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?
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.
The term for this is “negative correlation”
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.
No, surprisingly it’s not. My impression of beeping g in India was communication and coordination. Here in the US, it’s usually outrage, wounded pride.
I find that in myself too, despite advising my teens to watch out for it. When someone endangers you by doing something stupid, it’s easy to fall into that trap, and we have very little tradition of communication