[HN Gopher] Trailerduck is a smart e-bike trailer
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Trailerduck is a smart e-bike trailer
Author : mpweiher
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-09-21 10:27 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.autoevolution.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.autoevolution.com)
| carlob wrote:
| At what point do we start stretching the definition of what can
| be allowed on a bike path?
|
| 300 kg of cargo at 25 km/h is very close to the momentum of a
| moped riding at 50 km/h, which is something I definitely don't
| want to share a bike path with.
|
| For what it's worth when I'm in the mood for racing and I have my
| good road bike I tend to avoid bike paths as a courtesy to other
| cyclists (and to avoid getting stuck behind someone slow).
| nanis wrote:
| How about we start with not allowing motorcycles on the
| sidewalks? Whether the engine is a two-stroke or electric motor
| does not matter. In the NYC metro area (including cities/towns
| in NJ and CT), being on the sidewalk means having to duck heavy
| electric motorcycles and scooters doing about 20mph with no
| regard to anyone's safety. In most places, it is already
| illegal to bike on sidewalks, a rule that is conspicuous in the
| lack of adherence, but there is absolutely no enforcement.
| carlob wrote:
| I was once fined for riding a bicycle on a 10 m stretch of
| sidewalk because the road was congested. A moped and a full
| sized enduro were on the sidewalk at the same time and got
| the exact same fine, which is kind of annoying.
|
| For reference this was in Paris more than 10 years ago.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Here in NYC, we already see Amazon (via Whole Foods) abusing
| the bike lanes. They have a fleet of electric bikes with
| several large bins towed behind in a trailer. The trailer takes
| up the whole bike lane (preventing any passing). They've turned
| massive swaths of the sidewalk outside their Bowery store into
| a staging area, and the bikes make frequent trips over places
| like the nearby Williamsburg Bridge, where other cyclists are
| trying to travel; I consider myself fortunate that I only need
| to bike in that area occasionally.
|
| Of course, these bike lanes are also home to a growing moped
| infestation, and law enforcement doesn't care about that,
| either, and they don't do much about the (privately operated)
| school buses that routinely park in the Vernon Boulevard bike
| lanes near the Department of Education facility at 44th Rd,
| either, so, I guess there's just an open invitation to abuse
| the commons.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| The NYC mention reminds me of Bike Lanes by Neistat[1].
| Sounds like the situation has deteriorated, I'd be interested
| to see a 2021 version.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQh
| rdiddly wrote:
| The cops themselves park in the bike lanes near precincts all
| over town, too.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Oh, the cops just park all over _everywhere_. Fire
| department, too. On the sidewalk, half on the sidewalk, in
| the crosswalks, over the ADA sidewalk ramps in
| neighborhoods where they get good amounts of use -- hardly
| worth mentioning the bike lanes at that point.
|
| Check out this massive permanent NYPD/FDNY parking-lot that
| starts _on the freeway shoulder_ and goes along Tillary St
| / Gold St. These guys are here basically every day:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6970284,-73.9813054,3a,75y,
| 3...
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6962375,-73.9813369,3a,75y,
| 6...
|
| And that's not even a bad day; there's only one or two cars
| parked on the long narrow triangle where the onramp merges
| with the street.
|
| And the ambulance drivers park in the bike lanes to take a
| nap or for their lunch break. And the Post Office parks
| wherever and they just doesn't care, because they're
| federal, and you can't fine them.
| mapt wrote:
| Well that sounds illegal.
|
| Ever tried a citizen's arrest?
|
| (Last time the cops in NYC got angry at civilian oversight
| they kidnapped the Mayor's daughter and posted her mugshot
| on Twitter, and a Freudian slip of the SBA's announcement
| declared that they would "Win the war on New York City".
| The population should maybe do something about that.)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I don't know about NYC, it varies state-to-state, but
| usually a citizen's arrest is limited to directly
| witnessed felonies. Illegal parking isn't a felony.
| dmix wrote:
| In most cities cops are allowed to park in bike lanes
| when responding to a call.
| qvqv wrote:
| Yes but in NYC they park there even when they aren't
| responding to calls, including personal vehicles
|
| https://twitter.com/jangelooff/status/1436376185039212600
| stickfigure wrote:
| It's natural to feel upset about bike lanes being over-
| capacity, but maybe look at it this way: Now there is
| demonstrated need for expanded capacity, and a deep-pocket
| lobby (Amazon) on your side.
|
| Perhaps getting a larger coalition of users on board is
| exactly what we need to expand bike infrastructure. The
| scarcity of bike lanes is wholly artificial and easily fixed
| by transitioning more automobile infrastructure.
| clairity wrote:
| yup, i read that and thought, "yes, a reason to double-wide
| the bike lanes!" i mean, i get it, someone abusing the
| commons is annoying, but it means we need more human-
| oriented commons (vs. the car-oriented).
|
| cars get too much of our shared space. we should consider
| repurposing most city streets, such as: one lane (each way)
| for cars, 1 lane for buses, and 1 protected lane for bikes.
| most lanes are about 10 feet wide, so we can take a foot
| away from the car lane and give it to the bus lane to
| promote traffic calming, while the protected (with curb or
| bollard) bike lane can be split in two to provide a passing
| lane.
| u801e wrote:
| > one lane (each way) for cars, 1 lane for buses, and 1
| protected lane for bikes. most lanes are about 10 feet
| wide, so we can take a foot away from the car lane and
| give it to the bus lane
|
| How will intersections be managed for each lane? Will we
| have an exclusive traffic light signal phase for each
| lane? I imagine that would significantly reduce
| throughput.
| clairity wrote:
| you'd group the bike lane with pedestrians, while cars
| and buses go together, so it wouldn't be any different.
| you can still have dedicated left and right turn lanes
| where needed, which micro-vehicles could optionally use
| too, just like now. you wouldn't need a separate light
| cycle for micro-vehicles, as they'd have the flexibility
| to use either existing option.
| Steltek wrote:
| Interesting. Micro-cars will come to the US - not by
| beginning with sharing the road with lethal pickups and
| SUVs - but by "bike" lanes annexing road space.
| clairity wrote:
| to be clear, i don't particularly like the trailerduck
| (outside being a novel application of technology) as a
| solution to moving large amounts of stuff in the bike
| lanes, which potentially would be a precursor to that
| future. i think microcars (up to ~45mph, not highway
| legal) belong in car lanes in the city, while
| e-bikes/scooters should be able to utilize double-wide
| bike lanes (up to ~25mph, primarily in the passing lane).
| y4mi wrote:
| People drive 25 mp/h or 40 km/h on bike lanes?
|
| I routinely drove about 27-30km/h without assist and was
| already getting worried about breaking speed and people
| entering the bike lane. Going so much faster would be
| terrifying to me
| clairity wrote:
| i do see e-bikers doing 20-25mph (up to ~40km/h)
| occasionally, and a determined pedal biker can reach
| those speeds as well. "terrifying" seems a little
| hyperbolic though. certainly you're likely to get hurt if
| you crash a bike at those speeds, but that's why safety
| gear exists, and why we need protected bike lanes to
| segregate speeds/vehicles. crashing a car at high speed
| is similarly terrifying, yet we drive cars at high speed
| orders of magnitude more often.
|
| but that's also why we need double-wide lanes, so that
| faster micro-vehicles have space too. city streets should
| support a full gradient of travel speeds/vehicles, from
| walking to car, the normalization of which should reduce
| the incidence of people blindly entering bike lanes (just
| as we don't have people jumping in front of cars all the
| time).
| u801e wrote:
| > i do see e-bikers doing 20-25mph (up to ~40km/h)
| occasionally, and a determined pedal biker can reach
| those speeds as well.
|
| At that speed, why not just use the road instead of the
| narrow bike lanes/paths?
| clairity wrote:
| where i live, they do tend to use the road because there
| aren't many bike lanes/paths around (mostly sharrows or
| nothing at all).
