I am new to FuckCars, and personally, I feel very much aligned to this ideology. Particularly, the amout of environmental damage the fuel consumption causes, concerns me.
However, sometimes, I feel like I am a hypocrite, because I drive a motorcycle, which again, causes pollution. But, in my defense, I always try to use my bicycle if I can, and use my motorbike only when necessary, because public transportation system isn’t great in my city. Also, the amount of pollutants my bike releases is way less when compared to a car, or even a small hatchback.
The bike in question is only 160cc, and does 30-40 km/litre (~18-25 miles/litre).
So, what is your opinion on all this, and how can I improve my situation?
I think that sound pollution regulations should be enrforced fiercely.
Want to drive around on a motorcycle? Go right ahead. Want to mod the exhaust and create a multi km wide disturbance? Get your license revoked, get your vehicle taken away, get a mandatory rehabilitation course and community service.
I don’t understand why we tolerate the morons that think it’s okay to just straight up blast deafening noise at everyone and everything they happen to pass by
There was a study that “found that if 10 percent of all private cars were replaced by motorcycles in the traffic flow of the test area, total time losses for all vehicles decreased by 40 percent and total emissions reduced by 6 percent (1 percent from the different traffic composition of more emission-reduced motorcycles and 5 percent from avoided traffic congestion). A 25 percent modal shift from cars to motorcycles was found to eliminate congestion entirely.”
It’s way better than a car for most situations. I commuted on a motorcycle for over a decade. I was in California where lane splitting and filtering is legal, which made traffic almost disappear from my perspective.
It’s all or something, not all or nothing. You do the best you can. Use as much public transport or eco-friendly modes of transport. Walk, if you cant walk, bike/scoot, if you cant bike or scoot, bus/tram, if not that, motorcycle.
You get the idea, sounds like you’re already approaching this the right way, doing what you can. Be safe, driving motorcycles is dangerous, especially in the US.
They usually are much noisier than cars which can be very annoying. But a big part of it is due to the type of people who ride them in my city, they usually really don’t care about others.
But if the motorbike is chosen and used correctly, they are better than most cars.
Riders don’t necessarily like their rides that loud either, and obviously they don’t need to be, except it’s their number 1 defense on the road.
Drivers do not pay well enough attention, and especially in America, aren’t used to having riders all around them, or even ever consciously looking for riders. If a motorbike isn’t heard, it isn’t seen, and that creates a scene.
Let me tell ya, after being almost hit 5 dozen times even tho my bike is the loudest thing within 100m I can come off not giving a single fuck about anybody on or near that road either, but it’s not out of some crassness, it’s about me not being murdered by every Lexus or Mercedes that’s too important to be bothered to use a turn signal or check their fucking mirrors.
But then it’s a shame that the ones that have to suffer the most from this are the pedestrians (and animals, my dog is petrified every time that a motorbike passes by). We don’t have an easy solution for this, but fighting fire with fire is definitely not the way to go.
I hate how loud the bikes gotta be. I’m right there with you, trust me. If there were more riders and people were just intuitively aware of bikes, like in SE Asia (it doesn’t need to be a river of riders, just more commonplace than now), then I think we could move past it towards something rational.
Currently it’s the best I can do. I’m a sub of this community, I fucking hate cars, hence, riding whenever possible as I don’t have the option of public transit to cover my bases in my area. I’ve been the guy trying to keep riders conscious as they lay in the pavement, more than a few times. It’s not a fond set of memories. And I really don’t want to take a turn either.
I truly understood Indian beeping when I was sitting in a car and realised I could perfectly track every single bike around me. They start beeping when they get close to a car, and don’t stop until they overtake it.
There’s no way to not hear someone constantly going BEEEP BEEP BEEEEEEP BEP BEP BEEEEEEEEEP. On the other hand, even obnoxiousously loud exhausts can partially blend in the background noise and music.
It’s just trading one set of obnoxious noises for another and we’d be in a thread about that instead, y’know.
Clearly ppl don’t like motorcycles here. Maybe they name should change to fuckcars+motorbikes.
There’s definitely a tier list, and motorcycles are overall better imo. They’re smaller and generally get better gas mileage. I can’t say for certain, but if I had to guess people driving a motorcycle are also paying more attention to the road and less likely to hit pedestrians.
My biggest complaint with them is the noise and the emissions. Ideally they will be replaced by electric alternatives in the future and that will resolve both issues.
