibly cheap for what they do.
> Yes, and this would be an even bigger problem for your proposal, that's the point.
No. Trains must make every station. A low occupancy pod will only diverge from the high speed lane when it has reached a destination or pickup point.
> in a city with a decent subway system that longer journey with a change will still be significantly faster than driving.
I don't think anyone disputes that. But this happens because there is no comparable point to point transit system and the existing road network is inefficient. The point of building tunnels is remove those conflict areas and provide direct point to point routes with very high throughput. If, for the same price you can have similar throughput using individual vehicles, then it makes absolutely no sense cram people into comunal transport, force them into unnecessary stops, changes, and waiting times, making them compete for real-estate prices in transit corridors etc.
So you'll have to build twin tunnels through stations (and since they'll require an ADA-compliant evacuation walkway, they'll have to be almost full-size subway tunnels even if you're using smaller personal pods), which will be a fiddle to use TBMs for. You'll have to have a system for diverting or not, and that's going to require maintenance and break down sometimes. And what does the actual mechanics of pods stopping for people to get out look like at busy stations? You'd need giant shunting yards to route pods to free "platforms" (like a garage forecourt only much bigger), and you'd have to build them underground in the places that are most expensive to do tunnelling and remove spoil from, and they'd have a complex layout that would have to be built in a labour-intensive way - all the lighting and ventilation and fire-suppression systems would have to be fitted into that layout (underground stations are already the most expensive parts of building subway projects). Or you'd have pods backing up onto the main line. Or you'd have to batch them together in a, uh, train.
> I don't think anyone disputes that. But this happens because there is no comparable point to point transit system and the existing road network is inefficient.
Tunnels are still only going to go from some places to some other places. Roads are already planned carefully. But there's only so much capacity you can get out of individual vehicles.
> The point of building tunnels is remove those conflict areas and provide direct point to point routes with very high throughput.
It's not going to be high throughput though. Every transportation system has a high throughput when you're just looking at maximum capacity along a plain line going at speed - it's all the fiddly interfaces where the throughput goes down. It'll be the same for a tunnel system (if it's ever built).
I don't really understand what you mean by maintenance of the system used for diverting from the main lane - it's essentially the same thing as an exit ramp from a highway, but much shorter since the reliability of the automated driver is a built-in design factor.
The lane shift maneuver requires about 1s, so about 15m of widened tunnel at the entrance and exit of the stations. An additional 20m of is required for reliable deceleration and acceleration respectively, which would be handled by dedicated tunnels serving the station. I agree that these interfaces would handle much less vehicles, but it would drive down the throughput of the respective station, not that of the main lane.
Regarding the size of the underground station - why not make it on the surface? You can have much steeper ramps in an automated, controlled system, if for example de-icing is guaranteed near the surface with dedicated heaters, the quality and grip of the tires is controlled etc. Essentially, any down-town parking can be transformed in a very large station by dedicating o few hundred m^2 for these ramps.
If we're going to make a valid comparison between different systems then we have to compare them under the same regulatory regime. A lot of the costs of real-world subway systems are down to regulatory requirements, so comparing an imaginary system that's exempt from those regulatory requirements is going to be very biased.
> I don't really understand what you mean by maintenance of the system used for diverting from the main lane - it's essentially the same thing as an exit ramp from a highway, but much shorter since the reliability of the automated driver is a built-in design factor.
Highways try to avoid having exit ramps in tunnels, because fundamentally you're creating the possibility of a vehicle crashing into the pointy bit (or at best a blank wall). If you're relying purely on automated steering to avoid that, inevitably sooner or later a pod is going to hit it, if only through mechanical failure of the steering system.
> Regarding the size of the underground station - why not make it on the surface? You can have much steeper ramps in an automated, controlled system, if for example de-icing is guaranteed near the surface with dedicated heaters, the quality and grip of the tires is controlled etc. Essentially, any down-town parking can be transformed in a very large station by dedicating o few hundred m^2 for these ramps.
That doesn't solve the problem - the reason tunnelling is expensive in these areas is because land is expensive there. Parking has an absurdly small capacity compared to transit. Even bus stations just can't unload enough people quickly enough in the space available in truly dense city centres, and this pod system is going to need a lot more space per person than a bus station.
#1 best way to get around any European city. I cannot fathom circumstances where I would go back to petrol-based transportation, also. From here on out its electric, or walk.
I've had days where all I can think of, is how to add sound to my moped in cool ways. #1 idea is to put a kind of buzzer/whistle on my helmet .. thought of the whole 'speed-based synthesiser app' that makes the "drrroooooot" sound (its a nonsense idea), but in the end, a plain old bell seems to be the most effective measure yet, in the effort to continue to enjoy the electric ride ..