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You're not allowed, and people will be absolutely furious
| at you for doing it. Also drivers rear-ending you.
| u801e wrote:
| > You're not allowed
|
| VAT 1234 [1] only applies when going less than the normal
| speed of traffic, which isn't the case on an e-bike.
|
| > people will be absolutely furious at you for doing it.
|
| People do a lot of things that make other people furious.
| Riding on the road isnt anything special
|
| > Also drivers rear-ending you.
|
| It's far less likely than getting hit by a turning
| vehicle because the cyclist was in the motorist's blind
| spot.
|
| [1] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Is there any evidence at all that this is going to happen?
| Speculation doesn't craft reality.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Road and highway capacity is expanded based on usage. Why
| would bicycle lanes be different?
| u801e wrote:
| > The scarcity of bike lanes is wholly artificial and
| easily fixed by transitioning more automobile
| infrastructure.
|
| Wouldn't it just be easier to just have all vehicle types
| share the same infrastructure (roads)? They're already
| built out and can be used by any wheeled vehicle by
| following the rules of the road.
|
| Roads are designed to be used by any type of vehicle, not
| just automobiles.
| piperswe wrote:
| Unfortunately, different classes of vehicle have
| difficulty co-existing on one piece of road
| infrastructure. I'm going to consider cars, trucks, etc.
| as high speed/high momentum vehicles and bikes,
| pedestrians, etc. as low speed/low momentum vehicles.
|
| - High speed, high momentum vehicles are a larger danger
| to low speed, low momentum vehicles than they are to
| other high speed vehicles.
|
| - Infrastructure that can be used by high speed vehicles
| must be designed for high speed vehicles, and that design
| often conflicts with design decisions that make a piece
| of infrastructure more useful to low speed vehicles. For
| instance, roundabouts can alleviate high speed vehicle
| traffic but pose issues for low speed vehicles.
|
| - Humans aren't rational - segregated infrastructure is
| much more appealing to users of the low speed vehicles,
| even if we were to somehow mitigate the risks of
| desegregated infrastructure.
| u801e wrote:
| > High speed, high momentum vehicles are a larger danger
| to low speed, low momentum vehicles than they are to
| other high speed vehicles.
|
| The danger is only relevant if a collision occurs.
| Motorcyclists also use the roads and they're signicantly
| lighter than the average passenger vehicle. The average
| passenger vehicle is signficantly less massive compared
| to a bus, dump truck, or tractor-trailer.
|
| The key to avoiding collisions is to follow the rules of
| the road in terms of right-of-way rules, signaling in
| advance one's intention to change course, and positioning
| when preparing to make a turn at an intersection.
|
| > Infrastructure that can be used by high speed vehicles
| must be designed for high speed vehicles
|
| Except that typical surface streets are not designed for
| high speeds. There are numerous intersections, vehicles
| waiting to turn, traffic control devices that require one
| to slow or stop before proceeding, etc. The only
| infrastructure that meets the criterion you mention are
| limited access highways where exit and entry are via
| interchanges as opposed to at grade intersections.
|
| > Humans aren't rational - segregated infrastructure is
| much more appealing to users of the low speed vehicles
|
| While it is, it also encourages unsafe behaviors at
| intersections. Pedestrian rules of movement rely on the
| assumption that a pedestrian moving at 2 to 4 mph will be
| close enough to an intersection such that the driver of a
| vehicle has time to see them and yield to them. Someone
| on a bicycle moves much faster than a pedestrian. Even
| casual cyclists go between 6 to 12 mph which is at least
| twice to four times as fast as a typical walking
| pedestrian. This means they can be twice to four times as
| far from an intersection and out of the area a driver of
| a vehicle normally scans before exiting an intersection
| when turning. This increases the risk of a collision.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| This sounds like a simple fix.
|
| Charge large companies fees to use use their large delivery
| vechicles on any road.
|
| Those fees, and taxes, could build more bike paths, and
| repair streets.
|
| (I would like to see governments charging large companies to
| use our infrastructure. Only charge the large companies. They
| are the ones abusing the privilege usually.)
| u801e wrote:
| A more simple fix would be to repeal VAT 1234[1] and allow
| cycles to ride on the roads. If the bike lanes are blocked,
| then they're useless and cyclists should legally be allowed
| to ride in the center of the general purpose lane without
| getting cited for it.
|
| [1] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > Charge large companies fees to use use their large
| delivery vehicles on any road.
|
| Meh. We can't even charge delivery trucks to use the
| commercial-loading-area parking meters. They just double-
| park in the street, and the cops have given up on all but
| the most convenient forms of enforcement.
| specialist wrote:
| Freedom Markets(tm) theology prohibits taxing megacorps who
| abuse the commons.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| If I am going to call some platform a "freedom markets
| theology" platform, my #1 candidate is a policy-oriented
| think tank called the Reason Foundation, staffed by
| Libertarians, and dedicated to both freedom and markets.
| While their writing here is not as strident as at their
| sister site it is certainly worth calling "theology" in
| an offhand sense like this one. Their site:
| http://reason.org
|
| The thing is that, quite contrary to what you say here,
| they end up being quite focused on "user pays"
| infrastructure, particularly for highways (where the
| worst wear and tear comes from trucks). Besides tolls
| they also like congestion pricing schemes and hate
| exceptions to the schemes being handed to privileged
| groups. You want them to start charging for the bike lane
| too? They'd be all over that. Market pricing is how they
| propose to allocate scarce resources; what's more scarce
| than road space in Manhattan?
|
| There's a lot of room to be skeptical of "freedom market
| theology" but it deserves to be critiqued for what it is,
| not what it is imagined to be, and this particular attack
| on it is actually radically at odds with what it teaches.
|
| p.s. Oh, yeah, great, send upvotes for the non-
| constructive political cheap shots which misrepresent
| actual policy positions, and -2 for the post using effort
| to challenge bullshit with fact. Love you too, HN, and I
| know you'll never change. Send more downvotes, I love it.
| hinkley wrote:
| Traffic legislation is written in blood. Many cities put
| traffic lights on corners that have had traffic fatalities,
| and no amount of complaining about near misses gets them to
| pay the costs. They want numbers. And those numbers are
| insurance claims.
|
| It's probably going to take someone plowing into a tour group
| of kids before anything changes, and then that change will be
| shrill and reactionary.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Are they legal pedal-assist e-bikes or do they have a hand
| throttle like all the takeout delivery guys use? If the
| latter you can get the city to crack down since they aren't
| permitted under NY law.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I'd probably feel differently if I had to ride through that
| on my morning commute, but presumably replacing diesel
| delivery trucks with (even obnoxious) electric bikes is on
| balance a good thing? As for trucks and buses parking in the
| bike lanes, in most states unfortunately traffic laws provide
| loopholes for that, sadly.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Not if the people who ride bikes switch to driving because
| it's more dangerous or slow to bike.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| They aren't replacing delivery trucks that stock stores,
| it's adding to personal deliveries usually done by normal
| bike or sometimes car depending on the traffic density.
| The-Bus wrote:
| Amazon deliveries in NYC are done by a mix of bikes with
| trailers, the US Postal Service, Amazon's own Sprinter
| vans, and third-party contractors using their own
| vehicles (e.g. Lasership). The bikes and trailers are
| replacing these vehicles, not a normal bike.
| teekert wrote:
| I feel that this is a discussion very must about to become
| mainstream in the Netherlands. Electric vehicles of all sorts
| and sizes are entering the once relaxed and predictable bike
| lanes (which here are often not just lanes but complete
| separate roads with no car-roads around, ie. through a park or
| forest).
|
| It's not just e-bikes and their unexpected speed, everywhere
| now you can rent "e-choppers", with a wide steering bar and a
| relaxed attitude. However they are much faster and wider than
| normal bicycles and you can see the annoyance on the faces of
| people constantly overtaken by them. 25 KPH is really fast on a
| bike path, and then they are also silent so they pop out of
| nowhere. It's not a good combo. Many of these bike lanes are of
| limits to gasoline scooters ("Fietspad dus niet brommen") I'm
| guessing many of these things are going to forced onto the car-
| roads by law, like we did 20 years ago with scooters (max 45
| kph, require helmet, they are partly forced on car-roads, here
| is an example where scooters leave the bike path to enter the
| road: [0]).
|
| [0]: https://goo.gl/maps/RxWxazWic2dduqU67
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| 25 kph is about 15 mph, which is not particularly fast in a
| bike lane here in the US. It is a lane, not a path; basically
| a painted shoulder theoretically closed to vehicles. However,
| most cyclists seem to be riding for sport, few people ride at
| a sedate pace because you're on the bike to burn calories and
| improve your fitness, not to get somewhere in normal clothes
| without becoming sweaty.
|
| It feels too dangerous to be a couple feet from all our big
| SUVs and pickup trucks at 100 kph/55 mph unless you're also
| going an appreciable fraction of that speed.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _However, most cyclists seem to be riding for sport, few
| people ride at a sedate pace because you 're on the bike to
| burn calories and improve your fitness, not to get
| somewhere in normal clothes without becoming sweaty._
|
| This is _quite_ the hasty generalization.
| u801e wrote:
| > It feels too dangerous to be a couple feet from all our
| big SUVs and pickup trucks at 100 kph/55 mph unless you're
| also going an appreciable fraction of that speed.
|
| Most bike lanes are on city streets where motor vehicles
| are going anywhere from 0 to 35 mph (0 to 55 km/h). Most
| people on bikes are going 0 to 20 mph (0 to 30 km/h) which
| really isn't much slower, so bike lanes or separated paths
| really don't make sense.
|
| Where traffic is moving faster, you rarely find bike lanes
| or separated paths.
| shafyy wrote:
| Your city is doing bike lanes wrong :-)
| scrose wrote:
| I think you mean 'Your country'. The US is notoriously
| bad at prioritizing people over 'Level of Service' for
| cars.
| shafyy wrote:
| I lived in SF for a while. While there's a lot of
| potential, it wasn't as bad as I would have thought.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I've lived in Amsterdam, Berlin and SF. SF is easily the
| worst, especially if you want to go biking with your
| family, even if that family includes an older teenager.
| Managing 3 people traversing a city shouldn't be as
| heinous as it is in SF.
|
| I've had fun in SF on a bike, bombing around solo -- but
| it never felt safe.
| shafyy wrote:
| I live in Berlin and lived in Zurich and SF. I think SF
| is good for US standards. In Zurich you have fewer bike
| lanes than in SF, but the drivers are more aware of
| cyclists so I felt safer.
|
| Berlin is investing a lot into biking infrastructure and
| I feel like there are great bike lanes for almost
| everyone you want to go (at least in the neighborhoods I
| go around).
|
| Of course, Amsterdam is another ball game :-)
| Vinnl wrote:
| Yeah, in more and more places I think they're sending
| everything above 25 km/h to the road. At the same time, we
| see "bicycle streets" emerging more and more, which are just
| as wide as regular streets (and which _can_ be used by cars),
| but where the bicycle is the primary vehicle. I think they
| mostly rose in popularity in response to congestion on
| regular bike paths, but I feel like they also help with the
| width and speed issues - although above 25km /h is still
| quite fast. As I get more used to them though, the ones with
| a limit of 25 feel less problematic to me.
