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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that nobody every talked about tyre/brake dust until it became clear that cars aren't going away as we phase out fossil fuels, they're just going electric. Is this a serious environmental concern compared to the climate/emissions issue, or just the 'r/fuckcars mentality'?

Meanwhile, here in the UK, one of the more interesting alternatives - personal light EVs (ebikes/scooters) are being utterly demonized, and are never likely to be legal on the roads beyond the very limited 250W/15mph pedelec class of e-bikes. Wouldn't be surprised if even that is banned before long, too.

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I looked into this in detail a while ago [1]. Electric cars produce much less brake pollution than traditional cars due to regenerative braking. They do probably create more tire pollution, simply because batteries are heavy. And, current emission standards for gasoline engines are so strict (and engines so well designed) that the engines themselves probably do create a negligible fraction of the overall particulate pollution. So it's plausible that with current technology, hybrid cars might create the least total particulate pollution. But all electric cars are probably better than all-gasoline cars.

That said, I'd think we could probably do lots more to reduce the tire pollution. And, obviously, electric cars have other advantages!

[1] https://dynomight.net/tires/

It’s also the reward of increased regulations on tailpipe emissions. We now have a new target to clean up. It’s not as if this is new, it just used to be we had lead fuel, poorly burned fuel, tire dust, asbestos in brakes, and many other problematic forms of pollution. We’re just going down the list.

Also, what you’re looking at is an overweighted responsibility on people/consumers to own the solutions to pollution. No matter what car you buy today it is emitting less pollution than ten, twenty, and especially thirty to fifty years ago. Meanwhile we still burn bunker oil (the leftovers from petroleum distillation) in shipping. It’s as if we swore off doing anything better for the planet if it inconveniences a large company.

https://harvardpolitics.com/climate-change-responsibility/

> No matter what car you buy today it is emitting less pollution than ten, twenty, and especially thirty to fifty years ago.

Sure, but a single bus would emit way less than the 60-150 cars (yes, large buses here have a total capacity of about 150 people [1]) it replaces. And if you have a bikable city like about every city in the Netherlands is, there's zero emissions.

> Meanwhile we still burn bunker oil (the leftovers from petroleum distillation) in shipping. It’s as if we swore off doing anything better for the planet if it inconveniences a large company.

We do, but even there there is progress! In fact, the regulations on sulphur content going into effect showed that this actually had climate impacts on the scale of an ultra-large geoengineering project [2]. On top of that, bunker fuel is banned in many countries' 12-mile-zone or at the very least near ports, ships have to burn diesel there.

[1] https://infoportal.mobil.nrw/technik/bussemitkonventionellem...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01442-3

> In fact, the regulations on sulphur content going into effect showed that this actually had climate impacts on the scale of an ultra-large geoengineering project...

... but not in the desired direction. Sulfur dioxide emissions from shipping appear to have actually been slowing (!!) global warming by seeding clouds which reflected sunlight.

Tell that to a 90s honda with a 5 speed and 50mpg from technique over any hybrid technology that it pollutes more than a car that doesn’t achieve that mpg and hasn’t paid for its production carbon footprint in hundreds of thousands of miles driven yet.

Also in the UK and I certainly subscribe to r/fuckcars as I'm a keen cyclist and never got around to learning to drive.

I find it annoying that media outlets (BBC - I'm looking mainly at you!) will refer to EVs as being car-shaped and then, as you said, demonise e-bikes by lumping them in with the illegal e-motorbikes (see the recent Panorama program for a clear case of not making clear the distinction between e-motorbikes and e-bikes).

As I see it, the biggest problems with cars are their size and weight. With electric propulsion, the weight is a problem as they have to propel the vehicle and the batteries which obviously means even more weight (though they're typically only slightly more than ICE cars). This also leads to the problem of the vehicles taking longer to recharge and thus requiring upgraded infrastructure to allow people to charge them quickly.

