For context, in many European countries (including Italy where I grew up) 14 year olds can drive mopeds or moto scooters up to 50cc and limited to a max speed of 45km/h, however most of the times[1] those have post-market modifications installed, either at home or by unscrupulous mechanics, in order to go much faster.
A large portion of the public opinion in those countries see those mini-cars as a safer 4-wheel alternative.
I'm not saying that those mini-cars are safe or that they are great for the environment, just putting things into perspective for people who are not familiar with the situation in Europe.
[1] I don't have official statistics but anecdotally I can say that as a teenager, almost everyone I knew had modified their moped or scooter.
Here's a tip: Inevitably you'll sit outside in a restaurant, 3m from the street -- if you're lucky. Many streets in the Paris city center are one way, and many are on an incline. Pick one where the street slopes down. Most scooters will coast down relatively quietly. Conversely, avoid slopes going up. The locals don't seem to notice it.
I converted an old 1978 Puch Maxi moped that wasn't running to fully electric. Was a great way to learn how EVs work, and build a quiet around-town cruiser. https://photos.app.goo.gl/jgL4VmpmSWA5csba8
I love my electric moped, it is indeed quiet and smooth .. first few days of riding, I almost killed about 7 pedestrians, because people just do not look if they don't hear first, it seems, and I had to adjust my riding stance to be sure I was visible ..
#1 best way to get around any European city. I cannot fathom circumstances where I would go back to petrol-based transportation, also. From here on out its electric, or walk.
I almost got run over by one of those quiet electric scooters. Using sound as a cue isn’t gonna be very useful and it’ll take a while to get used to these things
Sounds to me like you never make a mistake. And of course i did look, thats why I didnt get run over! But we learn cues from patterns and the silent fast moving scooter is a new pattern. If this happened to you you’d understand instead of being snarky. And you probably dimly think I am against silent electric vehicles which I am not.
The other day this almost happened to me on a sidewalk in NYC. Delivery people on silent scooters do drive on sidewalks.
Your safety, especially avoiding being hit, effectively rests on mostly your own shoulders. That's why drivers learn defensive driving which teaches them they can get railed even when they have the right of way.
"I only look up from my phone when I hear an engine, so they should be stopping for me!" and the fact that the driver shares some of the blame isn't much of a consolation once you're laying in a hospital bed.
I also think it's a terrible justification for noise pollution.
That said, I'd be totally down for a city center that was just silent scooters, and where accidents got your scooter license revoked for 6mos no questions asked. ;)
I'm an avid electric moped rider in Vienna, a moderately sized European city, and in my first few weeks of ridership, it was very clear that people just do not look if they don't first have an audio cue .. and indeed, I almost hit a number of people because they didn't hear me. Electric mopeds are smooth and near-silent - especially in the rush of a big city.
I've had days where all I can think of, is how to add sound to my moped in cool ways. #1 idea is to put a kind of buzzer/whistle on my helmet .. thought of the whole 'speed-based synthesiser app' that makes the "drrroooooot" sound (its a nonsense idea), but in the end, a plain old bell seems to be the most effective measure yet, in the effort to continue to enjoy the electric ride ..
I could imagine an industry standard 'speed synthesiser', though, but the jingle-bell is cute too, and cheaper ...
Not sure about other countries, but in Germany at least an AVAS (acoustic vehicle alerting system) must be installed in new electric cars and hybrids. My Zoe sounds like a spaceship while under 30 kph, the sound becoming quieter the faster you go, as from about 20 kph the sound of the tires would be louder than an engine anyway. Could be used for mopeds too.
I think that is a good idea. It doesn't even need to be as loud as an engine and shouldn't be permanently on. Not sure what the sound could be without becoming a nuisance but im sure someone will come up with a good solution for this.
Same here. However, I am thinking about the "loud pipes save lifes" nonsense. Loud pipes should simply be banned, and thats it. The argument always seems to be the same, for kids as well as for grown up bikers: "But they're just kids, they just wanna play!"
Disagree. Banning things is rarely effective, can't be enforced and tends to make people install loud exhaust systems. I've seen far more confederate flags in California recently probably because of all the cancel culture efforts to ban them as an example. Also loud pipes actually do save biker lives, and I think as EV's start to break out of their niche market the manufacturers should have to build in some sort of pedestrian/cyclist/other motor vehicle awareness audio. Electric racing vehicles have to sound like wooping ice cream vans to compete so they don't kill marshals on track...link to VW hill climb EV(the perfect use of electric power - short run, altitude change acceleration)
https://youtu.be/kAJaGAMWjHM
"loud pipe save lives" has always struck me as such an egotistical, anti-social argument. Do you know what would save much more biker lives than loud pipes do? Limiting speed for 2-wheeled vehicles to 30mph, by construction. Somehow, I've seen exactly zero bikers that advocate that.
That's because it's a idiotic idea. A huge problem for bikers is getting out of the way of barely there car, suv and truck drivers looking at phones and drinking hot beverages. Accelerating away from these dangerous idiots is a major problem for cyclists too, who don't have the acceleration abilities of a m/c to get out of the way..
I used to always worry about red BMW drivers as being the most aggressive and worse drivers but these days a red prius is always a major red flag warning based on my experiences with them. Maybe attention wandering sensors and alerts should be put in silent hybrids and ev's to get the driver to be more considerate of those around them
Look at the numbers: 857 bicycle deaths[1] vs 4985 bikers[2]. You can look at the unit sales to see how those translate to percentages - but I hope it's easy to agree that there are more cyclists, in fact.
Your theory that motorcycle max speed saves lives is simply unsupported by any data; if you can't see it, it's just cognitive dissonance - you've made up your mind that you like loud speedy bikes and are just looking for justifications.
(don't get me wrong - I fully understand that a slow motorcycle is no fun. But it _is_ a dangerous vehicle - own that, don't use loud noises and other means that inconvenience people around in order to feel slightly safer, that's just inconsiderate. )
Exactly my point. If you're still doubtful about impact of max speed on fatality rate, check out the EU stats per 100k vehicles, bikes vs mopeds in different countries:
This is an impassioned argument that I hear frequently from those with loud engines. It’s not supported by data: http://www.maids-study.eu/pdf/MAIDS2.pdf. Because of the Doppler effect, the volume of your engine is not playing a significant role in detection by a driver in the vast majority of serious accidents due the fact that most of them are frontal.
On a personal level, the world you’re describing sounds like hell to me. There’s already way too much noise pollution. I ride motorcycles, I agree car drivers are inattentive to non-cars. Slowing down is the answer for noise and safety, save speed for track days.
Slowing down is the answer for noise and safety, save speed for track days < totally agree with that, and we also need more race tracks again.
People who race and do track days often drive like old grannies because they understand the dangers (especially from head on traffic) far better than the average street driver.
I think it inevitable that hybrids and EVs have some sort of noise projection at manufacture by law soon. Audio senses are 360 degree, vision isn't.
this is probably bad but I find driving extremely boring and I don’t hear or pay attention to any noise outside the car when I drive. I can remember only two drives in the last 10 years when I was not distracting myself with an audiobook or podcast. If an ambulance has their siren on I will notice it, thats it.
Your comment reminded me of the piss-take someone made of moped noise. Once the exhaust system has been modified it’s awful. https://youtu.be/0UotZ_ZLB5A
There’s another video kind of like this one that I saw once, but instead of an actually motorized bike they are riding on a conventional bicycle and playing a trumpet to make it sound like a motorcycle.
I can’t find the video now but I think it was filmed in Brazil and the guys on the bicycle we’re like teenagers or something.
Yeah this thing is quite luxurious I’m not sure the authors realized this. Either that or this sponsored content. I know you’re not supposed to say that here, but it really felt like that. Seemed to be totally lacking any critical perspective. Couldn’t figure it out.
I also don’t get how these are supposed to be safe for 14 year olds and pedestrians.
...not to mention they focus on 14 year olds (like they're marketing to parents?). The idea that children should be driving around in vehicles that are the result of millions of man-hours of engineering and thousands of man-hours of labor (adults and likely other children in other countries in the supply chain)... well, that's intensely luxurious. End-of-days luxurious, in my opinion.
Wow. I'm a very grown adult, and I've never been on a vacation that cost $5k.
I've owned several cars, but the most expensive, shiny, sexy one cost $2.4k.
The idea of being a child having $10k spent on me just for summer fun is mind-blowing.
That feels luxurious to me.
I am under the impression that most parents who send their children to university in the US have to scrimp and save to pay for it. Like it's a really big deal. Sometimes only one child of two can go, because there isn't enough to pay for both. So it's not likely there's a lot of cash readily available for summer fun for each child in the years leading up to it.
Round that up to 10k€ and you can get a real car like a Hyundai i10. Meanwhile the Ami is filled with compromises everywhere. Strange windows and doors. Only two seats. Limited max speed.
In fairness, it had to be said that in Italy (fiat Punto, I guess you're Italian?) in the time where no license was required to drive 50cc and no helmet was mandatory it was pretty much a anarchy on streets.
I had to get a license at 16 to drive a 125cc (both theoretical and actual driving test) and many of my peers had taken a smaller test (theoretical only) at 14 to drive their 50cc.
I am satisfied that such exams are now mandatory and helmets are mandatory too.
Well you're right, I misremembered. Also I just looked it up and I think it was actually a Panda and not a Punto (only owned it for a short time around 2009 and it was already close to worthless when I bought it). Still, I think it doesn't change the point much: at 500kg you're closer to a small car than to the lightweight moped for which these exceptions were made...
In the same way, a Panda is a ton. Generally speaking, the lightest you're every going to find in cars is 800kg. I drove a Clio 1 Phase 1, that was 820kg. And let's be honest, it wasn't much more than an engine, seats, and a body. Even a Twizy, which is absolutely nothing is in the 475kg range. Engines are heavy.
But yes, you are closer to a car. if it's truly 500kg.
If these are like most electric cars, the batteries are in a flat compartment at the bottom of the chassis in a box design, giving incredible torsional rigidity and a very low centre of mass, so great cornering. They could be pretty safe for the occupants, even fanging it down a narrow European street. However, not so safe for pedestrians. I'm guessing these won't come with ABS or mm wave collision detection emergency brakes; it's one of those items that is cheap to manufacture and install, but the IP and testing is expensive.
Well you do need to pass a theoretical and practical exam to get the Age 14 moped license. And since automatic mopeds are around 200kg it's much less dangerous.
All mopeds and all the mopeds of my friends were changed to 75cc. Some also changed the escape, and it used to be extremely noisy, but made the little engine faster. A friend of mine had a horrible unstable moped (Califfone), but it was tweaked to the level that it became dangerous to drive. That was in Naples in the 90s.
How exactly does one increase the engine displacement on a moped?
I’ve heard this claim many times, but more often than not it was just a random mechanic who charged a few hundred euros to put a different speedometer with inflated readings.
I modded some of my own motorbikes to improve air intake, changing the exhaust, and other minor things but I consider those to be in the realm of “cosmetics” (audible cosmetics?) rather than real major performance changing.
I just don’t see how you could bore out an extra 50% of displacement on engines made so cheaply.
It depends on the model of the engine, in some cases the bore can be bored larger (and an increased size piston to match is used) in some the whole cylinder (and piston) is replaced with a similar one but with a larger bore.
But in many cases there was no actual need to increase the size of the engine bore, as more often than not the original engine has much more power and it is limited by external devices (once - think of the '70's/*80's it was common to have the same engine 50 cc with 5-7 HP reduced to 1.5 HP by using an undersized carburetor, a smaller exhaust and even - in some cases a simple washer with a smaller hole in the intake).
I remember how (again this is the '70's) most "legal" mopeds in Italy had a carburetor (a Dell'Orto 14/12, meaning 14 mm diameter engine side, 12 mm air filter side) that was often drilled to 14/14 or replaced by a 18/18 or a 19/19. That was enough, without any other change to go from 1.5 HP (the "legal limit" at the time) to 3-4 HP, then changing addtionally the exhaust it went to 5-6 HP, then lightly enlarging the intake opening and "transfers" in the cylinder (remember these were two stroke engines) and adding 2-3 "transfers" was what made them reach 7-9 HP.