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| I quite like the bicycle streets, for example in places
| where there isn't room for a proper segregated bike path,
| it still makes it clear that drivers are guests in the
| street (and explicitly calls this out on signs), which
| definitely makes me feel safer when cycling on such
| streets, versus regular roads.
| petre wrote:
| That doesn't quite for without speed bumps, not in
| Eastern Europe anyway. Interrupted speed bumps every 100
| meters can be a solution for bikes, yet keep cars under
| 25 kph. Residential areas should effectively be bicycle
| streets.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I did not expect it to work either, but it does. I'm sure
| they've got a runbook documenting which traffic
| situations lend themselves to cycle streets (probably
| some combination of heavy flow of cycle traffic combined
| with nudges to car drivers to take a different road if
| possible), but the ones in my city all work great without
| speed bumps.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Electric vehicles of all sorts and sizes are entering the
| once relaxed and predictable bike lanes
|
| > I'm guessing many of these things are going to forced onto
| the car-roads by law, like we did 20 years ago with scooters
|
| Maybe we should repurpose some older 'provinciale' roads
| (which often run parallel to some of the major highways) for
| these new types of compact electric hybrid vehicle-bikes
| (transportation without an 'inside' or car-like cabin, that
| leaves the driver exposed), since expecting them to go on
| car-roads is inconsiderate.
|
| That way these new greener alternatives can take off, and
| their drivers are safe. We should never expect people with
| e-trailers (and similar) to compete for space with 35 ton
| lorries/semi trucks. I think this an infrastructural
| transition/move worth carefully tending to and designing for.
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah I like that idea!
| radu_floricica wrote:
| How's the regulation there? I'm often riding Limes which are
| capped at 25kph (about 15 mph, I think), and I keep comparing
| my speed with delivery people (Glovo, Uber and so on). Turns
| out the 25kph is a very well chosen point - it's about as
| fast as a bike rider on a delivery - maybe 1-2kph faster than
| the average, and a bit less than one who's really in a hurry.
|
| If your legislation allows for faster electric vehicles to
| share bike lanes, that's a big mistake IMO. Impact energy is
| proportional with the square of the speed, so crashing at 35
| is already double the damage. 50kph is four times as bad, not
| to mention reaction times.
| sneak wrote:
| I think people who are concerned about safety and people
| who ride electric scooters are mutually exclusive groups.
| Those things are death traps.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Why? I've ridden hundreds of kilometers on both the
| Xiaomi Scooter Pro 2 (the tall, small-wheels kind that
| companies like Lime use) and a custom built electric
| kickbike and I don't consider them any more dangerous
| than a normal bicycle. They reach similar speeds and have
| similar acceleration and braking distances.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Have you had to slam on the brakes in an emergency on
| them? That's what makes them dangerous, because at that
| speed, slamming the brakes can get you killed.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| If you just slam the brakes without using your body to
| counteract the inevitable push up and forward, you're
| going flying. E-scooters, just like e-bikes, normal
| scooters, bicycles and motorbikes require the rider to
| ride with their whole body and weight.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Yes, why would that be an issue? Maybe if you're standing
| on it weird. I have a scooter that I use to ride to work
| every day (ePF-1); I usually stand sideways with one foot
| in front, and as far as I can tell, braking is pretty
| stable in that pose.
|
| I could see braking being an issue if you're standing
| with both feet in parallel because it throws you onto and
| over the steering bar. But that's why you shouldn't stand
| that way. If you're sideways and you lose balance, you
| just jam your hip/thigh into the steering bar to stay
| stable, same as you do when driving one-handed.
|
| edit: I just google image searched "how to ride a
| scooter" and holy shit, are people _suicidal?!_
| Practically everyone in those pictures would go flying
| over the handlebars in an emergency brake. If that 's the
| norm, I can see why people think escooters are dangerous.
| sneak wrote:
| Doesn't matter how you stand, that forward energy has to
| go somewhere when you stop. Certain stances might
| transmit more of it to the tires but if you need to stop
| fast enough you're going to need lots of core strength to
| make sure enough does to not die or be seriously injured.
|
| That's not a safe machine, in my view, if it requires an
| intense muscle reaction to save the rider.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Right, but it gives you the most stable shot at braking
| because the point of rotation of the scooter is the front
| wheel, and if you can brake with your front leg up
| against the nook of the steering column, you can support
| your deceleration pretty much in a straight line against
| that point, which is approximately as good as it gets.
|
| And even if you can't take that, you can still hipbrace
| the steering bar, which gives you _almost_ as good a line
| - and even if you go flying, you 'll probably be rotating
| around your _feet_ which means you 'll frontal facecheck
| the ground.
|
| Which is bad, but: if you're standing _upright,_ then it
| 's your terribly angled arms against the handlebars that
| have to take approximately half the deceleration force,
| which means you rapidly cross the point where your mass
| is _above_ that line through the point of rotation, and
| then the steering bar basically flips your head against
| the ground with bonus rotational velocity. At which point
| you _will_ take spinal damage, helmet or not.
|
| Effectively, the easiest way to check is if someone's
| front foot is _either_ set well forward, or at an
| _inward_ angle. Either is fine. If it 's set forward, you
| can brake with a line through your foot (best case, but
| an exhausting pose); if it's at an inward angle, you
| automatically end up braking with your thigh against the
| steering column (second best case). If it's straight and
| upright, then you're in danger.
|
| Effectively, I'm not disagreeing, I'm saying I think
| scooters are primarily dangerous because _on top_ of what
| you 're saying, people _also_ ride them in a horrifyingly
| unsafe way.
| asdff wrote:
| Scooters don't go that fast though, you only need to
| bleed a few mph of speed before you can just run off it
| and bail like a skateboard. I don't find the stopping
| distances any different than a bike. In both cases, the
| brakes overpower the rubber and you end up breaking
| traction if you really brake too hard so its best not to
| do that and do something more evasive. Much safer to bail
| off a scooter than a bike at least.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Seasoned cyclist here...False.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I'm also a pretty seasoned cyclist (as in "a nice XC
| bike, wild downhill riding, steep technical sections,
| hitting speeds over 60 km/h" etc) and compared to
| anything you can do on a low-cost mountain bike, the
| e-scooters are very tame.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Not the person your replying too, also don't live in the
| Netherlands just fascinated with those bike infrastructure,
| but my understanding is that this is a historical quirk
| that came into existence when smaller mopeds where less
| common.
|
| In Amsterdam it used to be possible to ride mopeds under a
| certain power on bike paths, and these bikes could be
| identified by their number plates. Additionally micro cars,
| that in theory are meant to be accessibility devices for
| those with physical impairments are still allowed.
|
| But this is all slowly going away due to the exact issues
| you mention. The rise of cheap electric vehicles has meant
| that occasional fast vehicles sharing generous bike
| infrastructure has gone from acceptable to frustrating and
| soon to be dangerous.
|
| I think these rules are handled at the city/municipality
| level. So the rules are different city-to-city in the
| Netherlands, with some cities changing the rules quicker
| than others. But the writing is on the wall, cycle lanes in
| cities will soon be bikes, e-bikes, and more strictly
| regulated micro cars only in the near future.
| teekert wrote:
| It's difficult to find examples because obviously Google
| Streetview cars don't enter pure bike paths, but here is
| one of these paths where you won't make friends with a
| somewhat broader and faster electric personal transport
| device [0]. A better example and one where I did ride
| around on an e-chopper, annoying people on bikes ;) [1]
| (not me in the image). These small path are pretty common
| in nature reserves here [2].
|
| [0]: https://goo.gl/maps/yZXH4ggVQ6vXRcNy9
|
| [1]: https://weekendtoerist.nl/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/mooiste...
|
| [2]: https://www.myfootprints.nl/nederland/fietsen-en-
| wandelen-in...