However, if we get as many people to use e-bikes or e-scooters, then the size and weight issues pretty much disappear. It's often feasible to have removable batteries, so the vehicle can be "recharged" instantly by swapping the battery (I believe this is very popular in some countries for food delivery riders). This also means that the battery recharging can be performed using a normal power socket without requiring upgraded infrastructure although it may be wise to keep an eye on the batteries whilst charging to prevent house fires.

Incidentally, Mrs ndsipa_pomu recently bought a good quality e-bike (i.e. not one of the duck-taped conversions) and absolutely loves commuting on it as she sails past the traffic that she was previously trapped in. Though it's limited to assist only up to 15.5mph, she finds it powerful enough to cope with the hills.

I cycled for like 30 years before we had kids and needed a car.

The ebikes that the post refers to are a menace and should be banned. Both as a cyclist and a driver.

I've almost been plowed over by some idiot sitting on what should be a motorcycle but riding on the bike path. And I've almost had my kids run over.

Also, as a driver you just don't expect someone to be going so crazy fast in the bike lane. I've had people at insane speeds just appear from behind parked cars.

I'm all for pedal assist! But there should be strict speed limits.

I also find that people just don't take these electric motorcycles seriously. They zone out because they aren't doing anything. That's also very dangerous.

I find it hard to take the debate seriously because the default stance of everyone against electric 2-wheelers is not manual bikes, its cars.

And, cars are multiple orders of magnitude more dangerous than anything on 2-wheels.

I’m sure you’re right that theres room for improvement, but instead of building infrastructure (we literally shaped cities for cars after all)- we would rather ensure that cars are incumbent forever despite the harm we see them causing.

Cars are far less dangerous for occupants than 2 wheeled vehicles.

Perhaps there is less incentive then to drive dangerously.

That hasn't shown up in the fatality statistics for motorcycles. Sometimes more dangerous is just more dangerous.

I’d appreciate it if there was an attempt to actually engage here, this is hardly the gotcha you might think.

Most fatalities of motorcycles are due to collisions with cars, not other bikes nor pedestrians.

Diligence won’t save you if a driver unexpectedly swerves into you.

Undoubtedly there are stupid people and people who are more likely to take more risks will be more likely to engage in motorcycle riding; creating an additional selection bias.

But, we’re talking about electric scooters, e-bikes and so on, the core issue remains to be that mixed use-infrastructure will have a loser. Letting cars drive on pavements isn’t permitted for the same reason e-bikes shouldn’t be in traffic (or on the pavement).

> Diligence won’t save you if a driver unexpectedly swerves into you.

That's the point. Diligence won't save you but crumple zones might have.

It's also not obvious that most collisions being with cars isn't just because most other vehicles are cars. If two motorcycles collide with each other at high speed, the damage they do to each other isn't your problem, it's the resulting loss of control and the damage to your body when you impact the pavement.

> Letting cars drive on pavements isn’t permitted for the same reason e-bikes shouldn’t be in traffic (or on the pavement).

But then you're stuck between three bad options: You have separate roads specifically for e-bikes (implausible), you put high speed e-bikes in pedestrian zones, or you limit the top speed of e-bikes to something safe for pedestrians and then people go back to buying cars because e-bikes are too slow.

My point is cars don’t necessarily deserve the deference society affords them, they’re utility vehicles, needed by fewer people than we think (but still needed). The paths we reserve for car use should be diminished.

If every person was driving an articulated truck then there would be more deaths, caused not just by collisions and poor driving but by emissions too. We’d need bigger roads too- its unnecessary for everyone to do this.

The general problem is that it's not that fewer people need them, it's that most people need them on fewer occasions, but they're not going to buy, register and insure separate vehicles for different uses. So they get one that does everything and use it for everything, and then they're driving an SUV even when they're traveling alone with no cargo.

To get away from this you'd have to completely redesign US cities to have people living in them instead of significant numbers commuting in from the suburbs. To begin with you'd need a massive amount of new higher density housing, the construction of which is currently inhibited by building codes where not outright prohibited by zoning. Trying to solve the rest of it before you do that is going to face massive opposition, because you'll be trying to make it harder to have a car to people who still can't realistically avoid having a car.