The best (in the sense of funniest) performance kit[1] was one for the Ciao (and similar Piaggio light mopeds that originally mounted an even smaller 12/10) that added a second carburetor (not particularly uncospicuous), example:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCenA3H9siBLrpRUWCiLlWHw
I am not an expert, but in Denmark I believe they literally "drilled" the combustion chamber bigger and replaced the pistons (among other modifications).
Back in the early 90s when this was something my friends were into, several of them had Yamaha 4 gears capable to going over 100kph (60mph) while the legal limit was 30kph (~19mph).
Actual 2 stroke mechanic here with a old tomos. How? It's a literal lawnmower engine. You order up different pistons and head and bada bing put it together you have 75ccs. Kits are around 200usd. Check out treatland a large mopey seller on the west coast
I still recall my first mod on a small motocross 50cc 2 stroke motorcycle I had when I was like 15. The thing had 6 gears, but due to my weight paired by the heavily underpowered engine, I barely could use it up the 5th gear, therefore something had to be done. That was in the early 80s, and the engine was probably a mid 70s design with cast iron cylinder. Some then friends of mine who were into modding for fun told me they could do the work if I bought the mod, so I did and a few days later we were in their garage. The mod consisted in the complete head, cylinder and piston (still 50cc but racing grade chromed aluminium cylinder etc.), plus a new carburetor (from 14/9 to 22 iirc). After the mod was done it took a while to turn it on for the first time, but then after some tuning it became reliable and I could get back home.
I spent a couple days driving it, then the engine seized. Having done anything wrong, I called those friends to ask explanations, but as predicted they weren't collaborative, so I bought a second mod (reforming the chromed aluminium cylinder would cost more back then) and this time mounted it by myself. Turns out the old one broke because one of the G-clips on the piston was not properly secured and fell out of its receptacle destroying the cylinder chamber. The new mod, although performed by a complete novice, lasted some good years until the day some bastard stole my motorcycle.
In the end, it cost me all the money I had saved, but was a fun and instructional experience nonetheless, also for teaching me that some friends when things go wrong often stop being such.
So called "big bore" kits are common for 50cc scooters. You replace part of the engine block and sometimes the cylinder head. 50cc is pretty small when you thing about it so you don't need a massive change to get a performance boost.
Most of the time all you need to replace is the cylinder and piston. For two-strokes, this is often a very simple task. It might be as easy as removing four bolts and a circlip.
I wonder if 14-year-olds would drive these micro cars differently than mopeds because they're more enclosed. Does the inherent sense of danger with a moped limit you in some ways?
As a former italian 14-years-old, I can say that I did not perceive any inherent sense of danger driving a moped. If anything, I would say that a minicar would have prevented me from constantly zig-zaging between cars in the city traffic.
OTOH, a couple of moped accidents have quickly taught me to pay a lot of attention to other vehicles and to somehow anticipate their behavior. It's a risky but effective school.
As a parent of a current 14yo, I notice that her and her friends show almost no interest in mopeds or any form of autonomous transportation, while for us it was a must have - either you parents gave you one, or you kept relentlessly for fighting for it. I don't know what to make of it.
> I notice that her and her friends show almost no interest in mopeds or any form of autonomous transportation
Is this a broader thing? Are kids just not as interested in getting out of the house as they used to be? Less interested in being independent? Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and they're just more interested in being on TikTok.
The more likely explanation is that your teenagers have some public transportation available, so they can go somewhere if they want to.
Public transportation was non existent for the parent 30 years ago. If you look at cities all around the world, most tubes and overground lines were constructed in the past few decades.
The quality of public transportation in my city has not changed in a relevant way in the past 20 years. My teenager spends way more time at home than I used to (there's the old fart!). The internet is definitely a more relevant change.
I live near a university, so I would have to say no. Scooters tend to be ridden full throttle, limited only by the governor (which is often defeated) and the weight of the rider.
If anything, the enclosed body might make it more boring, and thus more likely to be driven slowly.
Modifications were extremely common with 2-strokes engines. Now (since about 10 years ago) mopeds must have 4-strokes engines and even with modifications they aren’t very fast or sprinting. Maybe for this reason I have seen many more electric mopeds in the last few years.
In Italy, particularly in Bologna, I've seen a bunch of small three-wheeled cars, I think single-seaters, that look like miniature race cars, but seem to be electic urban mobility vehicles, easy to park etc. What are those, if you know what I'm talking about?
Edit: Ah, never mind. I just had a look around myself. I think what I've seen are Renault Twizzys, judging from the pictures I found online. There seem to be quite a few of them in Bologna, for some reason.
exactly I love the twizzy but how expensive it is with doors, and it didn't even have glass windows it was too much.
Basically the twizzy was 18k usd for an electric two setter.
wheread I bought a Dodge Attitude 3 pistons, extremely fuel efficient 4 setter. for 9k usd.
I couldn't justify to my wife to buy half the car in twice the money... I tried
Isn't it location specific you are thinking about? EU norm is 30km/h for mopeds and bikelane only, and car drivers-license for 45km/h on the road. 45km/h on a moped would cause a fine if the police sees you. Unless it is in a country not following the EU norm of course.
It was so easy, you only had to modify the variator (the automatic transmisión of the scooter) because the limitation was just a low gear that didn’t let you go faster (think of driving always on first gear). You removed a stop on the variator that let you use the full range and the limit was gone.
Anyway, 2 stroke motors were also easily tunable, and people used to change the escape, carburetor, even sometimes the cilinder was changed to have more power on those little machines.
Norwegian here: When I grew up (I was born in 1980) there was a thriving market for performance parts for "moped"s small motorcycles (max 2,5hp, 50ccm).
You could get replacement cylinders and everything. According to what I heard if you upgraded everything you could get about 16hp out what used to be one of these underpowered machines.
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50cc moped and scooter hacking and ricing is no longer fashionable.
I see a lot more of suits-on-a-tmax and deliveroo-like drivers these days. Oh, and quite a few of those loud-right-out-of-the-box cars and motorcycles.
I haven't lived in Italy for 10 years, so I'm a bit out of the loop! Here in Australia I see a lot of the delivery guys, but very few maxi-scooters (I think one reason for that is the way cities/roads are built, which makes it more convenient to choose public transport or car over scooters).
I think this is good advice in most any thread on HN. I have lost count of the number of "In Europe it is this way" posts that have immediate replies saying "umm, not in all of Europe" from some other European.
There is a fair amount of difference even between various states in the US, and I imagine that the difference between European states is much more significant. Difficult to generalize.
"Seven countries require children to be 14 years (Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Portugal)"
and this is only EU members, other non-members such as Switzerland also have 14yo minimum age for mopeds.
In addition,
"Ten Member States allow children aged 15 years to acquire a driving license for a moped (Austria, Czechia, Germany, Spain, Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia)."
which is just one year older, so I would say it's a very similar situation.
Adding on to this, it shouldn't be very shocking even for Americans. Half the US states consider scooters to just be electric bikes, and have no restrictions beyond speed limits, and helmet laws.
It's a shame scooters are illegal in NYC, it seems like it would be a great place for it.
I'll never understand what drove the decision to make the limit for these 45km/h. The speed limit on town frequently is 50km/h which puts these things maximum speed just an infuriatingly small amount below that. I think everyone would be safer if the maximum for the vehicles was 55km/h since it would reduce inventive for risky overtaking. Even doing the opposite and reducing it to 40km/h would be safer since it would make it easier to overtake therm
It might have to do with the fact that more speed causes exponentially more damage and lethality. I don’t know the exact figures but something like hitting a pedestrian at 40kmh they’d have 90% chance of survival and that goes down to 25% at 50kmh (I don’t know the exact numbers but that’s the idea)
Maybe 45kmh was the best trade off between lethality and speed?
16 in Portugal also. However the majority of users are old people without driving license. These mini-cars are funnily called "papa reformas" that translates as "retirement eater".
I think they have a higher mortality in countries where regular bikes are more common because the elderly use them to get back on the streets again.
In the Netherlands the introduction of ebikes (limited to 25kph) has caused a spike in bike traffic deaths because many elderly people are brittle and don't have the response times they used to have, causing dangerous situations even at relatively low speeds.
Those mortality rates only really affect the drivers of the electric bikes though. AFAIK there's no increase in deaths because of drivers hitting others. After all, an electric bike, even going at high speed, is just a silent motor bike that any driver using their mirrors should be able to detect anyway.
“The number of people over the age of 70 was 1.5 million in 1999 while there were 2.3 million early 2019, an increase of 56%! Partially helped by e-bikes (which are not more dangerous than ordinary bicycles) this much larger group of elderly people cycles more often and further, which is unfortunately reflected in the fatality rate.”
Technological improvements that have helped increase safety of e-bicycles for the elderly are weight decrease because of battery improvements and lower centers of gravity (mid-drive electric bicycles are becoming more common). Both help decrease the number of deadly accidents not involving other traffic.
Some (maybe only slightly related or relevant) background:
In Germany, there is a pretty serious problem with dangerous driving and street racing: In the last ten or so years, there has been long string of downtown races that have killed numerous innocent bystanders in all major German cities.
This went so far that recently the German law has been changed and killing somebody while participating in a street race is now treated as "first degree murder". This year, the first conviction under this law was upheld by the German "supreme court". Still, street racing is on the rise.
Now, the uncomfortable truth is that the demographics of the offenders skew towards young German men that do not consider themselves to be culturally German or even European.
I am not trying to enter a debate on the how much value different cultures place on life.
What I am trying to do is to point out that when you consider how the human mind works, it is almost inevitable that these issues are starting to appear to be interlinked. What you have here is a very hot debate on road safety, which is already a topic that is very emotionally charged for a lot of people. Considering that there does actually seem to be a cultural correlation, it is somewhat predictable, if sad, that the public debate around here is now slowly starting to turn into an cultural/ethnic argument.
My personal opinion is that we need a massive crackdown on street racing and dangerous driving to prevent this topic from turning into yet another ethnic fault line in Germany.
I'm with you... Once in Thailand I was shocked that nobody on mopeds wears a helmet. My conclusion was that the people doesn't value their lives high enough. Sadly, I don't know how to put it differently. I don't know if this is culture, education, or what.
Instead of minicars or scooters, the absolutely safest option would be to use regular small cars that are re-registered with a speed limiter.
Used small cars are cheap and they come with all the safety features that have been around and mandated for decades. They are infinitely more safe than these plastic boxes. Just tack a safety triangle in the back of the car to warn others of the slow speed. When the young person turns 18 they could just have the speed limiter removed and continue driving the same car.
Sweden has a local exception that allows turning old cars into tractors that 16-year-olds can drive. There are other limitations and those are really slow, and building tractors out of old Volvos doesn't sound too unsafe.
As your parent pointed out, many places have a deeply entrenched culture of owners and mechanics illegally tuning vehicles. A speed limiter would not last long.
That's a problem for law enforcement and MOT inspections. Young people notoriously tune scooters and minicars already, there's absolutely no news there.
Penalties will take care of most of the tuners. For exampple, if you get caught with a disabled speed limiter you will have your license suspended for two years and your real full-power driver's license postponed by two years. Also insurance companies will impose hefty penalties if you're driving something else (more powerful) than what you've insured. If you crash, the insurance company will be charging you for the damages.
In my country at least, the regular vehicle inspections mandated by law are not performed by some theoretical incorruptible government office, but rather by the same mechanics who are willing to perform the illegal modifications. You can imagine how well that works in practice. (Which is not to say that I don't agree with you in theory, but people don't work that way.)
Agreed. In addition to making the world worse by having more cars on the road, we can also make it even worse by establishing a dystopian surveillance scheme.
> For context, in many European countries (including Italy where I grew up) 14 year olds
Isn't this 16 in most countries?
> have post-market modifications installed, either at home or by unscrupulous mechanics, in order to go much faster.
Which is ridiculously stupid, as it voids any insurance you have (obligatory at least in Germany) and may prevent you from ever getting a driving licence if caught by police.
In EU by the law, limit inside towns and cities is 50km/h - so it is a spot on speed.
By the way in cities average speed is very low. For instance in London the average speed within a mile of the city center dropped 1.22mph from an average of 6.35mph in 2016 to just 5.13mph in 2017.