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Yeah, in practice you do have single lane sized paths
| used in both directions, and having as meter wide "truck"
| coming from the opposite direction won't be pleasant.
| Well, this is the kind of problem I like having - it
| means the new e-vehicle ecology is working.
|
| I think there are plenty of solutions for this, enough so
| we don't have to worry this early. Easiest is simply
| having a "no cargo" sign at the entrance of smaller
| bidirectional paths. But in practice, I think we'll see a
| mix of municipalities increasing lane size and producers
| coming up with smaller cargo vehicles.
| datavirtue wrote:
| People pull kids and pets in cargo trailers a lot.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| His problem is with meter-wide ones, which yeah, are a
| bit of a stretch. But like I said I think it'll fix by
| itself - they're not the kind of vehicles you take on a
| forest pleasure ride anyways. They're probably more
| useful for business use.
| teekert wrote:
| It's also the combination with the higher speed. But
| indeed, in cities people often have broad e-cargo bikes
| [0]
|
| [0]: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=bakfiets&iax=images
| &ia=imag...
| Someone wrote:
| > because obviously Google Streetview cars don't enter
| pure bike paths
|
| Their cars don't, but their bicycles sometimes do (https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View#Data_captur...
| shows a trike. At the bottom of the page, there even is a
| photo of a pedestrian wearing a camera backpack)
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| Broadly there's a few categories of bicycle paths/roads in
| NL:
|
| - bicycle path ( _fietspad_ )
|
| - bicycle + moped path ( _bromfietspad_ ) (same as a
| bicycle path but a bit wider)
|
| - the road
|
| In terms of the vehicles, there's also a few categories:
|
| - bicycles (i.e. unpowered)
|
| - e-bike with pedal assistance that stops at 25km/h
|
| - moped (max speed 25km/h, " _snorfiets_ ")
|
| - high-speed e-bike (" _speed-pedelec_ "), max speed 45km/h
|
| - moped (max speed 45km/h, " _bromfiets_ ")
|
| The first 3 types of vehicles can usually ride on both a
| bicycle path or a bicycle + moped path [1]. There is no
| explicit speed limit other than the 25km/h limit on the
| e-bike/moped itself. (I guess that on a non-electric bike
| you can ride faster than 25km/h, as fast as you can go)
|
| The second 2 types of vehicles can ride on a bicycle +
| moped path, but must otherwise ride on the road. For the
| second 2 types of vehicles, you need a numberplate and a
| helmet, and a mirror. On a bike + moped path inside the
| city, you can ride 30km/h, outside the city 40km/h, and on
| the road, 45km/h (less if the road has an explicit speed
| limit).
|
| A table illustrating this: https://www.catchlegal.nl/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/06/Afbeeld... ( _snelheid_ == speed,
| _toegestaan_ == allowed).
|
| [1] notable exception being inside the city of Amsterdam,
| where mopeds must ride on the road with a helmet (which is
| not normally required elsewhere), but e-bikes can remain on
| the bike path.
| Animats wrote:
| Here's the chart for California.[1] That's very similar.
|
| [1] https://currentebikes.com/ebike-classes-california/
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I think 25 km/h is not all that fast in the US for a bike
| path. It is extremely easy to maintain that speed on even a
| cheap mountain bike much less a road bike. 25mph is very fast
| for a bicycle which some ebikes can reach and even exceed.
| People should definitely only be riding at that speed on
| roads.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Energy goes with speed squared, so you have only 75kg at double
| the speed. A fully loaded moped with passenger (we're comparing
| apples to apples, right?) would be at around 250kg (75+75+100).
|
| Also at 25kph both the vehicle and the passengers have more
| time to react.
|
| So yeah, fully loaded the driver/rider would have to pay more
| attention, but that's true for anything that's fully loaded.
| Given the shape of the problem, this solution is pretty damn
| good: green, quiet, small, good looking and reasonably safe.
| Possibly very safe, if its auto braking works well enough.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah he said momentum, not energy.
| carlob wrote:
| Energy goes with speed squared, that's why I said momentum,
| which doesn't. Also a 50 cc moped with a single passenger
| would be closer to 150 kg.
|
| Pedantics aside, probably the most annoying thing about
| having this on a bike lane would be the 1 m width, especially
| considering that some two way bike lanes are just 2 m wide.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| I doubt we'll be seeing them behind every bike. And if by
| any chance we will, most of them will be a lot smaller.
|
| I'm big on having this kind of small e-vehicles on the
| roads, because I think they're the best chance we have on
| having truly nice, open, clean cities. Using a half-ton
| monstrosity to go buy a loaf of bread is a horrible waste
| of, not just resources, but commons. As you said, the worst
| thing is their size, and that is by necessity limited in
| urban areas.
|
| So if we're going to have this kind of things replace cars,
| we'll have to be open to a larger ecology of e-vehicles,
| for various use cases. Including larger ones for cargo, and
| also the sick grandma that can't ride a bike.
|
| Probably the biggest difference of opinion between us is
| that I see them as replacement for traffic, and so I want
| them scaled up and separate them from pedestrians as much
| as practically possible.
| petre wrote:
| Mountain bikes are close to 1 m now with all the 80+ cm
| handlebars. 1 m is rather insufficient for a bike lane, it
| would be like <2.5 m lanes for cars.
| Animats wrote:
| Someone who is into both e-bikes and motorcycles has a good
| answer to this. He put an e-bike hub motor with a motorcycle-
| sized wheel on a motorcycle frame. The result has about the
| performance of a class 3 e-bike, but it's a better vehicle.[1]
| You sit lower, so the CG is lower, and if something goes wrong
| you tend to slide, not go over the handlebars. You have
| motorcycle-grade tires, brakes, and suspension, so the stopping
| distances are much shorter than with an e-bike.
|
| But you can't take the thing in a bike lane. And it requires a
| motorcycle license.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM8Xli2KTzI
| baxuz wrote:
| I'm so glad that e-bikes are assist limited to 25km/h in
| Croatia.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > For what it's worth when I'm in the mood for racing and I
| have my good road bike I tend to avoid bike paths as a courtesy
| to other cyclists (and to avoid getting stuck behind someone
| slow).
|
| Thank you. As a casual cyclist who enjoys a weekend ride along
| the bike paths in NYC I cant help but hold contempt for some of
| the entitled road hog racing cyclists.
| [deleted]
| avianlyric wrote:
| The momentum point is very valid. But the slower speeds provide
| more time for drivers and others to react. That in turn gives
| you much more time to break and scrub off that extra momentum.
|
| At 50kph your reaction distance is about 15 meters, at 25kph
| it's half that at 7.5meters. (Assuming reaction time of 1
| second, which seems to be a realist value).
|
| 7.5 meters is quite a bit of distance, and in a busy city will
| make a lot of difference.
| nanis wrote:
| > But the slower speeds provide more time for drivers
|
| I can't react to something coming straight at me on my six.
| And, the drivers of these motorcycles tend to be busy on
| their phones.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Those are separate issues to do with driver responsibility
| and enforcement of existing laws. Applies to existing bikes
| just as much as e-bikes etc
|
| Also how are these people using their phones? Last I
| checked you need to keep your hands on bars to prevent you
| from falling over.
| CDRdude wrote:
| You only need both hands on the handlebars when starting
| from a stop. It is very easy to ride with one hand even
| at slow speeds, and bikes can be ridden with no hands at
| moderate speeds.
| frozenrouter wrote:
| I regularly have to ride my (pedal, non-e) bike one
| handed due to injuries to one arm and hand. At low to
| medium speed this is very easy, only becoming an issue
| with uneven terrain or high speeds. Brakes for one handed
| operation are also available.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| For the last couple of days I've been contemplating the idea of
| converting a grand piano into a road-legal tricycle, with
| either no motor (which would mean it'd need some _extremely_
| low gearing) or no more than 250W (the limit in Australia).
| It's more an amusing idea than anything else, but who knows, if
| the velomobile and trailer I'm planning (with my 11.5kg Yamaha
| P-45 digital piano built into the trailer as well as a small
| fridge and other such stuff for indefinite touring as I cycle
| round the country) goes well, maybe eventually I _will_ convert
| a grand piano just for fun. It occurred to me today while
| cycling and mulling over the legal requirements of bicycles in
| Victoria that if the piano was playable while in motion, it
| might not even need a bell... (Road Safety Road Rules 2017,
| 258(b): "a bell, horn, or similar warning device, in working
| order.")
|
| I've also been amusing myself imagining ways this grand piano
| tricycle could be prepared for certification as a self-
| contained vehicle in New Zealand (typically the domain of RVs
| and some vans). If you didn't care about complying, the basics
| of camping would actually be fairly simple--sling a hammock
| underneath it!