I used to be an EMT in the US. I also was an avid motorcycle rider for many, many years. And an avid bicycle rider for even longer.

It is dramatically easier to screw yourself up on bicycles and motorcycles than cars. It’s frankly shocking how stupid someone can be in a modern car and survive.

It doesn’t require another car to kill someone on a motorcycle or bicycle, but the squids tend to filter themselves out pretty quickly. Many of them actively collide with cars due to their own recklessness and/or stupidity, making the statistics somewhat hard to interpret.

Was the 80 year old driving the RV ‘the cause’ of the head on collision, or the 22 year old with the 1.5l super bike illegally passing over a double yellow at 50 over the speed limit around a corner?

I can provide graphic details of who ended up winning in that situation, regardless.

If everyone had to ride instead of drive (including drunks, soccer moms, burnt out graveyard shift workers, medical workers on their second 24 hour shift, retirees, etc), you’d see a lot more dead folks overall.

Because even though cars are also more dangerous to other people, for the most part, those other people are in cars in the US, and the danger still generally cancels out.

Even head on collisions at highway speeds are more survivable than anyone should reasonably be able to expect.

Vehicle vs ped calls are still the worst though.

Protip: don’t get out of your car after an accident on the highway unless you’re really really sure you can see all other traffic. Chances are you can’t, especially at night. Especially when the drunk coming the wrong way on the highway never turned on their headlights. Wait for the firefighters to physically block the road with their rigs first. That was a gnarly call.

my perspective is someone where the city has been largely built for cycling, which leads to less deaths overall.

Population of Malmo is actually higher than Orlando, FL for example.

Yet, for Skåne (the region where Malmo is; pop: 1,421,781), 25 traffic deaths were recorded in the year 2019[0].

173 road deaths were recorded in Orange County (where Orlando is; pop: 1,429,908), during the same period.[1]

That’s a difference of 7x, and Skåne is one of the largest regions in the country, many places are car dependent - yet the major change is that urban areas are sufficiently dense so can be cycled (even during cold climates) and that there’s dedicated infrastructure for doing so, which eases the traffic burden too.

[0]: https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/globalassets/global/press/...

[1]: https://www.flhealthcharts.gov/ChartsReports/rdPage.aspx?rdR...

So if everything is different, everything is different?

Make life require cars: more fatalities.

Seems pretty evident.

Arguably the conditions are better for personal electric vehicles and bicycles in Florida (than the comparatively frigid and rainy conditions of Sweden).

Even the topography is flat[0][1], it's literally the perfect place for cycling, but the US has chosen something else.

So, yes, if things are different they are different: comparable populations, a better climate and an equally flat topography and somehow 7x the amount of deaths; and the only difference is the approach to infrastructure by the county.

[0]: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-c3fdcz/Orange-County/?...

[1]: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-5749m/Malmö/

Florida may not get as cold as Sweden, but it's certainly not hurting for rain.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2024/02/02/discover-the...

It also has the opposite problem in terms of temperature. There are days when the wet bulb temperature in Florida requires humans to be in an air conditioned environment because they would otherwise literally die from the heat.

> If everyone had to ride instead of drive (including drunks, soccer moms, burnt out graveyard shift workers, medical workers on their second 24 hour shift, retirees, etc), you’d see a lot more dead folks overall.

That's rubbish as cyclists/bikers are not the cause of most collisions. Once you remove the majority of car drivers, the number of collisions will plummet along with the severity of those collisions.

(Sedentary disease such as heart disease and type II diabetes will also reduce if more people are using active travel - not so much if they're motorbiking).

There's some data that for middle aged blokes bicycles are safter if you take obesity and heart attacks into the equation.

Are you replying to the right post?

My default is my manual bike.