It's simply not true for the cities, people largely drive around 50 km/h if that's the limit. On the highways however going 30+ over the limit is a norm.
Seems same in Bosnia, I traveled there and ppl said I should follow the speed limit at all times due to likelihood of police punishing with big fines. Uhh.. that didn't last long. I was getting tailgated and passed angrily by basically every single person on the road, and even when I did get pulled over by the police (wasn't speeding or violating any driving rule there -- I read up on them), they just sent me on my way once I acted totally oblivious and also they could barely understand my English... heh! Too much hassle to try to get a bribe out of me I guess?
A car I was in was stopped three times in 10 minutes the moment it crossed into the "other" part of Sarajevo. Just before, the driver suggested I watch his speed, which was 5km/h below the limit the whole time. The police were simply taking money from the other ethnic group.
> police conduct around the Inter-Entity Boundary Line separating the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, had been the "greatest obstacle to freedom of movement", including intimidation and arbitrary fines.
I used to live in Florence, I'm familiar. Yes, cars are dangerous even at low speeds, but I find it annoying that if I drive at 50 km/h in a low-vis, twisty and narrow hill road the car before me will almost invariably ignore the safety distance to signal displeasure towards my slowness.
> but I find it annoying that if I drive at 50 km/h in a low-vis, twisty and narrow hill road the car before me will almost invariably ignore the safety distance to signal displeasure towards my slowness.
I guess you meant the car behind you.
It is called tailgating.
It is very annoying, I agree, but if I can offer en explanation, in those conditions to overtake you wanna cover the less possible distance, being closer to the car in front of you is a way to make it possible.
Having said that: compared to the population the most dangerous cities in Italy are, in order, Genoa, Florence and Milan.
That could explain it too.
To deal with a taligater, according to the experts, you should
> Brake slowly before stopping. Avoid tailgaters when possible by changing lanes. If you cannot change lanes, slow down enough to encourage the tailgater to go around you. If this does not work, pull off the road when safe and let the tailgater pass.
Yes, tailgating, exactly. I'm mostly talking about narrow roads where you need to slow down and maybe go a bit outside of the paved area to let another car pass in the opposite direction; these are common in the hills of Tuscany and overtaking is impossible. My approach if I'm not in a hurry and there is just one car behind me is to slow down to 10 km/h until the tailgater gets the message.
50km/h would be spot on for speed. 45km/h will just hold up the traffic behind you and lead to dangerous behaviour from frustrated drivers. I don't think this would be very safe to drive in NZ, but if it went 50km/h it would be fine (our traffic really does go 50km/h, and those averages must include waiting at lights, etc.).
Frustrated drivers need to learn to calm down instead of engaging in dangerous behavior. That's really the root of the safety problem that is big powerful cars.
True, but antagonising them isn't going to make that happen, and making this go just 5km/h faster is an easy way to avoid the problem entirely. Maybe "dangerous" isn't quite the right word, but certainly more aggressive, and it's not fun being on the receiving end, even if you're physically safe.
Someone who can't handle going 5 km/h under the speed limit (aka maximum) shouldn't be trusted to operate a motor vehicle.
Sadly, that describes all too many drivers. Enforcement and normalization of slower speeds through a critical mass of slower vehicles could change things.
Ultimately, people have shown that the need to be "tamed" while driving cars.
> Someone who can't handle going 5 km/h under the speed limit shouldn't be trusted to operate a motor vehicle
Neither should someone who can't handle going at 5km/h faster than the speed limit.
It will happen one day that they'll need to and maybe that day it will rain and that will be the day they cause an accident, possibly involving others.
Limits are not there because that's the maximum speed you should be _able_ to drive, they are there for pedestrian safety and to reduce the noise.
> . Enforcement and normalization of slower speeds through a critical mass of slower vehicles could change things.
On the contrary, I hope there will be way faster vehicles, underground, only for those trained to drive them or machine operated.
Everyone else should just ride a bike or walk or catch a bus or a (slow) cab.
The need for speed won't go back, we need to move faster and faster, the more our lives go faster.
p.s. before someone says it, I live in a very expensive neighborhood just to be at walking distance from my office. Even though I love driving and are a semi professional trained pilot, I usually don't drive in the city, unless I have to.
But I can understand why people forced to use a car want to drive them as fast as the limit permits.
The truth is that 50km/h is already way to fast in a city. A good driver who actually takes into account everything that can happen in a city would never drive at 50 km/h as it is already way to fast to keep pedestrian safe, at least in most European cities.
Nobody needs to drive at higher speed than the limits. If you can't wait behind a slow vehicle, unless you have a dying person on your side, maybe you should not drive in the first place...
> The truth is that 50km/h is already way to fast in a city.
The average speed in Rome is 8.3 km/h
So yeah, speeding is almost never the problem.
But people doing something else while driving is.
> If you can't wait behind a slow vehicle, unless you have a dying person on your side, maybe you should not drive in the first place...
If you are driving a car to go really slowly, driving in the middle of the streets, because you are too scared to drive too close to the side of the streets, why are you even driving in the first place?
It's like driving a motorbike with the training wheels because you have no equilibrium.
Would you find that acceptable?
And why not?
People can have many reasons to speed, they are not your concern, if you feel to drive slowly, just get out of the way, as experts of road safety suggest to do (that's exactly what I do on highways all the time)
> If someone behind you clearly wants to go faster, remember that it’s not your job to prevent them from doing so. Staying in front of a driver like this when you have space to move over could lead to even more aggressive driving, so it’s best to steer aside and let them drive the speed they’re going to drive (it’s their problem if they get pulled over, not yours!). If you’re genuinely concerned for the safety of yourself or others on the roadway, pull over and call local authorities to report an erratic or unsafe driver.
EDIT:
Some stats regarding Rome (the city where I was born and live)
- Rome has the highest number of accidents per capita, but the lowest mortality per capita in the whole Lazio region
- 75% of the accidents in the region happen in the cities, 25% outside them
- 52% of the accidents on urban roads and 62% of those on extra-urban roads happen on the straights
- most of them caused by distraction
- 45% of the accidents of the year in Rome happen between June and September due to the higher mobility of holiday season
- the two age groups where mortality is raising are 15-19 and over 70. Younger people number one cause of death is speeding (sometimes under the influence), due to inexperience (and the eventual alteration) they can't handle it. For older people is misjudgement: slower reaction times and impaired senses (vision, hearing) lead to deadly crashes.
- 80% of the accidents happen between 8-20, but most of the deadly one happen between 2 and 7 o'clock. Again, most probable causes are: distractions, sleepiness, driver fatigue, DUI.
Driving is a very complex operation, that requires skills and focus, and engage all the body, especially when using manual gears, it is very similar to playing drums.
If people don't give full attention on what they are doing it is very easy to make mistakes that could lead to very bad consequences or even death.
Hoping that other drivers will compensate for my own lack of focus, it's not the safest of the bets.
So, in my opinion, being a driver concerned of the safety yourself and others, means focusing on what you are doing and preventing potentially dangerous situations.
Blaming other drivers will not help you if you don't look twice before crossing a large street late at night or if you speed up to catch the yellow at the traffic-light.
Road safety statistics goes totally against your statement. There's a clear corelation between speed and accidents. You can claim that the person who are dangerous are the one driving slowly to stay in control, but the reality is that the real dangers is people thinking they are pilots and not understanding that a road is a shared infrastructure, not a private race track.
I started driving when it was the same really bad mentality of people having to make place to the one who wants to go fast. And it wasn't great at all, safety records show it.
When i started to understand that the best thing to do when I had such a "pilot" behind me was to slow down until the situation could be less dangerous, I just found myself in way less dangerous situations.
So no, you can be the best driver of the world, 50 km/h in a city is already way too dangerous for pedestrian, with a high death rate in case of accident. The unconfortable slow driver you hate ? Maybe not as dangerous as you are... Actually maybe making road safer.
You want to drive "fast"? Think about the safety of other people it involves.
> So no, you can be the best driver of the world, 50 km/h in a city is already way too dangerous for pedestrian
Nobody has ever said the contrary...
> The unconfortable slow driver you hate ? Maybe not as dangerous as you are
Maybe is a no until you prove it.
Meanwhile I can show you that the categories that suffer more deaths per capita are really young and inexperienced people and older people with slow reaction times and impaired vision (the traffic light was red but they didn't see it).
> You want to drive "fast"? Think about the safety of other people it involves.
I never said that.
I've said that if you can't handle to drive fast (fast as in slightly above the speed limits), you are dangerous even at low speed.
If you can't swim in a swimming pool, will you be a better swimmer in the Ocean?
As an example: my dad never liked driving, he never learned to be a good driver and as a result now that he is older his driving skill have lowered so much that he is a danger to himself.
He could drive meh at 50kmh when he was 40, barely when he was 50, now that he is 75 at 30kmh everything looks too fast for his reflexes. He breaks in the middle of the straight because he sees shadows, wait too long at crosses but then he passes in the wrong moment because he gets frustrated that other cars behind him are forming a long line because of him.
He never had to challenge his mediocre driving skills, because they were almost good enough and now he can't drive safely anymore.
Driving is like a muscle, if you don't exercise it and stimulate it, it will atrophy.
Cities like Rome, with the highest number of cars per capita in the West (73 cars every 100 people) need to either remove cars from the streets entirely or deploy large programs of safe driving because the population is getting older and their driving skills are not getting better.
Forcing everyone to go by bike or at 10kmh is not a solution.
At 20kmh a delay in reaction times of just one second means 6 meters.
It is a lot!
And I repeat it to be clear: I don't even drive anymore in Rome, I simply walk, because it's too frustrating as an experience.
What they need to learn is one thing, what actually happens right now is another. In many countries if you drive below 50km/h you will get a lot of rage and dangerous maneuvers directed at you. It sucks but it is the state of things now and you don't want to be on a fragile vehicle in the middle of it.
Curious as to the downvotes. 50km/h is the usual city speed limit in NZ, and going slower than that in the car lane will cause real problems (occasionally I have to briefly on my e-bike, so I know from experience). Our roads are mostly wide enough that bicycles and e-bikes are generally off to the side so cars going 50km/h can easily pass, but this vehicle wouldn't fit.
I agree with what you’re saying, but average (assuming it’s a mean) speed is not really a useful figure to determine if someone would be holding up traffic, because traffic doesn’t go a constant speed, especially in a city. Something like an 80 percentile speed might be better.
Most people don't respect the strict speed limits in Europe. As long as there's no radar and no heavy traffic around I can guarantee cars will go faster than 50km/h.
The thing is why should we need radar, cameras or ever people to behave like saints to obey speed limits?
Every major vehicle manufacturers is working on self-driving. So just how difficult would it be for them to make cars now as an intermediate step that actually obeyed the speed laws?
In the UK, The National Police Chiefs Council stated that speeding is believed to be a significant factor in 17 fatalities and 126 serious injuries on the country's roads each month. Globally ...
I don't know how many people the vehicle makers should be allowed to kill and maim because of a speeding problem that is entirely technically preventable. But at the moment it feels like they are getting away with something that is uncomfortably close to murder.
Firstly, it'll be ineffective. Going 60 in a 50 zone, which many people do, isn't going to result in many more fatalities, most speeding fatalities probably come from drivers who were going stupidly fast. That kind of driver is just going to go for used cars if new cars won't let you drive as you wish.
Secondly, there's a more fundamental issue. Most people are not going to be ok with the lawmaker exerting that level of control over their cars, because it's 1984-y.
Just because something kills people doesn't mean it always has to be completely stopped and eradicated. People die from eating too much junk food, should we forbid it? People die to stairs, are you going to legally force constructions to pad any staircases with cushions? People ruin their lives due to alcohol. People drown in pools. Kids get injured on playgrounds - think of the children.
There's a line where you need to leave things up to individuals, even if some of them are going to fuck up, because otherwise you end up creating a draconian state, which is way worse than any possible outcome created by people misusing their agency. Trying to enforce speed limits this hard is way over that line.
Sales of alcohol have gradually been lowered in the Nordic countries through punitive taxation and a requirement that only a state monopoly can sell liquor. Yes, there are still people who drink destructively, but figures are way down compared to some decades ago before these restrictions. Moreover, the majority of the public is in favor of maintaining these restrictions instead of loosening them, so there hasn’t been that backlash against a "draconian state" that you speak of. It is definitely possible for a large enough group of citizens to be so concerned about the harmful effects of something that they do not believe it should be left to the individual.