| crtasm wrote:
| A grand would be amazing, find someone to accompany you on
| double bass like Rimski & Handkerchief!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXwSW34Bmk
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I think I'd like it able to be used as a single- or two-
| seater in some way or other, so you can get single-
| instrument duets--not quite the same, but something.
| Possibly some kind of modular seat/drivetrain linkage so
| that you can have zero, one or two. I haven't _planned_
| this, it was just a stray thought yesterday that caught my
| sense of humour so that I've been dwelling on it further.
| bserge wrote:
| https://youtu.be/tesr1OyymXo heh
| omnicognate wrote:
| I had a memorable dream once where I was going down the
| motorway at the keyboard of a grand piano. Please make this a
| reality.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Look, honestly, if someone delivered a grand piano to me
| with this request but no expectations, I'd probably try
| converting it before going ahead with my velomobile.
| Although it'd require some heavier-duty design (e.g. it'd
| need something sturdier than my recumbent trike's two 90mm
| drum brakes, and typical bike suspension parts would
| probably not be adequate but I think it'd need suspension,
| unlike my recumbent trike), it'd be easier in most ways
| because you're already acknowledging you don't care much
| about weight or aerodynamics, and it's _expected_ to be
| fairly ridiculous.
|
| (... if that's you, email me.)
| josefresco wrote:
| > when I'm in the mood for racing and I have my good road bike
| I tend to avoid bike paths as a courtesy to other cyclists
|
| Please share this advice with your fellow bike racing
| enthusiasts. I reside on Cape Cod, which has a rather famous
| and busy bike trail. My kids and I have been almost run over,
| and scolded by spandex wearing weekend _Tour de France_
| warriors several times. If you want to race, stay off bike
| trails.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Cincinnati here. Might want to hit them up too. There are
| droves of "dentists" riding $10k road bikes in $2k worth of
| gear pretending to be on the Roubaix and acting the total
| asshole on a multi-use trail. As an avid cyclist I make it a
| point not to ride the same bikes or get all kitted out
| because I don't want to be associated with that crowd. I also
| observe the rules of the path...enough to make one stand out.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I love ebikes, but I agree further regulation is needed to
| limit the amount of power these bikes can have rather than just
| limiting speed like laws do right now. I have asthma and
| climbing big hills next to a bunch of cars (which happens a lot
| where I live due to lots of hills) is very difficult for me to
| do. It's because of this that I would use an ebike even if it
| were only able to carry me up said hills at 10mph (slow but
| still fast enough to be stable) while avoiding giving me an
| asthma attack.
| gnarcoregrizz wrote:
| We don't limit the amount of horsepower or top speed of cars
| and motorcycles.
|
| Limiting power and top speed is futile. You can actually
| enforce speed limits with radar, but checking power output
| requires testing it on a dyno, which can easily be cheated
| with a switch or remote.
|
| Half of ebikes for sale are technically street illegal
| anyway. Federal law limits them to 750w 28mph until pedal
| assisted... while some stick to this, they can do 2kw burst
| and cruise at 750w sustained. Some just flat out ignore it
| and pull 5-7kw off the shelf. Some conversions pull 15kw and
| do 80 mph.
|
| Here's a regular looking SCOOTER that does 75mph
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-IqhezeZw
| bserge wrote:
| Haha, seeing huge tricycles and cargo ebikes all the time I've
| been wondering the same.
|
| Legally they must be propelled by pedaling... However these
| ebikes really stretch that definition, the pedals do not
| directly drive anything, they just work as a throttle.
|
| So, if the battery is discharged, the pedals are useless.
|
| I've actually been thinking of a similar system, except the
| pedals drive a generator that charges the battery.
|
| This way the bike is motor propelled, you can have a longer
| battery life by charging it as you ride and it's technically
| _more of a_ cycle since you could cycle to provide power to the
| motor.
|
| My main thought is that it would reduce/even the load on your
| knees since you wouldn't need to start/accelerate as often.
| emj wrote:
| In Europe you can classify things as a bicycle even though
| they have no pedals, there are some special rules for it one
| of them is below 20 kph "anything goes".
| btbuildem wrote:
| Thank you for considering this in terms of physics. I believe
| vehicle rules should vary depending on the potential for damage
| a vehicle can do. A cyclist running a stop sign would have
| negligible consequences compared to a fully loaded dump truck
| doing the same.
|
| A heavy cargo trailer towed by a cyclist (who thinks and acts
| like a cyclist, not a driver) definitely does not belong on a
| bike path.
| u801e wrote:
| > 300 kg of cargo at 25 km/h is very close to the momentum of a
| moped riding at 50 km/h, which is something I definitely don't
| want to share a bike path with.
|
| Why does the mass or momentum of a particular vehicle driver
| combination matter in terms of sharing a particular resource?
| Drivers of motor vehicles like cars share the road with other
| motor vehicles that are significantly more massive, yet no one
| says that they shouldn't have to share the road with those
| heavier vehicles because of their mass and/or momentum.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| I think it depends on the bicycle paths in your country. In
| Poland, most bicycle paths are fairly thin, barely allowing two
| people to pass each other. There isn't any extra space for
| anything remotely resembling a trailer.
| ohazi wrote:
| Are these trailers big/bulky/scary enough to convince someone
| driving a car or truck to finally pass a bike safely (i.e. by
| changing lanes completely rather than whizzing by?).
|
| If so, it might be a useful addition for cyclists who want to
| drive in a car lane without getting run over.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Came here to bring this up. I'm consistently seeing adults and
| many under driving age flying down bike paths at 20mph through
| congested pedestrian and bycicle areas.
|
| My wife was almost hit by a cyclist that was thrown off course
| and had to perform an emergency stop because of two clueless
| fucks on hover boards.
|
| I really have zero problem with ebikes making cycling and
| mobility possible for people but they are a flip of the wrist
| away from fucking up someone's life on an otherwise peaceful
| and very safe bike path.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| To expand the scope here a little, personal electric transport
| will take over city centres over the next five to fifteen years
| and managing that transition will be tricky and divisive.
|
| The fundamental driving force of this change is that electric
| vehicles scale much better than fossil fuel power vehicles. A
| 500watt ebike is perfectly quiet, clean and reliable whereas a
| gas engine of similar power and weight is messy, polluting and
| loud.
|
| Start with bike paths. In North America, the standard is becoming
| 20mph/32kph. I ride an ebike often and I find this is more than
| fast enough and probably equal to about an automobile's 40mph
| with traffic lights.
|
| Vehicles allowed on these paths should have a limited width and
| the allowed speed should depend upon its weight. It's not
| necessary to restrict motor power since speed is regulated by
| weight. So yes, if you're on a pedal bike you still have to
| follow the speed limits even if it's down hill. Some
| jurisdictions already follow this scheme with police and speed
| guns (Calgary is one as I recall).
|
| The next step is to transition fossil fuel traffic to electric
| traffic in the city core. The most effective approach here is to
| initially allocate an entire lane on say, every fourth road, to
| electric (but not pedal only), vehicles of all sorts. The reason
| for excluding pedal only, ie normal bikes, is that their
| acceleration is too slow when starting from a dead stop at
| intersections. Whereas electric bikes have excellent
| acceleration, even better than cars from a dead stop.
|
| Allocating a full lane to electric traffic (even Teslas) will be
| a big incentive for commuters to switch to electric transport.
| Another benefit is that it's much cheaper to do it this way than
| to create bespoke bike lanes. Just the low concrete dividers on
| top of the lane lines is enough and they can be laid down or
| removed very easily and cheaply for flexibility. As more
| commuters adopt electric transport more lanes can be allocated to
| them. Before you know it the city core will be all electric
| excepting delivery trucks.
| asdff wrote:
| I think a big issue with these is that for one people are
| buying them with cash, for two the used market is questionable
| owing to battery/abuse/etc and overall not much cheaper than
| new, and three they aren't insuring them. in an urban area,
| this means if someone steals your ebike, you are out like over
| $1k sometimes with no recourse at all. We have systems to deal
| with this for car theft (insurance, cops that care more about
| car theft than bike theft), but nothing for small transit like
| a bicycle. Most people will probably give up after a single
| theft if they have a car still in their garage. $1000 is a lot
| of money for the vast majority of people.
|
| To make these sustainable they either have to be _cheap_ cheap,
| like less than $100 cheap because for some people that 's over
| a days wages, so that when they are stolen they can be replaced
| rather than alternatives sought, or we have to invest heavily
| in securing these bikes and going after theft. I'm not sure if
| the latter can actually be done considering I've had my own
| bike stolen in my city from my underground, gated, surveilled
| apartment parking garage, and I'm not sure what's left to
| prevent that from happening to anyone again short of a guard
| standing watch 24/7, and you can't practically have that on
| every corner of the city.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The problem with bikes is the collision safety issues as well
| as protection from weather. It's not so much that pedalling is
| hard, but that it's not safe, and requires a high trust
| society. While there are small island of high trust urban
| socities still around, they are not the norm. Yes, I know of
| all the bike riders in Holland. I also know that the rest of
| the world is very different from Holland.