No amount of infrastructure will make these electric motorcycles safe in bike lanes or pedestrian paths. They should be banned.

We don't ban cars or motorbikes because they're unsafe. We require a license and insurance then ban those who repeatedly break the rules of the road.

We need to find a sensible way to regulate these bikes, which may involve some sort of license, insurance, and mandatory helmets. But it needs to be less costly/more convenient than getting a petrol motorbike (or car) if we want people choosing the more eco-friendly option.

Cycling enthusiasts don't tend to consider those who are far less fit/healthy/young when they push the pure-human-powered option.

I think the parent is talking about banning them specifically in pedestrians and cycling lanes. We currently ban motorcycles and cars from using them, presumably because it’s dangerous to pedestrians.

You've got to distinguish the legal ebikes limited to 15mph from the illegal ones. Sure the illegal ones should be illegal and sometimes the police do actually pull them over and then the bike is usually crushed.

> However, if we get as many people to use e-bikes or e-scooters, then the size and weight issues pretty much disappear.

I still don't understand how they expect to solve the occupant safety issue though. Cars travel at high speeds but have crumple zones and airbags. E-bikes travel at the same speeds but if you crash, you die. And 2-wheeled vehicles are easier to crash.

The fatality rate for motorcycles is astonishingly bad and changing the propulsion type wouldn't really affect that.

Some measures can be taken such as reducing urban speed limits to something like 20mph and increasing traffic enforcement so that riders/drivers have an incentive to take sufficient care.

There's also the possibility of creating separated infrastructure to allow the smaller/lighter vehicle riders (e.g. two/three wheelers) to not have to tangle with car and lorry drivers. However that requires political will and infrastructure investment.

Speed limits are set for the conditions, e.g. they're lower in an area with high pedestrian traffic than on the highway. But that's just dodging the issue; what do you do about the highway? Traveling at higher speeds on the appropriate roads is good and people want to continue to do that. You want plumbers and firefighters to be able to travel quickly from one side of the city to the other. So then you've got a highway, but if you put two-wheeled vehicles on it then people die, and if you disallow two-wheeled vehicles on it then people buy cars instead.

Ironically, the somewhat obvious solution to this would be smaller/lighter cars (e.g. one- or two-seaters), but they can't pass the safety standards required for cars even though they would still be dramatically safer than two-wheeled vehicles.

Furthermore, when I've eaten at the sidewalk area of a restaurant near a theater I go to in the summer, the protected bike lane has truly terrifying combinations of traffic outside of cars including what I guess are electric motorcycles. And, because it's a "bike" lane, a ton of users basically just blow through the red lights.

Plumbers and firefighters have stuff to haul and long distances to cover. They need to do 40/50/60mph on the freeway, and 15/20mph on local surface access roads where they're mixed in with light vehicles.

The whole light-vehicle thing is predicated on low speeds and relatively short distances (up to about 15 miles). Most urban areas, even fairly sprawling ones, that's enough to cover a pretty substantial % of trips.

It's about using 1/10th the weight and 1/50th the power to cover a big % of the same tasks. Personally I'd say the bike/scooter/golf-buggy, and then either an owned or shared car for the last 10% of trips where you need to use the freeway is a better optimum than high-speed light vehicles, because as soon as you get to about 25-30mph you need impact protection, and the design constraints quickly escalate to "absolutely no smaller than a Fiat 500".

There's also ofc the option of mass transit for some of the longer distance stuff, at least in cities that are able to build it.

> as soon as you get to about 25-30mph you need impact protection, and the design constraints quickly escalate to "absolutely no smaller than a Fiat 500".

The real problem here is that as soon as you need impact protection, you get four wheels, and then it's classified as a car instead of a motorcycle and the government safety standards for cars de facto require "absolutely no smaller than a Fiat 500".

What would be interesting is to change the definition of "motorcycle" from "has fewer than 4 wheels" to "has fewer than 3 seats" and see what happens.

This is the case in France & some other EU countries (light quadricycles - Renault, Citroen and so on) and Japan (Kei Cars).