Junk food, too, is the target of similar restrictions in several countries now. Also, playgrounds have been scaled down in the last couple of decades for safety reasons, and in the USA that wasn’t due to draconian laws, it was due to fear of lawsuits.
Taxing is not the same as forbidding. If you forbid alcohol, there is going to be a backlash, see prohibition. In the same way you can "tax" speeders with speeding cameras but I don't think people are going to be okay with literally getting forced to not do it.
> It is definitely possible for a large enough group of citizens to be so concerned about the harmful effects of something that they do not believe it should be left to the individual.
True. Everyone is fine with heroin being illegal. That's why I said that there is a line and not that you should leave everything to the individual.
> in the USA that wasn’t due to draconian laws, it was due to fear of lawsuits.
Is that not the same? Just that the US already has draconian laws?
Everyone is not fine with heroin being illegal. Heroin being illegal is wildly irresponsible and immoral because while heroin is a dangerous drug, far more danger is created by an unclean and unpredictable supply and by pushing addicts into crime to finance it.
The big difference is that speeding puts others lives at risk. Someones heroin addiction for the most part will themselves at risk (except where keeping it illegal pushes people into crime to finance their addiction, which is another reason to provide legal access)
Even in countries where heroin possession and use has been decriminalized (for the compassionate reasons you mention), heroin is still illegal in that there are still prohibitions against its production and sale. It would be a fringe position indeed to say that all laws relating to hard drugs be taken off the books.
It would be fringe position, yes, but decriminalisation is not enough - it does not fix the issues with heroin use, for example, which are tied to a mix of cost and unreliable supply.
Hence it's important to get people to stop seeing opposition to legalisation of these drugs as "obvious", because opposing legalisation of these drugs is extremely irrational.
Current laws on this are immoral and deeply harmful. The vast majority of drugs should be fully legalised and regulated, not decriminalised. The only reasonable exceptions are possibly things like fentanyl and "synthetic cannabis" variants that few people use because they want just those drugs but because of poor availability of safer drugs.
Any evidence-based drugs policy would involve full legalisation of most drugs - there's simply nothing that suggests the current laws achieve their claimed intent, and plenty that demonstrate they are causing massive harm both to addicts and to victims of related crime.
> there's simply nothing that suggests the current laws achieve their claimed intent
Decriminalizing heroin possession and use, while keeping production and sale illegal, has already resulted in absolutely massive reduction of heroin use in several places. Sometimes to the point that there’s only a few elderly addicts hanging on but virtually no younger users are taking up the drug. I’d say that the policies achieved their claimed intent. What more do you want?
> Going 60 in a 50 zone, which many people do, isn't going to result in many more fatalities,
If it is technically preventable without impeding the lawful usage, why is it assumed that the killing or maiming of even one extra person is okay?
> That kind of driver is just going to go for used cars if new cars won't let you drive as you wish
Perhaps, but isn't being surrounded by vehicles driving at the legal speed going to slow them down? And if that doesn't slow them down, then aren't the police likely to have more resources to deal with them?
> the lawmaker exerting that level of control over their cars, because it's 1984-y.
And having our roads festooned with cameras and number plate readers while still suffering the deaths and injuries is not a worse vision of dystopia?
> because otherwise you end up creating a draconian state, which is way worse than any possible outcome created by people misusing their agency. Trying to enforce speed limits this hard is way over that line.
I know what Top Gear and the rest of the industry with the largest advertising budget on the planet might like us to think. But speeding is not a human right. It's not much like freedom of speech; is it? So just how would preventing law-abiding citizens from being killed or maimed by illegal driving bring about a "draconian state"?
When science and technology make it preventable, why should it be acceptable to allow our loved ones to continue to be killed and maimed just so that some people can continue to break the law and drive dangerously?
It's not about being able to speed, it's about the government forcibly taking your control of your personal property away. In that way, it's an infringement of your basic human rights, and it's done basically because you're thought to be too incompetent to follow the rules, too stupid to be able to differentiate good from bad. And while that's merely insulting, what's actually dangerous about is that it's taking people's agency away at the same time that it's empowering the government to arbitrarily justify any further measures because "people die".
You mentioned free speech, so here's an analogy: Even with free speech, there are certain things you're not allowed to say, and most people agree that's reasonable. Imagine someone is bullied into suicide by hate speech, and we have the technology to implant people with chips that make it impossible for them to say these things.
Would you argue in the same way that "if it is technically preventable without impeding the lawful usage, why is it assumed that the killing or maiming of even one extra person is okay?"
In any case it should be clear that that would be a rather extremist position.
> It's not about being able to speed, it's about the government forcibly taking your
> control of your personal property away.
Is not every bought or sold item or service subject to some form of "government" regulation? Looking at Lead for instance; isn't it materially beneficial to a society that it is no longer a routine constituent of our gasoline or drinking water pipes? Is our health not better? Isn't stopping companies selling vehicles that can break speeding laws the same?
> re: mind-control chips. Would you argue in the same way that
> "if it is technically preventable without impeding the lawful usage,
> why is it assumed that the killing or maiming of even one extra
> person is okay?"
When, or if mind-control chips come into being, then it'll be up to the societies of which we are all parts to decide how, or if they want to use them. It'll be one heck of a debate; freedom of internal thought vs stopping rapists and serial killers.
Now, if they screw up, and "bad" mind-control comes to pass, will anyone seriously be saying? "you know what; it was because they stopped speeding cars on public roads". Would that be likely? Or are neural links, miniaturization, better batteries, etc and a sh*tty society misusing them more likely to be orders of magnitude more culpable?
So when science and technology make it (where "it" is speeding) preventable - who wouldn't want to use it to prevent theirs and other's loved ones from being killed and maimed?
> Isn't stopping companies selling vehicles that can break speeding laws the same?
No, because you can just not speed, whereas you can't just not drink the lead in your tap water. Your proposal is a different, far more extreme form of regulation.
> So when science and technology make it (where "it" is speeding) preventable - who wouldn't want to use it to prevent theirs and other's loved ones from being killed and maimed?
You keep repeating this thing about saving your loved ones, but it's not as simple as that. You have tunnel vision on the death toll and don't consider what other consequences you're creating. Reasoning that "if technology allows it and it can save a life, it's automatically worth doing" can justify a lot of hamfisted measures.
> It'll be one heck of a debate; freedom of internal thought vs stopping rapists and serial killers.
Here you even acknowledge that there is something to be lost in exchange for stopping bad things. That's my entire point. The speeding issue is exactly the same, just with smaller stakes.
Take away people's agency piece by piece to prevent speeding, murder and rape, and you end up with a society where everyone can live to 100 but no one is even human anymore.
It feels like doing 60mph in a 50mph zone is about the same thus people assume it’s equivalent even if it’s much more dangerous. The issue is most clearly demonstrated by stopping distance going up by ~40% even though it’s only 20% faster.
However that’s understating the difference. It’s common to be breaking just before impact at higher speeds you have less time to react and thus break less. If you go from 50MPH to 30 MPH that’s likely a completely survivable collision. Breaking from 60MPH to 50 MPH is less so as your dealing with V^2 = ~2.8x the energy. Similarly, many accidents are simply avoided...
I found one thing which is a bit counter to this, but not directly relevant to cities. Germany manages to have no speed limit on the majority of the Autobahn without a higher rate of accidents compared to surrounding countries.
It’s rather hard to directly collect such accident data, but plenty of studies have looked into the effect.
Anyway, overall safety of a given road is a separate factor. Germany has approximately 650,000 km of roads and only 12,996 kilometres (2016) where part of the Autobahn. So while per mile the Autobahn is safer than the older parts of the German road network, speed is hardly the only factor involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Germany#Roads
They have very high standards for what constitutes a no speed limit zone and such roads are safe enough to offset the added dangers of such speeds.
Some of the replies to you are focused on “nanny state” objections. So, how about a private sector solution here? Offer people a significant reduction in insurance for installing a speed governor that limits speeds to legal limits?
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try and reduce speeds. Speed kills, and that’s a fact. A lot of the killing is externalized as well.
I’ve said it before, but people who drive public streets like a track should either get themselves to a track, or internalize their risk-taking by buying a motorcycle. As a motorcyclist, I’m very aware of safety trade-offs I’m making. Oddly enough, not being inside a steel cage is a pretty good reminder to keep safety very high on the list of things I think about while riding.
No, they will not go that fast. The infrastructure simply makes it impossible.
Most European city centers do not have four lane straight-as-a-line roads with only a sign "restricting" the speed. On tight, winding roads with near-zero visibility at junctions, it's rare to even hit the speed limit. Driving faster doesn't happen because it feels (and is!) dangerous.
That's the kind of road this vehicle is designed for.
I've driven in a fair number of European cities, and it's true that in the very center you're just not going to hit the speed limit, if you can drive there at all. But that's confined to a tiny area, outside of which you will easily and safely hit the speed limit on many streets. And practically no one is going to be driving in the center only, because then it doesn't even make sense to own a car.
and in this places, roads are either near empty (so overtaking is safe on a double-lane, otherwise, chances are high, you have a crossing every 100m and so can not drive more than 30km/h either), or there are endless traffic jams. Both cases, this thing works great.
You're right of course when it comes to many European countries. I really can't understand why comments along yours are downvoted on this thread. It's enough to watch how German drivers behave in Poland for example. Once the threat of a heavy fine and speed traps at many places in the city is gone they speed recklessly the same way as locals. If you respect a speed limit in Polish cities you will get a lot of rage directed at you. That's the case in many European countries I drove through as well. Not all countries mind you but most of them.
I have a theory that this is due to pressure from the car industry. All non-car alternatives are nerfed: The 45km/h for these things, the 25km/h limit for electric bicycles, the 20km/h limit for e-scooters. All are 5-10km/h too slow to drive on the road without impeding traffic, making them significantly less attractive.
Or you know....it's a smart move by the legislators. Want to drive at car-like speeds? Get a car licence with everything that it involves then.
With bicycles it makes even more sense - since the reality is that despite what the law says, many people ride them on pavements - so the speed should be limited to what is safe for pedestrians.
It is of course a smart move by the legislators, since the car industry in critically important for the economy and "proper" cars have a much larger profit margin.
That's ridiculous. The legislators don't have any reason (except being bribed by car industry) to encourage people to use cars instead of more human-friendly modes of transport.
Also, if people are riding bikes on the pavement, it's a clear signal that they don't have a safe alternative.
>>The legislators don't have any reason (except being bribed by car industry) to encourage people to use cars instead of more human-friendly modes of transport.
Wait, I'm confused now, are you arguing for or against this thing then? You do realize that the Ami is made by Citroen, which is a car company, right? So....which way is this alleged bribe supposed to flow, exactly?
And really, like you can't see any reason at all?
Just off the top of my head - legislators say, for the sake of safety, that if a vehicle of any type can reach 50km/h or higher, it's a car. That's a car speed, therefore it should require a car licence. Because of that, manufacturers artificially limit the speed to 45km/h, so you don't need a licence to drive one of these. I'm not sure how would the car manufacturers bribe here - for? Or against this law? Because honestly, I can make an argument for either.
>>Also, if people are riding bikes on the pavement, it's a clear signal that they don't have a safe alternative.
You're stating the obvious here. Equally obvious is that the councils "should just build more bike paths". But in reality there is no money to do this. Local councils have barely enough money to clean the streets and patch the worst potholes, and building new bike lanes is a far higher expenditure than this. The problem might be solved with time, or it might not. The law should reflect reality(and it does), not some made up utopia that doesn't exist.
I don't think, building bike lanes in dense cities is hard. A bit of Jersey wall, some signs, single lane traffic for cars. You save a lot of pothole repairs soon!
Which may be appropriate for an exceptional piece of infrastructure capable of hosting heavy vehicles as well as cars.
If you are going to compare "infrastructure" then you have to compare everything, including how many people benefit - everyone who shops at a supermarket benefits from the road system even if they own no vehicle.