I could imagine an industry standard 'speed synthesiser', though, but the jingle-bell is cute too, and cheaper ...
I can’t find the video now but I think it was filmed in Brazil and the guys on the bicycle we’re like teenagers or something.
If you are going to compare "infrastructure" then you have to compare everything, including how many people benefit - everyone who shops at a supermarket benefits from the road system even if they own no vehicle.
The other day this almost happened to me on a sidewalk in NYC. Delivery people on silent scooters do drive on sidewalks.
"I only look up from my phone when I hear an engine, so they should be stopping for me!" and the fact that the driver shares some of the blame isn't much of a consolation once you're laying in a hospital bed.
I also think it's a terrible justification for noise pollution.
That said, I'd be totally down for a city center that was just silent scooters, and where accidents got your scooter license revoked for 6mos no questions asked. ;)
Your theory that motorcycle max speed saves lives is simply unsupported by any data; if you can't see it, it's just cognitive dissonance - you've made up your mind that you like loud speedy bikes and are just looking for justifications.
(don't get me wrong - I fully understand that a slow motorcycle is no fun. But it _is_ a dangerous vehicle - own that, don't use loud noises and other means that inconvenience people around in order to feel slightly safer, that's just inconsiderate. )
On a personal level, the world you’re describing sounds like hell to me. There’s already way too much noise pollution. I ride motorcycles, I agree car drivers are inattentive to non-cars. Slowing down is the answer for noise and safety, save speed for track days.
Where did you get that?
The reality is that if you are scared to drive or unfocused in a city like Rome or Milan, you are a menace even at very low speed.
At 10 km/h a car kills a pedestrian.
At 15 km/h without safety bells if you hit a wall you're thrown out from the windshield.
Slow drivers need to learn how to drive safely without pretending that their insecurities become everyoneś problem.
Especially in large cities where there are a pletora of alternative ways to move around.
> That's really the root of the safety problem that is big powerful cars.
It is not.
In Rome, where there are around 27 thousands car crashes every year, the number one cause of accidents is distraction.
Most of them happen at low speed.
The second is driving under the influence.
The third is road conditions.
Last comes speeding.
Driving under pressure because you don't feel confident behind the wheel is like DUI, you make mistakes and cause crashes.
Too many people obtain the driving license without having the necessary skills to handle the traffic flow of a large city.
Most people don't respect the strict speed limits in Europe. As long as there's no radar and no heavy traffic around I can guarantee cars will go faster than 50km/h.
Every major vehicle manufacturers is working on self-driving. So just how difficult would it be for them to make cars now as an intermediate step that actually obeyed the speed laws?
In the UK, The National Police Chiefs Council stated that speeding is believed to be a significant factor in 17 fatalities and 126 serious injuries on the country's roads each month. Globally ...
I don't know how many people the vehicle makers should be allowed to kill and maim because of a speeding problem that is entirely technically preventable. But at the moment it feels like they are getting away with something that is uncomfortably close to murder.
Secondly, there's a more fundamental issue. Most people are not going to be ok with the lawmaker exerting that level of control over their cars, because it's 1984-y.
Just because something kills people doesn't mean it always has to be completely stopped and eradicated. People die from eating too much junk food, should we forbid it? People die to stairs, are you going to legally force constructions to pad any staircases with cushions? People ruin their lives due to alcohol. People drown in pools. Kids get injured on playgrounds - think of the children.
There's a line where you need to leave things up to individuals, even if some of them are going to fuck up, because otherwise you end up creating a draconian state, which is way worse than any possible outcome created by people misusing their agency. Trying to enforce speed limits this hard is way over that line.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try and reduce speeds. Speed kills, and that’s a fact. A lot of the killing is externalized as well.
I’ve said it before, but people who drive public streets like a track should either get themselves to a track, or internalize their risk-taking by buying a motorcycle. As a motorcyclist, I’m very aware of safety trade-offs I’m making. Oddly enough, not being inside a steel cage is a pretty good reminder to keep safety very high on the list of things I think about while riding.
Most European city centers do not have four lane straight-as-a-line roads with only a sign "restricting" the speed. On tight, winding roads with near-zero visibility at junctions, it's rare to even hit the speed limit. Driving faster doesn't happen because it feels (and is!) dangerous.
That's the kind of road this vehicle is designed for.
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowle...
So I guess it's q.e.d that limiting max speed saves lives - but no biker will passionately advocate for this solution?