|
| This is why ever larger SUVs are popular. That's not to say
| that they can't be electric, but the future is more with the
| frigthteningly large cybertruk clad with bulletproof glass that
| provides someone comfort driving through a dystopia of riots,
| assaults, and protection from other cybetruck drivers running
| into them, rather than a version of happy milk-maids bicycling
| through meadows of flowers.
|
| This vision of bike riders, while certainly very pretty, is
| lost in the Julie Andrews past, and will remain a dream as long
| as we continue to live distrustful, isolated lives.
| Unfortunately nothing I've seen has made me believe the west is
| even capable of turning that around, and whether it turns
| around or not has nothing to do with urban planning or
| technological advances.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| What I'm talking about here applies to the urban downtown
| where traffic is usually congested and slow. The situation
| you're describing is more like stroads and highways where
| bigger is better. Driving a cybertruck in congested downtown
| traffic is not something that most drivers would look forward
| to. A zippy ebike would get them where they're going faster
| and more conveniently.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not easy for people to pick up that confidence to be
| honest. I know people who would be freightened to share the
| road with such heavy traffic. Even when I lane split I hold
| my breath, because in gridlocked traffic drivers typically
| muscle over between lanes without looking and rarely
| signalling, prime opportunity for you to hit an unexpected
| broadside. Not to mention the risk of being doored going
| past streetparked cars, people have like died from that.
|
| When I bike in town now I have to navigate around these
| heavy trafficked sections, favoring roundabout residential
| roads that usually take me longer than the direct path on
| stroads (bad in traffic for above, bad when they are clear
| since people go 60mph if no one is ahead of them).
|
| It's just not pleasant riding out on these congested
| streets or open stroads after you've had a number of close
| calls. I used to do it a lot but I've lost my appetite for
| that unfortunately, and my city is not building bike lanes
| at any decent pace in my neighborhood which is depressing.
| I support transit and bikes but at this point I'm taking a
| car out for everything because its three times as fast as
| the bus, and I'm not worrying about getting my head smashed
| by someone texting in a G wagon like on my bike.
| MivLives wrote:
| My biggest concern when I'm on an ebike is parking it. Bike
| racks and locks aren't really designed for the thicker tubes.
| My bike is suddenly worth 5 or 8 times as much as it was
| without the motor. When I used to ride a One Wheel around, at
| least I could take it with me. With a car I could at least be
| sure it likely wouldn't be stolen.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Much of this could be remedied by ebike makers including a
| front wheel lock that keeps the wheel at an angle. Almost
| all mopeds have this and it's cheap and effective. Because
| the lock is integrated with the steering breaking it
| involves breaking the bike. Because the wheel is "turned" a
| thief has to either carry it or but it in a vehicle both of
| which attract attention.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Side note: the design of that site is horrible. The colours,
| contrast, search bar which is inline with the main body all make
| it really hard to read for me
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Follow-the-leader is much easier AI technology than full self-
| driving. Almost certainly we'll soon see this in cross-country
| tractor-trailer highway freight "trains" where only the lead
| vehicle needs a human driver.
| brnt wrote:
| Here in NL, we've had cargo bikes like these in use for a while
| (century?) now:
|
| https://www.nijland.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Bakfiets-...
|
| They exist in electrified form, and also smaller ones which are
| much more commonly privately owned (Dutch soccer moms drive these
| instead of SUVs): https://dutchcargobike.com.au/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/02/bak...
|
| Trailerduck does seem more ergonomic (lower floor) and suitable
| for a larger volume of cargo, but not sure you've then already
| crossed into cargovan territory.
| emj wrote:
| There are alot of "new" cargo bike producers out there. This
| specific trailer seems like a mix of Veloves four wheel bicycle
| (+300kg capacity) and Carla Cargo (150 kg capacity). It is made
| for large cargo capacity and is a big difference from the
| ordinary Bakfiets cargobikes. Full suspension, a well thought
| out cargo hold and good motor is a must.
|
| https://www.velove.se/electric-cargo-bike
| https://www.velove.se/news/armadillo-40-german-newspapers-du...
| https://www.carlacargo.de/products/ecarla-ready/
| frankus wrote:
| There's a related product (can't find the link) that has a
| physical connection to the bike that includes a load cell that
| drives a motor in the trailer to keep the net force (when
| accelerating or braking) at zero.
|
| In fact if you know the gross mass of the trailer you can get
| pretty close with just an accelerometer, but I don't know of a
| commercial product that does this.
| furyg3 wrote:
| I think this is solving a problem too literally: "I have a bike,
| but sometimes want to carry more stuff."
|
| Though the problem is actually: "I have some stuff, and I want it
| to get somewhere"
|
| It's cute that a little car can follow my bike home from the
| hardware store with my stuff, but I don't actually care about the
| following. Just let me summon a trailer, put my stuff in it, and
| tell it to meet me at home in 20 mins. That way I don't have to
| pick it up somewhere, or drive it back when I'm done.
|
| Of course the issue is that self-driving isn't a thing yet, in
| which case I may as well drive the thing. Just give me some kind
| of cargo pickup scooter like a Stint
| (https://stintum.com/pickup/).
| ohazi wrote:
| It seems like this is essentially the same technology, but they
| use the "needs to follow a bike" property to deal with the fact
| that your proposed AI trailer likely wouldn't be street legal,
| and also as an easy way to deter vandalism or theft.
| yarcob wrote:
| > that your proposed AI trailer likely wouldn't be street
| legal
|
| I see this statement all the time (that legal issues are
| holding AI back) but I'm pretty sure the legal issues could
| be fixed pretty quickly if there actually were self driving
| things.
|
| In this case, if you look at the videos it doesn't look like
| this trailer is doing anything smart at all, it just
| accelerates/breaks when you pull/push on the draw bar.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > In this case, if you look at the videos it doesn't look
| like this trailer is doing anything smart at all, it just
| accelerates/breaks when you pull/push on the draw bar.
|
| Seems like a smart solution to the problem "I want to
| transport stuff, but bike trailers are too heavy"
| jjoonathan wrote:
| A car fully solves all of these problems simultaneously.
| b3morales wrote:
| ...while creating several others.
| furyg3 wrote:
| A whole lot of city dwellers, especially outside the US,
| don't have a license.
|
| On top of this they may be wishing to get stuff to/from
| places that aren't very accessible by car, and additionally
| rental car prices are heavily determined by the price of
| the vehicle, the operating costs, and maintenance. The
| numbers on something like this are much lower than on a
| van.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Way to miss the point. I've been without a car for about 18
| months now. Yes, I miss having a car, but I don't miss
| payments, insurance, or maintenance. I've dealt with small
| grocery runs with my pedal bike, but it has limitations.
| Delivery fees have just become part of my budget, but those
| fees still do not add up to a car payment or insurance
| fees. As much as I miss my last car, I'm not ready to jump
| into that level of commitment again any time soon.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Way to miss the point. Any niche between cars and bikes
| has to compete with both cars and bikes -- and you can
| aggregate things into cars to get utilization up, as you
| have discovered by paying for delivery.
|
| Bike infrastructure is underdeveloped. Car infrastructure
| is not, and cars are good at cargo. Shifting cargo-
| hauling duty onto bike infrastructure is a great way to
| put bike infrastructure overcapacity, but not a great way
| to haul cargo. We should reserve bike infrastructure for
| people, because getting people out of cars and onto bikes
| is where the magic happens. Turning bikes into small cars
| -- which is where this idea is clearly headed -- is
| gross.
| lolc wrote:
| Am I too cynical in not giving this piece of overengineering the
| slightest chance to survive actual use? Just get a cargo bike. Or
| a car. I don't see what niche this is supposed to fill.
|
| > Because the specially-designed drawbar with which it attaches
| to the bike is packed with sensors, it takes its cues from the
| towing vehicle and performs all maneuvers (braking, acceleration
| and maintaining speed, and turning) on its own.
|
| At least they were smart enough to not try and wing it with
| cameras only. Even if the graphics in the article suggest it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Just get a cargo bike. Or a car. I don't see what niche this
| is supposed to fill.
|
| Right from the article: Cargo bikes can't pull the weight, cars
| are going to be all but banned or be impeded by tolls from
| inner cities whereas this is supposed to be licensed as a bike
| trailer.
|
| The prime target market will be tradespeople and couriers.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Cargo bicycles (well, tricycles) capable of carrying a 300kg
| load are available.
| CivBase wrote:
| Is it really a "trailer" if it moves under its own force? It's
| basically just a tiny EV that follows your bike around. It's neat
| and all, but why not just drive that instead?
| vel0city wrote:
| It seems like its for people who need a car, but don't want to
| admit they need a car.
| jsight wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. How about one that you can sit
| in, and maybe attach your bike to the front or rear?
|
| I guess that's the next step and we can call it bikeless
| trailer or something.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >but why not just drive that instead?