In which way should the law reflect reality? Allowing bikes on pavement if there’s no money to build bike lanes? Good idea; I agree. Telling bikes to screw off and you have to walk your bike along the sidewalk because there’s no money for bike lanes here and we only allow cars on pavement? Not getting my support.
You are correct. They also build cars that can do double the speed limit and sell this as a feature. I sometimes wonder Does the theory extend to the idea that the world would collapse if petroleum taxation vanished overnight?
In my country the law explicitly says that you have to drive such small mopeds/scooters in a such way, keeping close to the right side, that cars can easily overtake you. They are treated exactly the same as bikes, can drive on bike lanes, etc.
That is very dangerous forcing bicycle and scooters/bikes to drive in the gutter.
When I used to ride a MB in London I did not hug the gutter that's asking to hit a grate or debris - I rode in the lane 1-2 feet from the kerb just like your supposed to.
oh and I didn't not undertake other vehicles that's just asking to be killed (90%) of bile deaths are undertaking related in London
You can still use old mopeds like the Simson S50/S51 that were allowed to go 60km/h and got grandfathered in.
That’s why they are still very popular to this day.
> According to the company’s data, about half of all Ami buyers have one car and at least two children. More than 40% of those driving Amis are under 18. A majority of users say they like it because it is green, while for more than 30% of users, not taking public transport – in a time of Covid – was an important factor.
In Europe (at least) you need an AM license to drive a 50cc scooter, so also an Ami. If your license is suspended, you cannot legally operate _any_ motor vehicle.
What normally happens in most of Europe is _all_ vehicle classes are voided following an offence (including, therefore, the AM class the Ami falls in).
Those numbers seem extremely unlikely. I would think that almost no 17-year old owns a car and also has two children. That would mean that people with one or no child, or not owning another car, account for only 10% of Ami drivers?
It’s sad that clickbait titles are almost always given to these articles, resulting in people focusing on the sensationalist topic rather than the actual topic.
I think at one point in the past, HN allowed titles to be rewritten to reflect the actual content, vs. having to strictly stick to the original title.
While it was a bit controversial, as it left some trust to the OP, and sometimes resulted in debate, I do miss that it didn’t give clickbait titles the satisfaction of sensationalism, at least here.
As somebody that lives in a fairly big city and hasn't needed a car for the last 8 years, such cars are interesting to me because 99% of the driving I would do would be in the city itself.
So much so that the car I drive the most via car sharing and that I'd like to buy is a smart fortwo.
Indeed, I'm quite fond of the smart fortwo car. And it's amazingly easy to park, given that small footprint (and it'll fit where most other cars won't).
A step in the wrong direction. Children should be riding bicycles. Adults should be too. But if you get them in cars at 14 it's never going to happen. Another enemy of other road users is born.
I disagree that it's a move in the wrong direction. When I got a scooter at 15 it suddenly opened up my world - I could ride it to other cities and meet distant friends after school, and just get a lot more things done without having to involve my parents. It was an incredible mobility improvement for a young person, and I imagine this will serve the exact same purpose.
And I rode a bicycle at the same time - me and my friends used to cycle 2-3 times per week, 100-120km per day, just for fun. But that's not a good option to go with friends to a cinema, when the nearest one is 45 minute bicycle ride away along major roads. A scooter improved that ability immensly, and I'm sure a small car will as well.
I don't doubt your story, but I still have doubts that scooters or minicars are the right fix.
45 minutes doesn't seem like a big deal, most people, especially in cities, probably live a lot closer to a cinema, and the main issue is dangerous main roads without sufficient cycle infrastructure.
Taming car traffic in cities and providing easy to use cycle infrastructure would be enormously more beneficial across the board that a competition for "fast as legally possible" mini cars and scooters, even electric ones.
And it never occurred to you that maybe the whole concept of lack of public transportation was at fault?
I didn't get my drivers licence until I was 23 and I didn't miss out on anything, because I could (and did) travel the whole country via train and bus - despite growing up in the countryside. The train station was just under 2km away and that helped immensely and had regular service (2 times an hour) to the nearest cities.
>>And it never occurred to you that maybe the whole concept of lack of public transportation was at fault?
Sure it did. What kind of power does a 15 year old have, exactly, to influence it though? A scooter has improved my mobility when I was 15. Going on the internet and saying that the lack of public transport is at fault would have not.
Besides, we do have really good public transport! It's just that even with buses running every 30 minutes it can still take a long time to get anywhere if you live couple towns over from where you need to be. So it's like.....45 minute bike ride, 15 minute scooter ride, or 1.5 hour bus ride because you have to swap buses twice? Not everything works for everyone, not everyone lives in the major cities. I didn't live out in the countryside either, but in a collection of smaller towns 4-5km apart, 10k population each.
> What kind of power does a 15 year old have, exactly, to influence it though? A scooter has improved my mobility when I was 15. Going on the internet and saying that the lack of public transport is at fault would have not.
True, of course.
But it's not about the individual 15 year old scooter owner who makes an individual decision to get a scooter, when they live outside the city, in a situation where it benefits them greatly, etc etc.
It's about the systemic impact of legalising a class of vehicles and thus adding hundreds of thousands more vehicles to the road network. People in situations where they could have happily stayed on public transport instead move to driving these small vehicles, which aren't as bad as full-sized cars but still consume resources and occupy valuable road and parking space. Fewer public transport users means fewer voters who care about public transport, and more who care about roads. That's not a step in the right direction.
(I grew up in rural Australia, I understand why you need private motorised transport to get around - but plenty of the customers who are going to be buying this Ami vehicle are going to be in extremely dense urban areas.)
People’s lives, especially the adolescent phase thereof, are short. I don’t blame them one bit for maximizing their mobility.
If you want public transport adopted, make it effective and reasonably efficient and people will use it. Crimping people’s mobility in the meantime to garner support for better public transport at some time in the distant future is not likely to work well.
> And it never occurred to you that maybe the whole concept of lack of public transportation was at fault?
This is an extremely good point.
The city where I live, Milan (Italy) has truly exceptional public transport, accessed via a single cheap monthly pass (39€/month, includes all subways, trams and buses).
It's so good that my gf got her driving license at 27 and she didn't even had to do it, she got it "just in case", and to occasionally use the car sharing services available in the city.
Her mother has a driving license but never drives, and despite this has been going to work and has been doing her things without a car for the last 32 years (!!!)
Trains are just an anecdotal example - today we also have "dial a ride" services, where you can call for a bus (during operating hours).
Once your population density goes below a certain threshold, individual traffic isn't a problem anyway. This isn't the case, however, with most of Europe.
To be honest, I'm not so sure where most of Europe falls on the "viability of public transport" spectrum. But that dial a ride service sounds like a nice alternative for otherwise too rural regions.
I agree 100%. I didn’t get my license until I was 22, and looking back I strongly feel like it was a mistake. There was just so much missed opportunity in being stuck within the range human power can get you.
Nope. We used to cycle to the mountains nearby then cycle back couple times a week after school and then at least once on the weekend. On road bikes we were averaging ~40km/h so it was only 3-4 hours total, maybe less if we were pushing it. Not to boast but I was super buff back then, leg muscles like steel lol.
Not at all. Its a step in the right direction. Who wants to go to work full of sweat or go meet friends quite a few km away and show up sweating.
People forget that bike riders, once its past a certain amount of distance will sweat + are exposed to the elements. Sure ebikes help with this. But nobody in my country is going to go to work in a full suit + on a bike.
Electric bicycles come to mind. They would provide a more direct comparison with the Ami, but being 50 times lighter, I don't see how the Ami could compete.
> a one-time impact of ~450kg
This amounts to 20000km! That's a lot of cycling before the Ami becomes less impactful. Also a battery lifetime is about 5 years.
> Your typical vegan on a bicycle has a footprint of 22g CO2/km
I didn't find this number. "CO2 emissions from the average European diet, which is another 16g per kilometer cycled" [1]
With this number, that would be 30000km of cycling before you even drive one meter with the Ami.
> in France
France electricity production generates very little CO2. In most other countries, the footprint would be much higher making the Ami an even worse option.
It's hard to argue that a 500kg vehicle can be more efficient than a 10kg one (or even 20kg for an electric bicycle).
That being said, it'd be great if Ami could replace more polluting cars for people who dislike cycles
Electric bicycles come to mind. They would provide a more direct comparison with the Ami, but being 50 times lighter, I don't see how the Ami could compete.
True, but the level
This amounts to 20000km! That's a lot of cycling before the Ami becomes less impactful. Also a battery lifetime is about 5 years.
A lot of cycling, but not a lot of commuting. Could be done in 4 years.
Also the most significant factor contributing to a battery's degradation is not age, but the number of cycles. Even at the low estimate of 500 cycles(consumer grade battery), it should be good for 35 000km. But since it's likely an automotive battery, one could expect for it to withstand 1000 cycles or 70 000km.
I didn't find this number. "CO2 emissions from the average European diet, which is another 16g per kilometer cycled" [1]
I've read the source and it says:
"at 16 km per hour, a cyclist is burning about 4 kilocalories per kilogram per hour, while the relative metabolic rate of “driving to work” requires no more energy than somebody going about their daily activities: 1,5 kilocalories per kilogram per hour8."
It takes this from * the Compendium of physical activities, 2003* where it's written that:
0101014.0Bicycling<10 MPH, to work or for pleasure
It's not at. It's less than.
The updated source(2011 Compendium of Physical Activities) says:
01010 4.0 bicycling, <10 mph, leisure, to work or for pleasure (Taylor Code 115)
01011 6.8 bicycling, to/from work, self selected pace
01013 5.8 bicycling, on dirt or farm road, moderate pace
01015 7.5 bicycling, general
01018 3.5 bicycling, leisure, 5.5 mph
01019 5.8 bicycling, leisure, 9.4 mph
They're not actually using the figure for 16km/h - the real figure at this speed is closer to 5.8 calories, which using their parameters yields 27g CO2/km for an average European.
It's hard to argue that a 500kg vehicle can be more efficient than a 10kg one (or even 20kg for an electric bicycle).
Problem is, the 10kg one is powered by a ~70kg biological machine, which isn't very efficient - that's my entire point. Also the 500kg one seats two and can sustain 45km/h for probably 50km or so - not an easy feat for your average cyclist.
But I agree - pedelecs are the most efficient as personal transportation.
CCstal says >"People forget that bike riders, once its past a certain amount of distance will sweat + are exposed to the elements.">
Driving home yesterday in a light rain I saw a gentleman in a bright yellow soccer shirt riding a bicycle slowly on the sidewalk. A wide stripe of dark brown mud ran up his back and onto his helmet! As I drove past I just had to laugh and wonder what the front wheel was doing to him!
No one owned a bicycle without fenders when I was young; today finding a bike with fenders is difficult. And some of today's aftermarket fenders are ridiculously flimsy.
I do not understand the absence of fenders on today's bicycles.
I think it is simply an uneducated market. When I was a kid I went everywhere: short trips and long. But I _always_ needed fenders b/c I was always running through water somewhere.
On a modern bicycle unless you're racing (and even then sometimes), fenders are a necessity, not an option.
For example, how many motorcycles don't have fenders? Cars?
This is why I love it when offices have showers at work. Commute in, shower, show up for work fresh. No need to do cardio outside of my ride in and out, so it’s saving me time in a way because it’s built into something I’m already doing.
I know not all offices have showers, but it was something I looked for when I was deciding on a coworking space a couple of years ago.
The office I currently work in does have one shower. It wouldn't be feasible if everyone had to use it. The early gym birds use it, the bike riders don't. And this is an office of 60 people.
Bicycles are great but no amount of pro-bike policies will make them better in the rain or when you need to carry any sort of cargo larger than a single shopping bag.
I used to carry about 3-4 shopping bags on my back while cycling back from the supermarket. That was before I discovered pannier bags which are far more effective. You can also get trailers. I also went to my job in the rain and snow. Why did I do this? Because I didn't have a car. It's amazing what is possible when there's no other option.
This is true. Nor is the climate suitable everywhere, etc. However:
> riding a bicycle where there's cars on the road is a lot more dangerous than being in a car.
This is a problem that absolutely can solved by more "should". The police should police more, and the courts should be strict about endangering others with deadly weapons, even if those deadly weapons are on wheels.
> people are free to make their own choices.