The problem seems to be that for most people who can legally drive a full-scale car (i.e. they're not too young or too old) getting a do-everything vehicle on finance is more attractive at that point.

They're somewhat popular with youngsters in rural areas (cheap to insure, minimum driver age is 14 I think, whereas for cars in France it's 17) and with frailer, older people who can't walk or cycle very far and don't have the stamina for longer drives, they just want an inexpensive little runabout to get to the village shops, nearby friends and appointments.

But they're expensive enough (about $10k) that you're unlikely to buy one in addition to your regular do-it-all car, where you might buy an ebike, pedal bike or motorcycle. Maybe as a second vehicle in a childless couple where one partner does almost all the driving, but unless heavier vehicles are highly taxed or restricted (city low emission & congestion zones), there's not enough advantage in one of these for mass adoption.

The safety is a function of the speed you are going. Legal ebikes in the UK are limited to 15mph which is normally survivable unlike say a 125cc scooter doing 60mph.

I've got an ebike in central london and find it quite practical on the whole. For local journeys <2miles it's faster than anything else and you can go down mostly traffic restricted roads. For intercity you can put the bike on a train. Rain is a bit of a pain.

They can provide assist up to 15.5 mph IIRC, but aren't limited to a top speed apart from your legs and/or finding a big hill.

Yeah. It's quite interesting watching it develop in London. Basically all the Deliveroo guys use ebikes, often converted mountain bikes. A fair number of commuters use the Lime bikes, though far less than who use the tube. We are also starting to see some ebike delievery van hybrids like the DPD ones here https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/advice/features/alternativ...

that could be a win for the environment and I guess they replace normal vans. And I just saw a two seater ebike taxi with a roof.

> I still don't understand how they expect to solve the occupant safety issue though.

What issue? I would regularly go 50km/h down hills on my road bike. That was completely my choice and if I came off I'd suffer the consequences.

The problem isn't the occupants. Nobody is forced to travel at high speeds (except on motorways). The problem is the people around and the environment. I definitely would not ever go that fast in town, even down a hill, because it's generally not safe for the people around me.

The problem with cars is the huge imbalance of power. Every car has the capability of killing or disabling you. But you can't disable them. As far as I know, carrying a portable EMP device is neither practical nor legal. Two wheeled vehicles don't exhibit this imbalance of power, not even motorbikes. I believe this is the most important reason to get rid of cars from towns.

> I definitely would not ever go that fast in town, even down a hill, because it's generally not safe for the people around me.

If you're on a bike, then you should also prioritise your own safety as you're likely to come off worse even when colliding with a pedestrian.

Anecdata time: my brother (over 60 years old and a very experienced cyclist) was heading down a hill, presumably at some speed and a young boy stepped out in front of him. They collided and my brother came off and ended up with a broken collar bone, broken rib, collapsed lung and minor concussion (he's fully recovered now). The kid received no damage apart from bruising AFAIK.

Yes, and cyclists generally do, as do motorcyclists. It's kinda natural by the time you get up adulthood to assess your risk and behave accordingly (ie. lower speed, don't walk close to the edge etc) The difference with cars is they are not at risk and they can't even see/hear/feel the speed and impact they are having on others so their judgement is completely screwed. Many of them have never even experienced the road outside of a car.

> However, if we get as many people to use e-bikes or e-scooters

Replacing cars with bikes/scooters is unrealistic and unreasonable. You're either ignoring or unaware of the actual dependence on cars that exists and that cannot be dismissed.

The exhaust used to be really nasty until just a little while ago. Nobody was focusing on the less harmful emissions.

Now we mostly fixed it, so it's time to look at the other stuff.

> The exhaust used to be really nasty

Specifically: Leaded gasoline (with tetraethyllead), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), carbon monoxide (CO), unburned hydrocarbons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_oxide , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx

Don't forget about the solid particles.