|
| cost of compliance
| masklinn wrote:
| Powered trailers exist so why not.
|
| That there is no physical coupling feels dubious though.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Is it really 'smart' when its just running a program?
|
| Not to be offensive, I have yet to see a truly 'smart' device of
| any kind.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Smart is an ill-defined marketing term just like AI.
|
| But in the end everything is just hardware, and some of it runs
| some software. If "just running a program" is your yardstick
| I'm not sure what could satisfy your definition of "smart"?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| When the world gets past 'just running a program' we'll know.
| Until then the creator might feel clever but the device is
| not smart.
|
| I suppose a space like HN is a place to be honest about what
| our technology can and cannot do. I think of this as a place
| where its okay to question ill-defined marketing terms and
| even do away with them when they don't apply.
| ctrlp wrote:
| I've been hoping someone would come out with something like this
| for a beach cart. Dragging a heavy cart over soft sand has to be
| one of the biggest problems of our time.
| gangstead wrote:
| You think it's bad dragging a tent, chairs, and a soft sided
| cooler over the dunes now? Once you get the powered buggy the
| family is going to expect you to bring BBQs, couches, and
| enormous bomb proof yetis and you'll miss the simpler days when
| you could just say "that's too much stuff!".\
| dun-hn wrote:
| Interesting idea, but not sure how would be possible to ride a
| bike on a soft sand :/
| Johnny555 wrote:
| https://gearjunkie.com/biking/beach-sand-fat-bike
|
| _The bike has a 10-inch-wide ATV tire on front to give
| float. The company touts you can "easily glide over soft
| beach sand as well as deep snow, mud, high grass, gravel, and
| anywhere else that regular bikes can't go."_
|
| _It has a 4.6-inch rear tire and a 500-watt motor for pedal-
| assist. A special fork lets you swap the massive rubber up
| front for a normal fat tire when less float is required._
| TheSmiddy wrote:
| The cart will more likely follow a person walking than
| someone riding a bike.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Right, maybe you have a wristband or something and it just
| follows you at a short distance.
| xeromal wrote:
| There's a piece of luggage that does this. Maybe they can
| use the tech for one of these beach buggies.
| bebna wrote:
| fat tires, like an udx for example
| ctrlp wrote:
| Lol, yeah.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Interesting concept, but... it's developed here in Germany? The
| country that took _years_ to legalize electric bikes and
| e-scooters?
|
| As a German, hats off to them and good luck, they will need it.
| arpinum wrote:
| Regulations require electric bikes to be 'pedal-assist' and is
| holding back sustainable transport. Let lightweight vehicles
| travel 25kmph without pedalling and these regulatory hacks won't
| be needed. It will likely lead to safer vehicles too compared to
| these regulatory hack solutions.
| choeger wrote:
| I'd say 30kph. I never understood the 25kph rule.
|
| Make 30kph the default speed limit in cities and let e-bikes
| drive with that speed on most roads, what's problematic with
| this approach? Are 5kph more really that more dangerous that
| you need to create a speed difference between even slow cars
| and bikes?
| avianlyric wrote:
| 25kph is average cycling speed of a male cyclist, 20kph for
| female.
|
| The limits there because these devices are just meant to be
| cycling assistance, not replacements. You don't want to be
| mixing two distinct classes of transport together (this is
| whole reason why protected cycle ways are so important),
| because overtaking etc is inherently dangerous.
|
| There's nothing preventing people from just creating electric
| motorbikes etc and driving them on the road with other road
| traffic. But having vehicles like that mix in close proximity
| to pedestrians and un-assisted cyclists just moves the
| problem we already have with car-bike conflict on to cycle
| lanes and pedestrian spaces.
|
| Also that extra 5kph is gonna have a pretty negligible impact
| on transit times, so is it really worth all the extra
| problems?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| "25kph is average cycling speed of a male cyclist, 20kph
| for female."
|
| Wait, what? I bike commuted for a while in both Cleveland
| and Boston. I can pretty handily maintain 30kph, and
| regularly hit over that when either warranted by traffic
| conditions or on a slight downhill.
|
| I do not consider myself a fast cyclist by any measure.
|
| I am quite confident that even the most casual group ride
| of semi serious cyclists would drop me in 5 km on a good
| day.
|
| Is my view of cycling speeds that skewed, or is the
| distribution very weird in some way?
|
| As for the extra 5kph making a difference, no it's not a
| huge deal in time. It's immensely important to riding
| safely in faster traffic. I find that the closer you can
| ride to the speed of traffic, the fewer boneheaded things
| people do to get past you.
|
| Being able to do 40kph for short stretches to basically
| match the speed of cars through a dodgy intersection is a
| huge improvement in safety. 30 isn't 40, but every little
| bit helps.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Is my view of cycling speeds that skewed
|
| Yes
|
| > It's immensely important to riding safely in faster
| traffic
|
| This why it's skewed.
|
| I agree that riding close to the speed of traffic is
| important. But over here in Europe we have far better
| cycle infrastructure compared to North America. In many
| cities you _don 't_ ride with normal traffic, so you
| don't need to go that fast. Instead your just cycling
| with with other bikes.
|
| It sounds like you cycle in a fairly hostile area for
| bikes, so speed is needed just to be safe. Can totally
| understand why you would do 30kph+, and indeed I do the
| same in nastier parts of London.
|
| But a consequence of the hostile environment is that
| you'll only be cycling with people who have made an
| active choice to cycle and are more advanced cyclists who
| are happy to deal with shitty car drivers.
|
| As you move towards proper cycle infrastructure the
| average cyclist becomes increasingly casual and amateur.
| Riding not for sport, fitness or to be green. But rather
| riding because it's just easier that other public
| transport options or using a car. Cyclist in this
| category cycle slower, and more casually. They just wear
| normal clothes and cycle nice and slow so they don't get
| sweaty.
|
| If you wanna see more, I would recommend the YouTube
| channel "NotJustBikes". It can be quite eye opening to
| see a world where everyone cycles because it's just
| cheaper, easier and faster than every other option.
| thor_molecules wrote:
| I second the recommendation for "NotJustBikes", very eye-
| opening in regards to city planning and infrastructure
| teekert wrote:
| Make that 10-15 kph (6.2-9.3 mph) for 8-16 year old
| students with all their school books or people in suits
| on one of these: [0], which is the majority here in the
| Netherlands. I think you are confusing what Americans
| know as "cyclists" (a subculture), with just "people on
| bikes" (our culture), which is most people, at some point
| during the day. Bike lanes look like this during rush
| hour: [1]. Silent, broader, 25 kph electric vehicles are
| much more disturbing in this setting.
|
| [0]: https://www.wheelerz.nl/fietsen/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/2...
|
| [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=druk+fietspad+nederl
| and&hl=e...
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Yeah, when I used to bike commute (in the US), I averaged
| about 10mph (16kph), wearing my work clothes, and not
| wanting to sweat. US perspective on biking is skewed
| because in most places, most adult cyclists are sport
| cycling enthusiasts.
| b3morales wrote:
| I would say even most of us (I am one) who cycle to
| commute/get around and _not_ for sport tend to be less
| casual and ride faster.
| choeger wrote:
| Ok then how about a speed limit of 20km/h on bike lanes?
| stdbrouw wrote:
| The 25 kph is on the assumption that people will use these
| e-bikes on bike lanes. Pretty much everyone who bikes
| regularly hates race bikes and speed bikes and anything else
| going over 25 kph, or frankly, going over 20 kph, because
| it's dangerous and unpredictable for other riders.
| carlob wrote:
| As an owner of both a road bike and a shitty commuter, I
| agree with you: if you wanna race, use the road.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The 25 kph is on the assumption that people will use
| these e-bikes on bike lanes.
|
| In fact the 25kph is so they are legally bicycles across
| europe, no questions asked.
|
| Countries can allow faster or more powerful devices, but
| the european baseline is that a pedelec is a bicycle
| period.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Cities tend to have speed limits closer to 50 km/h. (Is "kph"
| an accepted spelling?)
| carlob wrote:
| Bike friendly cities are converging towards 30 km/h.
|
| Kph, mt, sec: are all widely used but wrong.
| avianlyric wrote:
| As an example (for GP) many London boroughs (city
| councils/districts) now enforce a global 20mph (32kph)
| speed limit on all their roads. With recent legislation
| making it trivially easy for boroughs to do this (I think
| it used to require consultations etc, but now they can be
| unilaterally applied with consultation with the public).
|
| Additionally TfL have had the entire of central London
| (within the congestion zone) 20mph.
| patall wrote:
| For the city, maybe. For everywhere else, I doubt it. When I am
| up in the regional hills with my bike, I am (almost) the only
| one without battery. Its still okay but has become a lot less
| remote. If you now remove the pedaling, it becomes even more
| interesting for all those 'down-hillers' that run down narrow
| forest paths at insane speeds. If have also see people with
| insane carge-bikes in public transport. If we continoue that
| way, we will have to bann all bikes from there.