People are "free" to speed, or to drive drunk, or to otherwise endanger others "where there's cars on the road". Looks like these "own choices" aren't a terribly good fit to many of the problems posed by cars.
> People are "free" to speed, or to drive drunk, or to otherwise endanger others "where there's cars on the road". Looks like these "own choices" aren't a terribly good fit to many of the problems posed by cars.
Taking my quote out of context? It's pretty clear I meant that they are free to decide to have a car if that is best for them. Nowhere did I encourage speeding.
You didn't encourage speeding, but you did suggest that cars were somehow inherently dangerous to bikers. As opposed to the behavior of the people inside the cars being dangerous to bikers. You also suggested that this is a problem that cannot, or need not, be solved by "should" rules to change that behavior. I agree that people are free to decide to have a car, but they absolutely should behave very responsibly with them. I also agree that creating a more welcoming environment like this will encourage more people to make the free choice to bike, we don't need to force them.
As long as it doesn't impact too much the rest of society. For instance, people aren't free to drive a tank on the highway.
If we believe data on global warming, and if we consider it's an issue to be addressed (and most people believe both), some choices which are available now should be restricted in the future.
> some choices which are available now should be restricted in the future.
It will be easier to make people make these choices if they look attractive ways to go forward rather than blaming them about using what is available for them to live their lives.
I don't think blaming is a solution. I think some choices should be heavily discouraged or simply forbidden. I don't expect people to willingly lose comfort and convenience. Unfortunately, this is the only way to go if you want to reach the objective fixed by the Paris agreement [1]. CO2 emissions should be reduced by 5% every year.
Sure they're free to make their own choices, but most people are fit enough to ride bicycles, and exercise is good for you, so they should ride bicycles.
Sure, many people are fit enough to ride a bicycle for a bit on flat land when it is dry out. I'm not sure "most" people are, though, and I'm guessing this gets less the older folks get.
I do not live on flat land and I live in a place with winters. I, in fact, live in a mountainous area. Riding a bike is not an easy feat here - I've been testing this summer. Short slight inclines aren't too bad: The occasional steep hill isn't so bad. 15-30 minutes uphill, however, is too much for me. All uphill one way isn't easy. I'm not the only person that struggles with this: Biking forums are full of folks that struggle with uphill, and it takes time to get fit enough for this.
Electric bikes are the solution. I see more and more people commuting with electric bikes.
I've been commuting by bicycle for years, not for ecological reasons, but because it's convenient and healthy. That being said, I wouldn't do it if the roads weren't safe enough. To me, this is the main limitation. Bad weather and hills can be overcome, but I don't want to compromise with safety.
Disclaimer: lived in Paris for 20 years, specifically got my motorcycle license to avoid traffic jams and parking tickets 5 years ago.
Quick facts about Paris:
- there is motorcycles and scooters everywhere
- most people make trips way superior to 5km to go to work or even to go out
- no one can really afford parking his car outside of it's own neighborhood, because you don't have discounts then => 35 to 50€ a day!
You can buy an 125cc scooter with heated grips and a nice warm rain cover for around 3000-4000€ (new) / 1500€ (old) with a 200-300km range and you don't need to pay parking anywhere (yet).
IMO French automakers are lost and this car has almost market. They know they can't compete with Tesla in the near feature on real electric cars. It's way too expensive, for sure it's not targeted at 14-18yo in Paris "intra-muros". Its only features are you don't have to wear a helmet / protects you from rain. It has almost the size of a gas Smart ForTwo without the speed and range to go on a weekend trip.
They start selling it this year. How such a number could bring anything to the discussion ? We don't know if it will be 0 next year (if it's failure) or 200000 (if it's a success).
In Amsterdam,NL we've had these for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle)
And the more recent, fancier Biro:
https://biro.nl
You're allowed to drive them with a moped licence, available for 16 y/o. Don't think they cause many accidents though, I'd say safer than a moped.
They're causing issues as you are allowed to park them on the sidewalk (which is already crowded by bikes).
It is interesting indeed, €6000 (~$7100 ) for 45km/h and 70km range is very affordable price and very good for many EU cities where people daily do not drive more than 70km daily.
driving license nets you 1000€ at least and a 5000 for a car will only work for a mildly beaten up low end manual transmission gasoline car.
That doesn’t seem like a good comparison, perhaps the tweezy would be closer (smaller/easier to park while a tad less comfortable, still electric and “two-wheel” category)
or a full motorcycle license and a really nice sports bike which would be my way of spending it (and will be once I can reliably book training and a test again).
That's amazing.. the cheapest new EV I know of in Canada is around $25k CAD (€16k) ... They are really expensive here, even with $5k incentive from the government. Even if the Ami is speed/range-limited (and tiny), I don't know of anything even remotely comparable in that price range here! Though if someone knows of something cheaper here, I'm all ears.
I don't think anything like this exists in Canada (the closest thing would be an e-bike). I wonder if it would work there.
Con: On main arteries vehicles definitely move faster than its speed limit. I'm thinking University Ave or Spadina in Toronto.
Pro: 50 km/h (30 mph for Americans) is already the speed limit in most neighborhood streets. It would be interesting to see an Ami cut across 4 lanes to turn left on a multilane boulevard. :) But then again, Paris has tons of these multilane boulevards (like the Champs Elysee) and it seems to work there.
Con: An Ami would be treated like a bicycle except one that takes up the full width of the lane, which might annoy drivers who can't pass it.
Pro: ... which the regulatory framework technically already allows for (bike riders can take up the full lane, and motorists are supposed to allow a 3 ft buffer if passing).
Con: Canadian winters. In Southern Ontario, winter temperatures hover around -10 to -15°C (-30°C wind chill on some days).
Pro: There is a heater, and since it's an enclosed space, it should be fine if one bundles up.
Maybe it could work in denser cities like Toronto and Montréal...
Do you have a source for that? That's the first time I've heard about that and with leasing being so popular I don't really see this being true. Especially when observing people around me (Austria, Germany).
Cars previously used by businesses sold by leasing providers after 2-3 years of usage, mostly. Many of these are sold by Volkswagen Financial Services and include factory warranty. It's an easy way to get a car as good as new 30-50% cheaper.
I can see how these sound very attractive (particularly to a 14 year old). But we really need to make cities and city transportation better so these kind of vehicles aren't needed.
The solution is point-to-point, subscription-based and private autonomous minibusses, which generates routes based on demand and can seat 10 passengers.
Cities should subsidise these services, or at the least not charge sales tax on them.
In my opinion, public transport in cities is already good enough (it could be better, sure, but it's good enough that most people won't want to buy this "car"). A small "sub-car" that can be driven by younger people would make much more sense in rural areas, where public transport might exist, but maybe only once every few hours with the stop a 30 minute walk from the village.
Marketing it as a city vehicle, especially in dense Paris, seems strange to me. The only people who are going to be attracted to it in that setting are those who really hate public transport.
I've lived in cities with no public transport. I've lived in a few with only cabs - one city had cabs so bad that you couldn't reliably use them to get to work. (no pre-order, waiting time 10minutes to 2 hours). One had busses that didn't run late enough for 2nd shift to get home and didn't run at all on Sunday. Most of the time in the US, you cannot get from one city to another using public transportation. It took moving to Norway to live in a city with decent public transportation - and I know the countryside doesn't have as many options, even here. It seems a bit expensive, but I'm so very happy to have it nonetheless!
Many cities lack appropriate and affordable public transportation and force folks to buy a car. If you live in a town large enough to have shopping centers and you work in that same town, this car would fit well.
Unfortunately, living in a rural area actually makes these cars more difficult, at least in some places in the US. There are roads you couldn't drive on due to speed, and your commute would be longer. Unfortunately, the roads you need to take are also the roads that get snow cleared less often and seem to have a higher rate of disrepair.
What cities do you regularly ride public transportation in? I've used public transportation in several major North American cities and disagree that public transportation is good enough. Most cities can do a lot to improve their public transit infrastructure.
My comment was very Europe-centric, as the car is only for sale there, but I should've clarified my statement, sorry. From my experience here in the Czech Republic, most towns either have adequate public transport or are small enough that walking everywhere is viable.
For some definition of 'good'. In Germany it's usable enough that you can live without it, but only if you don't really value your time and comfort. From my personal experience, only the Netherlands has a city structure and public transportation that truly makes a car redundant.
It's all relative. Living in Dublin, I'm always amazed at how good the public transport is in German cities when I visit (in particular, it's punctual enough that "take this tram, then wait three minutes and take that tram, then wait four minutes and take that train" type directions often work!).
And then again, I'm always amused when visiting Americans think Dublin's awful public transport is good :)
Rural areas implies bigger roads. You aren't going to need it to get from one end of the village to another. What you need is something to get to the next town five or ten miles away. This doesn't look so attractive then.
I agree that distance/range is a problem, but I could see this as a way to get to school, to an after-school activity or to a shop in a nearby town. 50km should be enough for that and the speed, while much worse than a proper car, doesn't look so bad once you factor in waiting for a bus/waiting after the bus arrives/having to synchronize your schedule with parents.
To me cities are fantastic due to their diversity - to that end large monolithic public works like a single unified rail system or other mass transit are almost anathema to what a city is. Probably not a common opinion on HN: but let a thousand flowers bloom!
I wonder if there is room for compromise? For example building dedicated routes for buses, coaches and trucks. You get the benefit of big infrastructure in terms of adding capacity. But you also allow a diversity of operators.
These will always be needed. Public transport can be great but still not be ideal for getting to a friends house in the rain on a weekend. These offer a much safer alternative to cars.
I don't know what fabulous public transport you have where you live, but in the (German) city I live in, a 10 minute car ride to my friend (7 km) turns into a 40 minute odyssey using public transportation because it involves changing the bus and you'll spend almost half that time waiting/walking. It's already not comfortable on a normal day and an umbrella doesn't isolate you completely from rain.
I guess those are the cases where self driving vehicles of some sort would be great - it doesn't have to be the full point to point expensive vision driven systems.
Even slow moving driverless buses/trams on slightly larger roads following invisible tracks in the street that could be hailed/stopped from anywhere, would work (together with an app that tells you when one will appear).
I don’t understand why they put the speed limit of it at 45 km/h instead of 50 km/h. What makes traffic dangerous is people driving at different speeds which leads to overtaking. The same issue exists with pedelecs that are allowed to go 25km/h when 30 is a common speed limit.
50 km/h is also to low. 90 km/h is pretty much the minimum for a car. Most major cities will have a good number of people coming in on highways. 45km/h is the lowest legal speed for a Danish highways, but that’s still pretty dangerous and you’d be a hassel to the other drivers, which is also illegal.
I can get work either via a highway, or by driving through the center of town. Besided adding to trafic in the city center, I’m also looking at an additional 30 minute drive.
In my mind by only designing these tiny city cars to urban driving, manufactures are limiting them to the extend that they are bound to fail. Instead, with minor tweaks, they could remove full size cars and help lower pollution levels.
Oh great. More cars. Just what Paris needs. Also, it's an alternative to a scooter, but much bigger and more massive. This is "safer" -- for the driver. Less so for the people they will hit.
For many 14yos the attraction is that a car helps you climb the social ladder- you're perceived as that much more attractive. Bikes don't quite cut it for that.
You raise a great point though, cargo bikes are much more expensive than conventional ones. I don't see why either as I'm guessing there would be a big market at a lower price point (£500 vs £300 for a conventional rather than £2500), hence the scale to make them cheap.
> helps you climb the social ladder- you're perceived
As a parent of kids a bit younger, I aspire to help them avoid this sort of thing entirely
Cargo bikes don’t have to be expensive (Yuba Komba is 999€) except that they are, in the long tail format, 50 to 100% more steel, and because of the weight, drivetrain and brakes have to be good as well. A 250€ cargo bike would be an injury waiting to happen
As it happens, the bike I linked is a nice Chromoly frame, disc brakes, hub gears etc. If you look at other bikes with similar components you’d be hard pressed to beat the price.
