cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/34370513
Anon likes bikes
Not only are bikes one of the most efficient forms of transport, they might be the most efficient form of powered locomotion, period. A human being on a bicycle is far more efficient than anything in nature.
ETA: Unless you consider e-bikes a separate category, since they (in some cases?) add regenerative braking on top of everything else.
My wife likes to ride a bike, a lot. The more you get into it, the more expensive it gets. No those bikes and accessories aren't cheap. That thing getting stolen is a serious hit.
Simple general store ones are cheap, dedicated sports store ones are far from cheap.
Bicycles are great force multipliers, but legs are true symbol of freedom of movement. More versatile, almost everyone already have those, already using those is the maintenance required to maintain those.
Though yeah i absolutely can't understand how cars became a symbol of freedom.
Those are literally like a ball and chain around your legs.
The cost of maintenance, car itself and fuel, stress from said fuel price and then getting to sit in a traffic jam overwhelming majority of the time, while trying to memorize huge amount of road rules that many just ignore and which can result in death.
Yeah sure racetrack driving might be nice or going somewhere really remote, but that's so rare as to be a statistical anomaly, overwhelming majority of the time it's basic everyday driving.
I recently saw a scatter plot somewhere, I believe it was speed vs energy efficiency or something body weight vs cost of transport. And all animals, as well as most modes of transport follow a roughly anti-proportional relationship on a log-scale. If you're fast heavy, you use a lot of energy. If I remember it right, the fastest most efficient animal was the salmon (?). There was one single outlier from that trend, an animal that is much too fast and much too efficient for its weight at the same time: Human on a bike.
Edit: Found it: https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2025/12/31/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel/
Checkmate:
cars require roads for the most part and that's a socialized freedom boats would be a better symbol of freedom
almost completely unregulated
Not if the car brains get their way
Also the transmission lasts between 2 years and forever. Probably also depends on how aggressively you use it.
Well, the bicycle I use now is actually somewhat decent unlike the one I had as a child (so maybe that's why it doesn't have many problems).
I can't drive because I am neurodivergent and traumatized, so I get panic attacks when I drive. It's too fast, too much power and responsibility and my schizoautismo brain shuts down not knowing what to do. So I ride my bike everywhere.
Air conditioning.
Air conditioning is why the car is so popular.
Answer: freedom without effort is more freedom than freedom with effort. If that difference was small, nobody would put up with all the negative effects of cars
It might not be a bad idea to get some kind of insurance in the alarmingly likely event some jackass hits you and drives off either oblivious or indifferent.
one small nitpick
Being hit BY a bike rider is much safer, but being hit AS a bike rider is not.
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