• 0 Posts
  • 79 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle



  • I love my ebike! It’s been a game changer for me. I can give you a few safety pointers that apply to cycling in general.

    • invest in a rear-view mirror so that you can watch for people coming up from behind and cutting you off with a sudden right turn (the right hook, as it is sometimes called)
    • at intersections, try to make eye contact with anyone turning across you
    • get front and rear lights (most jurisdictions require these for night time riding but they are good to have on in daytime also)
    • get a bell (again, generally required) and use it when you are approaching pedestrians who can’t see you or in general when your sight lines are obstructed
    • watch out for parked car doors swinging out (if you need to take over a lane to pass a car safely, it is your right to do so)
    • when you need to maneuver (e.g. change lanes, turn, etc.), use hand signals and do so gradually from a good distance

    The nice thing about an ebike is it doesn’t cost you a lot of effort to get going again after slowing down or stopping, so you should do so if you’re facing an uncertain traffic situation.

    Also, regarding risks, you need to weigh them against the risks of not riding. In my case, I work a sedentary job and this is my primary means of exercise. (Yes, even ebikes can give you exercise!) I was developing type 2 diabetes, but since I started the bike commute, I’ve been losing weight (albeit very gradually) and my numbers have been going down.


  • There was a woman who died recently when her ebike was hit by a pickup truck along a route I often also ride an ebike on. He was making a left turn at an intersection. It bothers me that a collision of that nature was still enough to cause a fatality. I mean you would expect a turning vehicle to not be moving at great speed?

    But I guess as the article points out, the higher profile and greater weight of trucks takes its toll. Also, I think there is a certain segment of muscle truck drivers who like to floor it with reckless abandon, though I don’t know if that was the case here?


  • Your first one reminds me of something that happened awhile back. I was at a donut shop staring out the window when a scruffy dude in a pickup truck slammed into a traffic light, tipping it over across the street.

    Now as it happens, said donut shop was a watering hole for police officers (yes, the stereotype is real), and about a dozen buff uniforms trotted out within seconds. The guy climbed out of the truck and tried to light a cig and it fell out of his mouth as he saw them rushing up.


  • Oh I see. syncthing is more for keeping 2 directories synched between machines. I guess in a sense, it’s more of a Dropbox competitor while croc and sharr are for one-off file transfers. For awhile, I ran an owncloud server at work for internal use. It was pretty good for file synching, but required some port forwarding through the router. These solutions mentioned here seem to all have a public host somewhere to eliminate that need.









  • Yeah it’s kind of an arm’s race with people feeling they need to be the biggest thing on the road to feel safe. I’ve driven a few larger vehicles as airport rentals when they had nothing else in stock, and I’ve noticed they also tend to have a lot more blind spots than what I’m used to.

    I remember when I was taking lessons, my instructor said I should think of the airbag as being a spring-loaded spike that will impale you if you screw up. I guess he was trying to impress on me that it’s not good to feel safe and smug when you’re driving? And actually, I’ve read since that air bags can be pretty violent when they go off, so he may not have been as far from the truth as I thought?


  • I wish there were more regulation on the size of private vehicles, particularly in North America. It’s pretty clear at this point that what is contributing to higher pedestrian/cyclist fatalities despite better urban infrastructure is the increasing curb weight and ground clearance of automobiles. We can hope that collision-avoidance tech in newer models may reduce human-error type accidents, but at the end of the day, kinetic energy is a bitch.

    I wonder how the EV transition will affect things? On the one hand, an EV would weigh more than an ICE of the same class since batteries are heavy. On the other hand, batteries are also the most expensive component by far and you need more in a larger vehicle, so from a dealer’s perspective, the margins may not necessarily grow the bigger you go like with an ICE. The sweet spot might actually be something smaller. (In fact, for me, it’s actually ebikes.)



  • I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.

    Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.