> Taxi drivers from the Republika Srpska might be unwilling to drive to a destination in the Federation, and vice versa.
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/bosnia-and-herzegov...
Or Wikipedia
> police conduct around the Inter-Entity Boundary Line separating the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, had been the "greatest obstacle to freedom of movement", including intimidation and arbitrary fines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...
There are plenty of anecdotes similar to mine on TripAdvisor etc.
I guess you meant the car behind you.
It is called tailgating.
It is very annoying, I agree, but if I can offer en explanation, in those conditions to overtake you wanna cover the less possible distance, being closer to the car in front of you is a way to make it possible.
Having said that: compared to the population the most dangerous cities in Italy are, in order, Genoa, Florence and Milan.
That could explain it too.
To deal with a taligater, according to the experts, you should
> Brake slowly before stopping. Avoid tailgaters when possible by changing lanes. If you cannot change lanes, slow down enough to encourage the tailgater to go around you. If this does not work, pull off the road when safe and let the tailgater pass.
Sadly, that describes all too many drivers. Enforcement and normalization of slower speeds through a critical mass of slower vehicles could change things.
Ultimately, people have shown that the need to be "tamed" while driving cars.
Neither should someone who can't handle going at 5km/h faster than the speed limit.
It will happen one day that they'll need to and maybe that day it will rain and that will be the day they cause an accident, possibly involving others.
Limits are not there because that's the maximum speed you should be _able_ to drive, they are there for pedestrian safety and to reduce the noise.
> . Enforcement and normalization of slower speeds through a critical mass of slower vehicles could change things.
On the contrary, I hope there will be way faster vehicles, underground, only for those trained to drive them or machine operated.
Everyone else should just ride a bike or walk or catch a bus or a (slow) cab.
The need for speed won't go back, we need to move faster and faster, the more our lives go faster.
p.s. before someone says it, I live in a very expensive neighborhood just to be at walking distance from my office. Even though I love driving and are a semi professional trained pilot, I usually don't drive in the city, unless I have to.
But I can understand why people forced to use a car want to drive them as fast as the limit permits.
The average speed in Rome is 8.3 km/h
So yeah, speeding is almost never the problem.
But people doing something else while driving is.
> If you can't wait behind a slow vehicle, unless you have a dying person on your side, maybe you should not drive in the first place...
If you are driving a car to go really slowly, driving in the middle of the streets, because you are too scared to drive too close to the side of the streets, why are you even driving in the first place?
It's like driving a motorbike with the training wheels because you have no equilibrium.
Would you find that acceptable?
And why not?
People can have many reasons to speed, they are not your concern, if you feel to drive slowly, just get out of the way, as experts of road safety suggest to do (that's exactly what I do on highways all the time)
> If someone behind you clearly wants to go faster, remember that it’s not your job to prevent them from doing so. Staying in front of a driver like this when you have space to move over could lead to even more aggressive driving, so it’s best to steer aside and let them drive the speed they’re going to drive (it’s their problem if they get pulled over, not yours!). If you’re genuinely concerned for the safety of yourself or others on the roadway, pull over and call local authorities to report an erratic or unsafe driver.
EDIT:
Some stats regarding Rome (the city where I was born and live)
- Rome has the highest number of accidents per capita, but the lowest mortality per capita in the whole Lazio region
- 75% of the accidents in the region happen in the cities, 25% outside them
- 52% of the accidents on urban roads and 62% of those on extra-urban roads happen on the straights
- most of them caused by distraction
- 45% of the accidents of the year in Rome happen between June and September due to the higher mobility of holiday season
- the two age groups where mortality is raising are 15-19 and over 70. Younger people number one cause of death is speeding (sometimes under the influence), due to inexperience (and the eventual alteration) they can't handle it. For older people is misjudgement: slower reaction times and impaired senses (vision, hearing) lead to deadly crashes.
- 80% of the accidents happen between 8-20, but most of the deadly one happen between 2 and 7 o'clock. Again, most probable causes are: distractions, sleepiness, driver fatigue, DUI.
Driving is a very complex operation, that requires skills and focus, and engage all the body, especially when using manual gears, it is very similar to playing drums.
If people don't give full attention on what they are doing it is very easy to make mistakes that could lead to very bad consequences or even death.
Hoping that other drivers will compensate for my own lack of focus, it's not the safest of the bets.
So, in my opinion, being a driver concerned of the safety yourself and others, means focusing on what you are doing and preventing potentially dangerous situations.
Blaming other drivers will not help you if you don't look twice before crossing a large street late at night or if you speed up to catch the yellow at the traffic-light.