|
| There are electric motorscoters and there are ebikes. Only the
| latter should, in my honest opinion, use the full bike
| infrastructure.
| calpaterson wrote:
| My personal experience sharing space with electric
| bicycles/scooters in a large town (London) is that the public
| is very quickly getting sick of 25kmph vehicles that travel on
| the pavement and to - a lesser extent - even when they are
| cycle lanes.
|
| 25kmph is about the max speed for a street cyclist but vehicles
| that sustain this speed for long periods and can achieve it
| with no effort on the part of the rider are qualitatively
| different from the bicycles whose shape they share.
|
| Drivers of these vehicles also usually don't want to go on the
| road proper so I am not very sure where they will go at all.
| Removing pedal-assist is only going to make these things more
| anti-social and people won't put up with it for long.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Try tracking delivery riders. They're pretty constant at
| 23-24 kph.
|
| Also, you can't have an omelette without breaking eggs.
| Moving away from the big, polluting, dangerous cars will
| necessarily involve a transition path for those that can't or
| don't want to use muscle power. Having small, clean,
| relatively harmless electric vehicles is honestly by far the
| best transition path I can see. Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing
| them with a roof in a few years.
|
| There should be limitations, but they should well thought
| out. Speed capped at 25 is a big one. Separating them from
| pedestrians is a huge one.
|
| But overall, please also think of the upside. Having a
| e-something in the streets ensures that at least half a car
| is staying home that day.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >Having small, clean, relatively harmless electric vehicles
| is honestly by far the best transition path I can see.
| Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing them with a roof in a few
| years.
|
| Why not put them on the road instead of the bike lane,
| then?
| ip26 wrote:
| Because once you increase the speed to mesh with road
| traffic & add strength to survive a collision with a car,
| you have a car.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Bingo. You have <5kph for walking, 10-25 kph for this
| whatever-it-is-which-I-hope-grows, and 50+ for cars. They
| can mix occasionally, separated with paint or good will,
| but as much as infrastructure permits we need all three.
| calpaterson wrote:
| Sorry, a 25kmph electric go kart ("e-scooter") with a roof
| (!) is not a bicycle and is not the right vehicle for a
| cycle lane.
|
| Sensible transport segregates vehicles by their performance
| characteristics. In order to travel in the cycle lane you
| need to be going at bicycle-level top speeds with bicycle-
| level acceleration. More or less. E-scooters have a much
| higher top speed than most normal cyclists actually
| accomplish in the real world and, much worse, have far
| steeper acceleration curves. If there were lots of vehicles
| of the kind you imagine in cycle lanes they would be going
| much faster than real cyclists actually do and consequently
| overtaking constantly.
|
| This doesn't really happen much in practice for a couple of
| reasons. Firstly, e-scooter's wheels are too small and
| their wheelbases too short to comfortably travel in the
| cycle lane (or on the road) so they travel on the pavement
| and drive pedestrians barking mad. Secondly, partly because
| they are made of chocolate and partly for inherent design
| reasons, they don't last long (shortish MTBF, near infinite
| MTTR) - this does a lot to keep them off the roads - except
| when operated at a loss by venture-backed startups from
| California.
|
| And your idea that if people weren't on e-scooters that
| they would be in cars or something - not really. In my area
| they would be on public transport.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > the public is very quickly getting sick of 25kmph vehicles
| that travel on the pavement
|
| > Drivers of these vehicles also usually don't want to go on
| the road proper so I am not very sure where they will go at
| all.
|
| This is really great news - it will create a much stronger
| incentive for the government to put in _proper_ cycle lanes.
| calpaterson wrote:
| Sorry if I was unclear: I don't agree. I feel pretty mixed
| about "pedal-assist vehicles" in cycle lanes and oppose
| scooters and everything else.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I have no problems with pedal-assisted vehicles or
| scooters on proper bicycle paths that are at least 2m
| wide (per direction, so 4m if there's oncoming traffic).
| There overtaking isn't an issue, and 25km/h vehicles are
| somewhat average in terms of speed is there's no incline
| (leisure bikers are slower, while a good road bike goes
| faster).
|
| The problem are those 0.5-1m wide "bike lanes" they
| squeeze in as an afterthought in cities. Overtaking on
| them is basically impossible without breaking some rules,
| so scooters and pedal-assisted vehicles make it worse
| than it already is.
| worldmerge wrote:
| I'm in the US, where I think the limit is 25mph /750w for
| ebikes.
|
| > 25kmph is about the max speed for a street cyclist but
| vehicles that sustain this speed for long periods
|
| I'd agree with you if that was 25mph. On my road bike I
| sustain 20 mph for most of the ride. 25mph would be
| sprinting.
|
| Also, I'd bring up a different point about ebikes. It takes a
| while to get steering and quick reaction time skills for
| going that fast, ex. having your inside knee up and being
| comfortable banking a turn.
|
| Also the market for ebikes : older/entry cyclists might not
| have the reaction time needed at those speeds. And a lot of
| ebikes have upright geometry not aggressive road bike
| geometry.
|
| I built an ebike to commute around on, bafang conversion kit
| on a mtb. Ebikes have their place, and I'm excited to commute
| with it in the snow. I think the main issue is we need larger
| paths for bikes. Not these single track lanes that exist in
| cities. A lot of time the time in my area it makes sense to
| just ride on the road than deal with a bike lane when riding
| my road bike (pedal power).
|
| And the product in the article is insane in a bike lane. I
| think it really highlights my point about the size of lanes.
| They need to be bigger if bikes are going to become a more
| viable form of commuting for everyone.
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| >And the product in the article is insane in a bike lane. I
| think it really highlights my point about the size of
| lanes. They need to be bigger if bikes are going to become
| a more viable form of commuting for everyone.
|
| I don't think so, they mention that it's only 1m wide,
| which is 25cm wider than the average bike.
|
| Here in NL, for example, it would fit pretty much perfectly
| in the existing bicycle infrastructure. (barring the
| occasional small bridge with poles/gates at the end to slow
| cyclists down)
| masklinn wrote:
| > I don't think so, they mention that it's only 1m wide,
| which is 25cm wider than the average bike.
|
| And thinner than a Canta.
| Symbiote wrote:
| No, 25km/h is the normal maximum speed for a normal person
| cycling.
|
| > On my road bike I sustain 20 mph for most of the ride.
|
| A few people manage 32km/h in the Netherlands or Denmark,
| but only if they have a long commute through the suburbs or
| a rural area, often for recreation/leisure/exercise.
|
| In towns, other people aren't expecting Lance Armstrong to
| appear, and can step/swerve into your path. You can see
| from [1] (at the linked point) that there's no way you'll
| be going fast through the centre of Amsterdam. The path
| isn't wide enough, there are far too many other cyclists
| and pedestrians, and the car drivers yielding at the
| junctions would be startled, at best. The same at 4m32s (a
| park). At 9m37s it looks like the kind of place you'd get
| some road/fast cyclists (in fact the narration says so).
|
| People who want to go as fast as you would usually select a
| different route, where possible.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/M8F5hXqS-Ac?t=62
| sparsely wrote:
| There's a big difference in perceived (and probably actual)
| safety between sharing a narrow bikelane with current pedelecs
| and an electric moped. I do think that the use cases for
| bikelanes should be made more explicit and varied, but unless
| cities start building substantially bigger ones I don't think
| they can get much faster.
|
| In any case, in cities something which can go over 25kph
| without pedaling is likely safe enough to drive like a vehicle.
| avianlyric wrote:
| You can already buy an electric motorbike today that isn't
| pedal assisted, and they're pretty much the same price as a
| good e-bike.
|
| Why force normal cyclists and pedestrians to deal with these
| much faster vehicles in cycle lanes and pavements when we
| already have roads, and conflicts between road users today is
| already problematic.
| siosonel wrote:
| I average about 10mph or 16kph on my e-bike, and gets passed
| by routinely by 'normal' cyclists going faster than my pace.
| E-bike users do not necessarily ride faster; I use one to
| help with the many hills in my area, not to go fast. I don't
| think it'd be fair to force me to use roads and mingle with
| cars just because I use an e-bike.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Even at the cutoff of 25 km/h you will get passed by
| roadies all day long.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I think our perspectives are in complete agreement, and
| your comment proves that allowing e-bikes to go faster than
| 25kph, or operate without use of the pedals isn't
| necessary.
|
| I'm certainly not advocating that e-bike should mix with
| cars. I'm saying the than an e-bike that assists beyond
| 25kph, or doesn't require peddling, isn't an e-bike. It's
| just an unlicensed motorbike pretending to be an e-bike.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Fine, as long as you don't allow them on the sidewalk or the
| bike lanes.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Their logo implies that eventually they may want to daisy-chain
| these to make a "trailer train" led by one cyclist.
|
| Cool idea, but keep these off bike paths. Too wide and heavy to
| safely share that space.
| jsilence wrote:
| Carla Cargo is a very similar product: https://www.carlacargo.de/
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