> Now we mostly fixed it

Only in developed countries. The age of a typical car in my region is over 15 years. Basically, most of what you bought in 2005-2010, drove for a decade or more, and then sold for scrap eventually ends up in countries like mine. Moreover, most people take catalytic converters off their cars and sell them for $80-100 for platinum recycling.

I think most "developing" countries have the same problem. So the world at large hasn't really solved it and won't solve it any time soon.

None of my business but I’d love to know why your English is so good. Mind saying what region or country you live in?

> Is this a serious environmental concern compared to the climate/emissions

Yes.

> or just the 'r/fuckcars mentality'?

No.

"Recent studies have found tire particles made up 94% of microplastics in Switzerland, 61 to 79% in Sweden, 54% in China and 30% in Germany".

"If everyone just drove EVs we could merrily go on driving cars all day" is the 'r/HeadInTheSand mentality'.

Firstly, this is another positive for EVs. They do have brakes but most have regenerative braking too, which is clean.

Secondly, ebikes are rampantly misused in pedestrian areas, often used without helmets, often upclocked, many used for delivering, or kids. And because they're not a regulated vehicle, nobody has third party insurance.

There are legal ebikes and nobody has any more of a problem with them than normal bicycles when used in the right places.

However, even illegal e-bikes (or unregistered e-motorbikes to be more accurate) are preferable in my view to the problems associated with car traffic. At least when an e-bike rider does something stupid and crashes, they will typically end up hurting themselves which can be an important learning moment. Car drivers don't have the same "skin-in-the-game" to ensure that they're paying attention.

It's harm reduction - let's encourage the most irresponsible car drivers to be irresponsible e-bike (legal or not) riders and we should end up with far less congestion, pollution and collisions.

> And because they're not a regulated vehicle, nobody has third party insurance.

At least here in Germany, assuming it's not a tuned bike, it's covered by your regular liability insurance.

In the US at least, I'm not sure what "regular liability insurance" means. Might be something on a homeowner's policy and something on auto insurance but it's probably not something the average person necessarily has.

> very limited 250W/15mph pedelec class of e-bikes

Meanwhile in the Wild West (a.k.a. the United States) we have children hurling 100+ lb 750W throttle-controlled motorcycles (I'm sorry, "e-bikes") at up to 28 mph on mixed-use pedestrian trails. The best we can do is put up plastic signs on the trail begging them to slow down and be careful around other people.

And yet, despite the wild west regulatory situation you claim, bicycles kill and injure way fewer people than cars, and don't require insurance because it's nearly impossible to cause the level of damage with a bike as even a minor fender bender in a car. And, even considering how "dangerous" bicycles are, studies have repeatedly shown them to increase life expectancy of the rider. Meanwhile cars are among the highest cause of accidental death of children of nearly all ages in the US.

Your argument is actually a strong one in favor of bicycle-favoring transportation policy: despite limited existing regulation they're still incredibly safe, and we can always tweak policy to handle the worst case exceptions as needed if they end up causing significant problems as bicycle share grows.

We are just barely beginning to investigate the harms from PM2.5 particles.

It seems like every month we discover some new and harmful effect, or that it was worse than initially estimated from smaller sample sizes, etc.

I don't think it's a conspiracy, just the way that discovery happens.

We also have a tendency to completely oversight the harm of new tech in comparison to older tech. People get super worked up about the supposedly super toxic lithium ion batteries, but have little concern for the far greater amount of mining necessary to build the frame of a car.

So it's good to have a baseline of the amount of harm done with current tech to compare to and center our reactions to these large population scale effects.

It’s the “both sides bad” ploy in the service of continuing fossil fuel usage.

> Is this a serious environmental concern compared to the climate/emissions issue, or just the 'r/fuckcars mentality'?

It’s a minor issue in terms of impact. I see it over amplified because it is a tool for the anti car crowd. It’s not like we are measuring or discussing all the environmental issues from everything else people do in their lives. It’s a lopsided focus on everything related to cars, and there’s a reason why.

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