I started driving when it was the same really bad mentality of people having to make place to the one who wants to go fast. And it wasn't great at all, safety records show it.
When i started to understand that the best thing to do when I had such a "pilot" behind me was to slow down until the situation could be less dangerous, I just found myself in way less dangerous situations.
So no, you can be the best driver of the world, 50 km/h in a city is already way too dangerous for pedestrian, with a high death rate in case of accident. The unconfortable slow driver you hate ? Maybe not as dangerous as you are... Actually maybe making road safer.
You want to drive "fast"? Think about the safety of other people it involves.
There is not.
There is a clear correlation between speed and deadly accidents.
But most of the accidents happen in the cities and most of them happen at low speed.
The most probable cause is disrespect of priority, due to distractions (watching the phone is very common nowadays)
I posted some stats for the city of Rome, taken straight from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT)
> I started driving when it was the same really bad mentality of people having to make place to the one who wants to go fa
Those bad mentality people are experts in road safety.
If you are one of them I'd like to know where you work.
My fiancé worked here https://www.fia.com/road-safety
> So no, you can be the best driver of the world, 50 km/h in a city is already way too dangerous for pedestrian
Nobody has ever said the contrary...
> The unconfortable slow driver you hate ? Maybe not as dangerous as you are
Maybe is a no until you prove it.
Meanwhile I can show you that the categories that suffer more deaths per capita are really young and inexperienced people and older people with slow reaction times and impaired vision (the traffic light was red but they didn't see it).
> You want to drive "fast"? Think about the safety of other people it involves.
I never said that.
I've said that if you can't handle to drive fast (fast as in slightly above the speed limits), you are dangerous even at low speed.
If you can't swim in a swimming pool, will you be a better swimmer in the Ocean?
As an example: my dad never liked driving, he never learned to be a good driver and as a result now that he is older his driving skill have lowered so much that he is a danger to himself.
He could drive meh at 50kmh when he was 40, barely when he was 50, now that he is 75 at 30kmh everything looks too fast for his reflexes. He breaks in the middle of the straight because he sees shadows, wait too long at crosses but then he passes in the wrong moment because he gets frustrated that other cars behind him are forming a long line because of him.
He never had to challenge his mediocre driving skills, because they were almost good enough and now he can't drive safely anymore.
Driving is like a muscle, if you don't exercise it and stimulate it, it will atrophy.
Cities like Rome, with the highest number of cars per capita in the West (73 cars every 100 people) need to either remove cars from the streets entirely or deploy large programs of safe driving because the population is getting older and their driving skills are not getting better.
Forcing everyone to go by bike or at 10kmh is not a solution.
At 20kmh a delay in reaction times of just one second means 6 meters.
It is a lot!
And I repeat it to be clear: I don't even drive anymore in Rome, I simply walk, because it's too frustrating as an experience.
Junk food, too, is the target of similar restrictions in several countries now. Also, playgrounds have been scaled down in the last couple of decades for safety reasons, and in the USA that wasn’t due to draconian laws, it was due to fear of lawsuits.
> It is definitely possible for a large enough group of citizens to be so concerned about the harmful effects of something that they do not believe it should be left to the individual.
True. Everyone is fine with heroin being illegal. That's why I said that there is a line and not that you should leave everything to the individual.
> in the USA that wasn’t due to draconian laws, it was due to fear of lawsuits.
Is that not the same? Just that the US already has draconian laws?
The big difference is that speeding puts others lives at risk. Someones heroin addiction for the most part will themselves at risk (except where keeping it illegal pushes people into crime to finance their addiction, which is another reason to provide legal access)
If it is technically preventable without impeding the lawful usage, why is it assumed that the killing or maiming of even one extra person is okay?
> That kind of driver is just going to go for used cars if new cars won't let you drive as you wish
Perhaps, but isn't being surrounded by vehicles driving at the legal speed going to slow them down? And if that doesn't slow them down, then aren't the police likely to have more resources to deal with them?
(each death on UK roads is estimated to cost over £2 million pounds https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras60-av... , I'd imagine the figures are similar for most Western countries - that's a lot of resources freed)
> the lawmaker exerting that level of control over their cars, because it's 1984-y.
And having our roads festooned with cameras and number plate readers while still suffering the deaths and injuries is not a worse vision of dystopia?
> because otherwise you end up creating a draconian state, which is way worse than any possible outcome created by people misusing their agency. Trying to enforce speed limits this hard is way over that line.