I just noticed your scarecrow price tag of 2500€, which is probably for electric cargo bike. Those are limited to 250W usually, which I don’t find worth the price considering it’s comparable to what you can put out with your legs alone. (But I can tolerate sweating on the way to work..)
usrusr's comment in that thread:
"And less obvious ones, like https://www.ellenator-gmbh.de/ which exists solely to exploit a legal loophole to get something that is arguably more dangerous than a car into the hands of people who are not licensed to drive a car."
I'm 30 years old and don't have a driving licence. Many people learn to drive because their parents paid for lessons. Mine did not.
In university and since, I lived in many different countries. I haven't had a long-term visa. Currently I'm in New Zealand. Here it takes 2 years to get a driving licence. If my residency visa is approved, I'll be able to start learning to drive. For now, I use an old rusty bicycle that I bought from a scrapyard for $20. It would be nice to have a vehicle like that in Paris, because it would cover my head when it rains.
Legislation was intended to educate and protect people, and that is good. The problem is that the educators realised they had a captive market, ramped up prices, and now entire market segments (foreigners, young people) are excluded. Compared to the dangers of other mobility options (e.g. scooters), I think the Ami is much safer. It would be interesting to see how it is treated in other areas of law (parking fines, collisions) compared to bicycles.
I wish for good public transportation. Many Asian countries seem to get it right and it's way less risky statistically. My friend in HK love talking about the buses and trains. They are always on time.
Right now, I would prefer to have this over my bike or a scooter because Indian roads are such a hell. Many people here don't even have driving license and jaywalking is common. A new emerging trend is people sticking to their phone while driving.
I would feel much safer. Even my dad get into almost accidents a few times monthly. He has been driving for decades and always maintain a stable speed of under 45kmph.
In Auckland there's a busway with regular services to the city every 5-10 minutes. The connecting bus to the house goes once every 30 minutes. By bike it takes 10 minutes.
To go from the house to the office would take 1.5 hours by bus. By bicycle it takes 20 minutes.
Similar story in Kaohsiung: the MRT wasn't near my house, so I'd ride a bike to go to it. Other people there drive motor scooters (also dangerous) to and from the MRT. It was somewhat romantic to ride on the back of my girlfriend's scooter, hugging her from behind. I know we would've appreciated the privacy of an enclosed Ami though.
> I'm 30 years old and don't have a driving licence. Many people learn to drive because their parents paid for lessons. Mine did not.
I envy countries that have driving as part of the school curriculum. I was in the same boat as you, and it's an incredible PITA to make the required logbook hours unless you have a partner or very patient friend.
I'd suggest looking into a 150cc motorcycle license, for some reason the regulations are less strict. Still won't keep the rain off your head.
It's much less than 2 years. I think it's only 6 months if you're over 25. (you have to have had your restricted licence 6 months to get a full licence).
If you do an advanced driving course it's 3 months
> There’s a rudimentary heater, and if the idea of letting a 14-year-old loose on it seems unnerving, Krygier points out that unlike with a scooter – the most likely alternative for many of the Ami’s younger potential customers – you get the stability of four wheels on a proper chassis, and are safely enclosed in a solid tubular steel frame.
But it's not only about the passenger, is it? It is also about the pedestrian. A cube might be safer for a kid but the same cube going 45 kmph driven by an unlicensed person can be lethal to others.
The car industry has forever not given a fuck about people who aren't their direct customers, mostly because they don't have to.
Nobody's buying a car on the merit that it will protect victims of a crash that aren't in the car itself. I think that's mostly due to the cognitive dissonance that people have where they think that they're not going to be the one to cause a wreck somebody else dies in. Because if you were aware of that possibility, you'd have to be aware of your responsibility to drive safely. But driving should be cool, fun, and maybe even practical, at least that's how car companies sell their product.
Safety is only ever marketed to the consumer as something that protects them.
> the same cube going 45 kmph driven by an unlicensed person can be lethal to other
You are required to have a class-AM driving licence to operate these. Unlicensed driving is a criminal offence in many countries anyway so it wouldn't matter if the person drove a little cube or a fully loaded lorry.
2 Seats, 2.4m long,
1.4m wide,
top speed of 45km/h,
range of 70km,
€6000,
Recharges from standard 220V socket (3h recharge time, 5.5kWh lithium battery).
> or, with €100 down, €78 a month – roughly what most Parisians pay for an all-zone metro and suburban rail pass.
Not exactly true: by law, employers must pay half of that amount, so most Parisian pay €38/mo for that "all-zone metro and suburban rail pass". If you don’t work, that’s free. Pretty much nobody pays the full amount.
An interesting law, that I never heard anyone suggest here (Sweden / Stockholm). But many argue that instead the commuter pass should be free. Considering it is subsidized about 50 percent with taxes already, I think we have a good system as it is. In Stockholm the price currently is about €90 / month.
What makes you say that? In Paris, all subway stations are always at walking distance, even for the elderly. And you never have to wait for a metro (unless strike). In Stockholm, all is punctual, but with much lower frequency.
I used to live next to a high-school in the south of France. A lot of teens with these "without-license" cars, mostly Twizy [1] and Chatenet [2], this is not a new phenomena.
Personally, I didn't feel more in danger compared to other cars when they're around.
France has had a long tradition of these "Voiture sans permis" (car without permit), which usually had a limit on weight and power. They were popular among teenagers learning to drive, poorer residents who couldn't afford larger cars, and unfortunately occasionally drunks who couldn't qualify for a regular license.
In fact, most of Europe for a long time had multiple tiers of licenses for "regular" cars. It's my understanding that part of the popularity of the three wheeled Reliant Robin was caused by the fact that until 2001 you could drive it with a Motorcycle license, which I presume is much easier to get than a full car license. Also, I believe it was cheap.
For a price of two Brompton electric folding bikes you can get an Ami, really nice engineering there to get to the price point.
This can be a game changer in urban set up especially in my part of the world where it can protect the occupants from the weather that is either rain or hot.
I'm involved in an IoT project where we have a few Toyota EV COMS cars (2nd generation) that is similar in size and purpose to Ami [1]. It's a joy to drive and convenient to use if you want to travel from A to B in urban environment.
> Walking around Manhattan, with many people moving out, sidewalks are overflowing with what they don’t value enough to keep. What are they disposing? Sofas, mattresses, shelves, chairs, books, televisions, printers, scanners, lamps, mirrors, plates, toasters, silverware, . . . I could go on.
> Notice anything about them? All those things used to be once-in-a-lifetime purchases. Some were high-tech wonders when introduced—now disposable. We don’t value them as much as the effort to maintain them. We turn them into pollution.
> Our market system has shifted from creating value to creating craving. People like novelty, I guess, so marketing engineers figure out how to generate craving so they can temporarily satisfy it.
> Meanwhile, markets motivate people to figure out how to deliver with lower cost. The result? Everything becomes disposable—food, plates, furniture, silverware (now plasticware), clothing, everything.
. . .
and ended with
> We don’t lack comfort and convenience. We’re choking on waste.
> We like comfort and convenience, but our world doesn’t lack it. On the contrary, we’re drowning in it. Our lack of physical activity and feeling entitled is making us depressed, obese, and sick, lacking resilience, discipline, or initiative to respond.
> History implies people will buy this product in droves, competitors will match it, the market will keep driving down cost and durability, increasing landfill waste. We will increase total waste and lower quality of life, meaning, and purpose.
> There is a nice nod to the 2CV in the Ami’s flip-up windows, while other simple, money-saving ideas include identical doors (meaning one opens backwards and the other frontwards) and similarly interchangeable front and rear panels.
The windows are a nice touch, and the identical doors and interchangeable panels are, frankly, ingenious!
Something I didn't see mentioned in the article was the range - as a city car, I guess it's not that important, but does anyone know what it is?
The original Ford Bronco has identical door skins left and right to save money. It's one die to stamp them instead of two. I love that they're taking it to another level on the Ami.
I believe driver-less cities will eventually converge to networks of microvehicles like this, as opposed to large, inefficient vehicles designed to handle highway speeds and risks.
You can fit two such pods side by side in one of the tunnels of the Boring Company. If they run at 2 second intervals, one after the other, with an average occupancy of 1.5 people, a single tunnel can provide a peak throughput of 90 people per minute or 5400 per hour. That's about half of what a subway can handle. You could also create "formations" of pods even more tightly packed for longer cross-city links. Full computer control requires much less safety devices such as airbags - like in a subway, the crash is ruled out by proper management of trafic.
Outside the tunnels, they can blend in easily and provide a sane mass transport alternative, as opposed to congesting the city with more full sized cars. An existing row of paralel parking spots is all of a sudden a mass transport station where pods dock perpendicularly and await commuters; no need for fancy elevators, just an steep slope to the tunnels below.
> If they run at 2 second intervals, one after the other, [...], a single tunnel can provide a peak throughput of 90 people per minute or 5400 per hour.
I like optimism in general, but think about that for just a second. At the vehicles' top speed of ~45km/h, 2 seconds translate to an average distance of just 25m.
This leaves very little room for error and isn't enough of a safety margin.
Then there's the obvious thing which renders this idea completely impractical: have you ever tried to stop a car going at 45km/h, get out of it and have another person enter the vehicle in well under 2 seconds?
That's practically impossible.
Also, it's time to rethink cities instead of regurgitating failed concepts (e.g. individual transport within densely populated areas) over and over again. A liveable city should be made for people, not cars (no matter the size). Going through the insane effort of stuffing individual traffic underground wouldn't change anything - you'd just have your congestion during peak hours underground; it wouldn't go away, though.
The recommended spacing for human drivers is 3s, and if you ever drive on a highway, you will see 2s is the norm most drivers actually use at much higher speeds. There is absolutely no issue to reach that spacing for computer divers at 45 Km/h, even if the front vehicle comes to an instantaneous stop, 10 meters is enough to brake.
Clearly the stopping and picking up of passengers is not gonna be done on the main lane. Just like with regular cars, pods exit the speed lane, enter a deceleration lane, then stop into the actual station - a series of parking spaces - where people can embark and disembark at will.
How on earth would you have multiple lanes within a glorified utility tunnel? That's even more unrealistic, because now you not only need a main tunnel and emergency exits, you also need a bunch of parallel tunnels with individual lifts/ramps plus lots of room for merging.
This is even more impractical. Just to be clear: impractical doesn't mean impossible - it just means that there's no way this can be as economical, safe, and efficient as existing concepts.
An actual station or "a series of parking spaces" as you put it, has no advantages over a traditional subway/people mover station in terms of efficiency, cost and space requirements while offering significantly less throughput.
I just don't see how any of this would be an improvement in any way.
The improvement lays in the flexibility of the system. In the financial district, you have a large station with similar costs and restraints as existing systems, and with multiple paralel lanes to handle the trafic, merging etc.
When you fan out throughout the city, you can build, for the same price of a single subway tunnel, multiple links, and you can build much more micostations, close to where people need to go, with very short ramps and deceleration and acceleration handled cooperatively with the other vehicles, since throughput is no longer critical.
And finally, on the last mile, the vehicles goes outside and drives to your suburban home on the existing road network, in areas of low density where no people mover will ever make economic sense.
It is this flexibility that makes self driving vehicles a very practical proposition for future cities.
Well, you cannot pack trains of 2K people at 90 seconds, because you reach a limit with people getting in and off in the stations, the whole system slows down with trains waiting their turn to enter the station, so real throughput decreases drastically. Additionally, infrastructure costs are much higher for similar peak rates since subway tunnels remove 3x more dirt volume, and require proportional structural materials (7.3 m bore holes vs the current Borring prototypes of 4.2m)
Also, there is a more fundamental problem with reaching high thoughtputs with mass transit: you need to force people out of optimal routes from their distributed destinations and origins, into enforced stations. This makes sense for point to point links like LA to SF, but it's very inefficient when trying to cover a 2D city: the more routes and stations you add, the less you are likely to reach peak capacity of any one link. If you are going for city-wide subway, you will pay much, much more to build large, expensive tunnels that will stay mostly idle at the perifery of the system.
> you reach a limit with people getting in and off in the stations, the whole system slows down with trains waiting their turn to enter the station, so real throughput decreases drastically.
Yes, and this would be an even bigger problem for your proposal, that's the point.
