• @[email protected]
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    8 hours ago

    That’s cute. No other personal vehicle beats the caloric efficiency of a bicycle, and it’s not even close. They’re very literally one of the most impressive feats of engineering that human kind has ever invented.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 hours ago

        I couldn’t believe how little energy I used to cycle the 35 mile round trip to work on an ebike, it’s bonkers

        • @[email protected]
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          22 hours ago

          Per mile, there are more fatalities, but in the US, something like 39/40 deaths from bicycles and 4/5 deaths from motorbikes is due to cars; presumably decreasing the number of miles driven by car would lower the number of pedestrian, bike, and motorbike fatalities they cause.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 hours ago

          That depends on a whole bunch of factors. Maximum velocity is a big one. In Germany (might be EU, not sure), motor assistance is capped at 25km/h for the vast majority of e-bikes (there are some that go to 45, but they are not allowed on bike lanes), which I find to be a decent compromise between safety and speed.

          Age plays another role, in that e-bikes allow older people to cycle, whose reaction times or other capabilities may be worse than average. Some training might be required to adjust to the unfamiliar power, too. But I’ll take an elderly cyclist over elderly SUV drivers any day.

          And then there’s the infrastructure. Biking can be anywhere from outright suicidal to very safe depending on the existence and state of proper bike lanes. This is the biggest difference between places like the Netherlands and let’s just say elsewhere.