I know what Top Gear and the rest of the industry with the largest advertising budget on the planet might like us to think. But speeding is not a human right. It's not much like freedom of speech; is it? So just how would preventing law-abiding citizens from being killed or maimed by illegal driving bring about a "draconian state"?
When science and technology make it preventable, why should it be acceptable to allow our loved ones to continue to be killed and maimed just so that some people can continue to break the law and drive dangerously?
You mentioned free speech, so here's an analogy: Even with free speech, there are certain things you're not allowed to say, and most people agree that's reasonable. Imagine someone is bullied into suicide by hate speech, and we have the technology to implant people with chips that make it impossible for them to say these things.
Would you argue in the same way that "if it is technically preventable without impeding the lawful usage, why is it assumed that the killing or maiming of even one extra person is okay?"
In any case it should be clear that that would be a rather extremist position.
Is not every bought or sold item or service subject to some form of "government" regulation? Looking at Lead for instance; isn't it materially beneficial to a society that it is no longer a routine constituent of our gasoline or drinking water pipes? Is our health not better? Isn't stopping companies selling vehicles that can break speeding laws the same?
> re: mind-control chips. Would you argue in the same way that > "if it is technically preventable without impeding the lawful usage, > why is it assumed that the killing or maiming of even one extra > person is okay?"
When, or if mind-control chips come into being, then it'll be up to the societies of which we are all parts to decide how, or if they want to use them. It'll be one heck of a debate; freedom of internal thought vs stopping rapists and serial killers.
Now, if they screw up, and "bad" mind-control comes to pass, will anyone seriously be saying? "you know what; it was because they stopped speeding cars on public roads". Would that be likely? Or are neural links, miniaturization, better batteries, etc and a sh*tty society misusing them more likely to be orders of magnitude more culpable?
So when science and technology make it (where "it" is speeding) preventable - who wouldn't want to use it to prevent theirs and other's loved ones from being killed and maimed?
However that’s understating the difference. It’s common to be breaking just before impact at higher speeds you have less time to react and thus break less. If you go from 50MPH to 30 MPH that’s likely a completely survivable collision. Breaking from 60MPH to 50 MPH is less so as your dealing with V^2 = ~2.8x the energy. Similarly, many accidents are simply avoided...
I found one thing which is a bit counter to this, but not directly relevant to cities. Germany manages to have no speed limit on the majority of the Autobahn without a higher rate of accidents compared to surrounding countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
Anyway, overall safety of a given road is a separate factor. Germany has approximately 650,000 km of roads and only 12,996 kilometres (2016) where part of the Autobahn. So while per mile the Autobahn is safer than the older parts of the German road network, speed is hardly the only factor involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Germany#Roads
They have very high standards for what constitutes a no speed limit zone and such roads are safe enough to offset the added dangers of such speeds.
No, because you can just not speed, whereas you can't just not drink the lead in your tap water. Your proposal is a different, far more extreme form of regulation.
> So when science and technology make it (where "it" is speeding) preventable - who wouldn't want to use it to prevent theirs and other's loved ones from being killed and maimed?
You keep repeating this thing about saving your loved ones, but it's not as simple as that. You have tunnel vision on the death toll and don't consider what other consequences you're creating. Reasoning that "if technology allows it and it can save a life, it's automatically worth doing" can justify a lot of hamfisted measures.
> It'll be one heck of a debate; freedom of internal thought vs stopping rapists and serial killers.
Here you even acknowledge that there is something to be lost in exchange for stopping bad things. That's my entire point. The speeding issue is exactly the same, just with smaller stakes.
Take away people's agency piece by piece to prevent speeding, murder and rape, and you end up with a society where everyone can live to 100 but no one is even human anymore.
Hence it's important to get people to stop seeing opposition to legalisation of these drugs as "obvious", because opposing legalisation of these drugs is extremely irrational.
Current laws on this are immoral and deeply harmful. The vast majority of drugs should be fully legalised and regulated, not decriminalised. The only reasonable exceptions are possibly things like fentanyl and "synthetic cannabis" variants that few people use because they want just those drugs but because of poor availability of safer drugs.
Any evidence-based drugs policy would involve full legalisation of most drugs - there's simply nothing that suggests the current laws achieve their claimed intent, and plenty that demonstrate they are causing massive harm both to addicts and to victims of related crime.
Decriminalizing heroin possession and use, while keeping production and sale illegal, has already resulted in absolutely massive reduction of heroin use in several places. Sometimes to the point that there’s only a few elderly addicts hanging on but virtually no younger users are taking up the drug. I’d say that the policies achieved their claimed intent. What more do you want?