> Also, there is a more fundamental problem with reaching high thoughtputs with mass transit: you need to force people out of optimal routes from their distributed destinations and origins, into enforced stations. This makes sense for point to point links like LA to SF, but it's very inefficient when trying to cover a 2D city: the more routes and stations you add, the less you are likely to reach peak capacity of any one link. If you are going for city-wide subway, you will pay much, much more to build large, expensive tunnels that will stay mostly idle at the perifery of the system.
You're hugely exaggerating the problem. You get some inefficiency yes - if we imagine a grid system then many journeys require a change of line and the average journey is 1.27x longer than an ideal path between two points, assuming people don't change their actions at all (e.g. living on the same line where they work). But that's outweighed by the efficiency gains of mass transit - in a city with a decent subway system that longer journey with a change will still be significantly faster than driving.
As for tunnels sitting idle at the periphery of the system, in the real world that's really not the issue you make it out to be, for a number of reasons; housing concentrates along commuting corridors, the places where the population thins out are, by the same token, the places where land is cheap and the train line can run on the surface, and if necessary then trains can turn short or split/join. If you look at the usage levels that subways actually achieve, they're incredibly cheap for what they do.
>
Yes, and this would be an even bigger problem for your proposal, that's the point.
No. Trains must make every station. A low occupancy pod will only diverge from the high speed lane when it has reached a destination or pickup point.
> in a city with a decent subway system that longer journey with a change will still be significantly faster than driving.
I don't think anyone disputes that. But this happens because there is no comparable point to point transit system and the existing road network is inefficient. The point of building tunnels is remove those conflict areas and provide direct point to point routes with very high throughput. If, for the same price you can have similar throughput using individual vehicles, then it makes absolutely no sense cram people into comunal transport, force them into unnecessary stops, changes, and waiting times, making them compete for real-estate prices in transit corridors etc.
> No. Trains must make every station. A low occupancy pod will only diverge from the high speed lane when it has reached a destination or pickup point.
So you'll have to build twin tunnels through stations (and since they'll require an ADA-compliant evacuation walkway, they'll have to be almost full-size subway tunnels even if you're using smaller personal pods), which will be a fiddle to use TBMs for. You'll have to have a system for diverting or not, and that's going to require maintenance and break down sometimes. And what does the actual mechanics of pods stopping for people to get out look like at busy stations? You'd need giant shunting yards to route pods to free "platforms" (like a garage forecourt only much bigger), and you'd have to build them underground in the places that are most expensive to do tunnelling and remove spoil from, and they'd have a complex layout that would have to be built in a labour-intensive way - all the lighting and ventilation and fire-suppression systems would have to be fitted into that layout (underground stations are already the most expensive parts of building subway projects). Or you'd have pods backing up onto the main line. Or you'd have to batch them together in a, uh, train.
> I don't think anyone disputes that. But this happens because there is no comparable point to point transit system and the existing road network is inefficient.
Tunnels are still only going to go from some places to some other places. Roads are already planned carefully. But there's only so much capacity you can get out of individual vehicles.
> The point of building tunnels is remove those conflict areas and provide direct point to point routes with very high throughput.
It's not going to be high throughput though. Every transportation system has a high throughput when you're just looking at maximum capacity along a plain line going at speed - it's all the fiddly interfaces where the throughput goes down. It'll be the same for a tunnel system (if it's ever built).
Let's not speculate on how evacuation can be handled in a regulation-compliant way. I can certainly imagine a system where trafic is reliably halted when pedestrians are detected on the main lane. You might counter that such a system is unreliable, and until a regulator looks over such a proposal, it's impossible to predict their decision. Let's just agree that there is no fundamental physical reason that prevents humans traveling in vehicles down 3m wide shafts - see for example elevators.
I don't really understand what you mean by maintenance of the system used for diverting from the main lane - it's essentially the same thing as an exit ramp from a highway, but much shorter since the reliability of the automated driver is a built-in design factor.
The lane shift maneuver requires about 1s, so about 15m of widened tunnel at the entrance and exit of the stations. An additional 20m of is required for reliable deceleration and acceleration respectively, which would be handled by dedicated tunnels serving the station. I agree that these interfaces would handle much less vehicles, but it would drive down the throughput of the respective station, not that of the main lane.
Regarding the size of the underground station - why not make it on the surface? You can have much steeper ramps in an automated, controlled system, if for example de-icing is guaranteed near the surface with dedicated heaters, the quality and grip of the tires is controlled etc. Essentially, any down-town parking can be transformed in a very large station by dedicating o few hundred m^2 for these ramps.
> Let's not speculate on how evacuation can be handled in a regulation-compliant way.
If we're going to make a valid comparison between different systems then we have to compare them under the same regulatory regime. A lot of the costs of real-world subway systems are down to regulatory requirements, so comparing an imaginary system that's exempt from those regulatory requirements is going to be very biased.
> I don't really understand what you mean by maintenance of the system used for diverting from the main lane - it's essentially the same thing as an exit ramp from a highway, but much shorter since the reliability of the automated driver is a built-in design factor.
Highways try to avoid having exit ramps in tunnels, because fundamentally you're creating the possibility of a vehicle crashing into the pointy bit (or at best a blank wall). If you're relying purely on automated steering to avoid that, inevitably sooner or later a pod is going to hit it, if only through mechanical failure of the steering system.
> Regarding the size of the underground station - why not make it on the surface? You can have much steeper ramps in an automated, controlled system, if for example de-icing is guaranteed near the surface with dedicated heaters, the quality and grip of the tires is controlled etc. Essentially, any down-town parking can be transformed in a very large station by dedicating o few hundred m^2 for these ramps.
That doesn't solve the problem - the reason tunnelling is expensive in these areas is because land is expensive there. Parking has an absurdly small capacity compared to transit. Even bus stations just can't unload enough people quickly enough in the space available in truly dense city centres, and this pod system is going to need a lot more space per person than a bus station.
Some pods will indeed travel empty in the system to rebalance the supply of vehicles into areas of rush hour exodus. But this is a highly predictable event; the pods will be supplied in advance and on less congested, roundabout routes. So it should have little bearing on peak capacity of any single link.
At peak, the 1.5 occupancy rate I factored is achievable and quite typical for car commuting.
> It can be recharged from a standard home socket in three hours
I keep wondering how you are supposed to charge a car in an (un-specially-prepared) city if you can't afford a place in an indoors lot. Do you just throw an extension cord out your window? Do you book lamppost electricity from the local authority?
Though I guess Paris is not a place with this problem.
To me, there are more benefits in using a bike: maintenance, cost, health benefits, it's probably also more secure
I've taken the bus for years at that age (10-18 years old) to go to school, I regret so much not using a bike, I could have woken up later and have more freedom (not have to wait for buses)
That would be good for the environment if it would replace larger cars, but seems to end up bad for it (globally. Locally, going electric likely is a plus), as it mostly replaces scooters for healthy teenage drivers, which should be replaced by human-powered bicycles.
The environmental footprint is not that clear-cut here, because humans are generally bad at turning food into energy, so cycling has a footprint of anywhere between 22g/km (vegan diet) to ~80g/km(average US diet rich in beef) of CO2 per kilometer.
Meanwhile a kilometer of driving this vehicle in France has a footprint of ~7g.
The battery's manufacturing footprint sits at around 450kg of CO2 - and this is something that has to be "paid off", but it's entirely possible within the car's lifecycle.
Basically unless you're vegan, it's likely more environmentally friendly in France to drive this.
Walking is less energy efficient per km than cycling, so by that logic, we should spend our lives in electric wheel chairs. I don’t want us to go there.
Luckily, it may not be true that this is more environmentally friendly than cycling. I would think this 485 kg car uses more road space and causes more wear and tear on roads than a 25 kg bicycle. That must count for something.
You also have to take the health benefits of cycling/the effect of more car driving on obesity into account.
Rome is already full of such vehicles and has been for at least a decade.
We call them mini car or micro car.
A popular brand is Ligier.
The solution for traffic jams have always been mopeds here, but given their higher safety, and the price tag that was very close to a modern scooter, parents have started buying them for their children.
But they have soon become a status symbol for rich kids, the prices went up considerably (between 10k and 15k but up to 30k) and now they usually rally in some of the popular high end neighborhoods (such as Parioli) and act like gangs.
They fight for territory with those coming from other neighborhoods, spice up the engines and make a lot of noise.
To the point that they have become a nightmare for the residents and for the police.
I've never heard of that the movie before, thanks for the the tip!
If you are interested there are is a news video reportage about the "rich babies" generation in Rome, it's in Italian but auto generated English subtitles are not bad
If these are like most electric cars, the batteries are in a flat compartment at the bottom of the chassis in a box design, giving incredible torsional rigidity and a very low centre of mass, so great cornering. They could be pretty safe for the occupants, even fanging it down a narrow European street. However, not so safe for pedestrians. I'm guessing these won't come with ABS or mm wave collision detection emergency brakes; it's one of those items that is cheap to manufacture and install, but the IP and testing is expensive.
> More than 40% of those driving Amis are under 18
On this quote, it should be noted this is for the Ami specifically, and not for the market it is targeting.
There are other vehicles already existing in this “less than a car, more than a scooter” niche, notably Renault’s Twizy, but also makers like Aixam who build “license less” cars mostly for elderlies, people who never bothered passing the driving license or lost it at some point etc.
Perhaps the Ami is just not competitive enough to take significant market share from those, and is pigeonholed in 18- market, but the whole targetable market is larger.
It is not clear to me why they need to make them so ugly: Citroën is pretty good with design, and then they try to sell these. It is almost as if they don't want people to buy them.
But I don't think there is much to do with design, I guess all shapes have been already designed for these cars, and they all invariably end up being a sort of caricature of a "real size" car, more or less the inside needs to be big enough to house the driver and passenger (that do not and cannot shrink) whilst the outside is reduced in size as much as possible leading to things that are "stubby".
The only two exceptions I know are (like it or hate it) the already mentioned Renault Twizy that has a somewhat unconventional design and the Microlino which is a sort of (good ol') Isetta replica:
Brand loyalty is a huge thing with cars. It's actually really bizarre to see it. Some people won't even consider another brand of car for any reason. So these are to hook people on to the brand but make sure they want the more expensive models.
Because they don’t. They still have petrol cars to sell and no real plans for electric full cars. The only companies that make nice electric cars are those that only sell electric cars.
I find it surprisingly, and interestingly, similar to the first wave of electric cars, over a hundred years ago, such as the Baker [1]. They were small, didn't require much mechanical insight (as EVs do) and particularly suited for small drives to the grocery store.
As the current top comment indicates, 14 year-olds have been driving mopeds for decades. And as a great many more comments indicate, souping them up for about that long less 10 minutes.
Paris traffic means the long-term average street speed is 20kph. Read the article. These toy cars can't use the peripherique or the motorways like the one lady di crashed in.
I'm 28 without a licence and love electric scooters which I sometimes use on the street when I feel it's safe. I would be afraid to drive the Ami because I don't know the traffic rules and I don't think I could just go on the sidedwalk with this when I don't know what to do on the street like I can with a bike / scooter.
I'm just back from biking in a dense urban area, 45km/h for inner city is top. Few years ago some company tried the leased per hour model, sadly people degraded cars at high rate, too much money lost, service was cut. Still there's a spot here.
These Boloré Bluecars cars had a shit battery technology that needed to be at least 60°C (140°F) warm, all the time. Even when the car was parked and not used for hours / days.
Do people really feel safer, or more comfortable, in this tiny tin can than on a bicycle? If so, something must be really wrong with traffic and our cities.
Sure they do. Works with pets as well as people, give security from the sides and a roof and suddenly you have an air of safety.
plus I know there is big kick here on HN for bicycles but it is wholly unrealistic to rely on a mode of transport that is not useful in all weather conditions. Hell the number of people who fall into the trap that a motorcycle will save them money and then don't ride it for the same reasons is legion.
They are fun, your chance of injury is magnitudes greater though, and they are not suited for all people. This can be based on needs to carry stuff, to being secure from the weather, or being handicapped.
A large portion of the public opinion in those countries see those mini-cars as a safer 4-wheel alternative.
I'm not saying that those mini-cars are safe or that they are great for the environment, just putting things into perspective for people who are not familiar with the situation in Europe.
[1] I don't have official statistics but anecdotally I can say that as a teenager, almost everyone I knew had modified their moped or scooter.