Europe
News and information from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media. Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org
view the rest of the comments
Do you know that there is a reason for the regulations on light motorcycles, mopeds, mofas, Vespas, scooters and however you name them? It's the number of fatal traffic accidents. And yes, there are probably over two dozens of these motorized vehicle classes which originally started with the idea of an "bicycle with a bit of motor" such as mopeds and mofas.
We want to reduce traffic and oil consumption and can't figure why people buy larger vehicles in North America?
Yeah, the issue isn't the light motorcycles/mopeds/etc....
So dude is right, a whole class of vehicle is being being held back by regulation, and the premise/reason is ridiculous for a society that would like to see less cars on the road.
I love that viewpoint of American tech bros that "regulation baaad!". Are you aware that the living standard in the EU is in many measures much better than in the US? To start with, everyone has health insurance here while US has some Third-World reality...
Bud, the point isn't simply removing cars, it's about having something better, which includes safer.
If your motor-vehicle endangers people, such as by vroooooming in a bike line where people are pedaling at average speeds, you're the threat, you're the car.
A thing which has a motor and where the human delivers less than 30% of the power at max speed is a light motorcycle. The reason for that is with more power you need a heavier battery and a much heavier frame with better brakes. You need a solid helmet which again makes it impractical to pedal at power because it becomes hot. At 40 km/h, it becomes to chill in the winter and at 45 km/h or so, you really need protective clothing because otherwise in a fall, the asfalt will strip your skin off. At that point it is very clearly becoming a motorcycle. You have lost thr technical sweet spot of a bicycle at that point. There have been many attempts to blur that line (guess what the name "Mofa" comes from or "Moped" or why these things have pedals which nobody uses).
And we have motor-powered bikes since a long time - over 75 years -, and regulations have evolved out of need. Traditinally, the motor was a combustion engine - but that's the only difference and it is totally irrelevant for traffic safety.
That's not totally correct. Here in Germany we have so called "Mofas" which translates to "motorized bicycle". Those are different from eBikes and heavily regulated. There are age limits, drivers licence, insurance requirements, regulations where you are allowed to drive and so on. And yes, they are also restricted to 25km/h. Why are there this heavy regulations which are not in place for our pedelecs? The reason is plain racism in combination with "old people hate young people". Those Mofas were popular with young migrant workers back in the 50s and 60s. And therefore they were regulated as fuck. You will see stuff like this with modern eScooters where the whole class will be restricted because they are popular with younger people.
What I wanted to say was exactly this: There is a rule in place that basically created artificial differences between the same thing. A 25km/h vehicle with a motor and pedals is heavily restricted, another one is totally free. Which makes no sense.
I don't believe that. I was going to secondary school in Germany in the late seventies / early eighties and they were very popular with white middle class teenagers and apprentices younger than 18 years old. And they were regulated because of tons of serious accidents. Migrant workers would not earn very well and they would use a bike. Young students or workers would much more likely light motorcycles - in the seventies, the motorcycle industry worked very hard to both make them more affordable, and to work around regulations for motor bikes which had much higher safety requirements.
In addition, in 1965 mofas where exempted from requiring a drivers licence. Before, as of 1960, a mofa was considedered a moped and did require a proper class 5 (today: class AM) drivers license.
I really can't see this in the traffic accident statistics. Yes, there are a lot of motorcycle accidents, but if you look deeper into them, those are in most cases "real" motorcycles and not those slower variants. And if you take a look at those eScooters, most accidents here are people driving those rental scooters while drunk. That's a problem, but that's also a problem you won't solve by regulating the dude going to the train station in the morning.
It is very clear from statistics of traffic accidents between cars and pedestrians that risk of lethal injuries rises sharply with speed, even at speeds of 30 km/h. It does not make a difference whether a car crashes with 30 km\h into you, or you crash with 30 km/h into a car.
It is also very clear that riding light motorcycles is far more risky than riding a bike.
Actually it does make a difference, as cynetic energy is proportionnal to mass, so 30kmh car is much more dangerous than a 30kmh bike. Though it does not invalidate your point
No, that's not the case. What's relevant, especially with a difference of mass so large, is the relative speed of the two objects, which is 30 km/h.
@Alerian@sh.itjust.works
Suppose the impact coefficient k is similar, it does make a difference whether a bike crashes into a standing car (case 1) or a car crashes into a standing biker (case 2).
collapsed inline media
The thing is: You are using velocities v1, v2 which are relative to Earth. But none of the two vehicles collide with Earth - they collide with each other, thus the thing that matters is their relative speed, thus the difference of their velocities relative to Earth.
(That's also why the speed at which both Earth, the car, and the motorized bike move around the sun does not matter - relative speed is all what matters).
The other thing is that a human colliding with an object of several tons weight with a speed of, say, 36 km/h is not "elastic". 36 km/h is 10 meter per second, which is equal to about one second of free fall (accelerating with a= 9.81 meter per square second to the ground), which is equivalent to a fall height of h = a/2 * s ^2 or 5 meters.
Somebody falling from 5 meters hight on hard concrete ground will not bounce up but will likely have some broken bones, or a broken skull. What happens is that all parts of thier body is decelerated to a speed of zero within a distance of one or two centimeters, which involves massive forces that easily break bones.
And a speed of 14 m/s, or 54 km/h corresponds to a fall of ten meters depth - almost certainly lethal if hitting a two-ton concrete block.
The formula includes the relative speed (v_2 - v_1) of both bodies. Derivation, see Wikipedia or a book on engineering mechanics.
case 1, k=0. Fortunately, a car is not solid rock. I don't know about a typical of k for collissions of humans with a car, but if you say it's 0, that's actually good for the biker, as the forces then acting on their tissues is smaller than if that would not the case.
So concluding. If the collision of the biker and the car is completely inelastic, it doesn't matter if the biker crashes into a resting car or the car crashes into a standing biker. The only thing that matters is the relative velocity of the two objects.
Sorry I don't have much time today to get into it. Seems to me you can't solve for case 2 here since in this case m2 and m1 are switched. But it does not matter, I am not trying to solve for speed before and after.
The force of the impact does not depend on the mass, I agree, but the energy to dissipate (in the cyclist body) is much higher. I'm just saying that inertia plays a role as it contribute to the energy necessary to stop either vehicule. I am happy to be proven wrong, I just don't think this is the right equation to do so.
No, for both cases, body "1" is the biker and body "2" is the car.
This is just for the sake if simplicity. The force does in general depend on both masses, not just the mass of the car. Yet, the biker has only ~ 5 - 10 % of the mass of the car and thus, their mass can be neglected and the simplfied solution (m_1 / m_2 -> 0) doesn't include masses anymore
Exactly. This part is included in the coefficient k. Yet, for the simplified solution, the biker doesn't stop the car in any form.
Suppose a completely plastic impact, k=0: The biker would be stopped to zero velocity in case 1, and in case 2 they would be accelerated to the velocity of the car. Here the magnitude of the force/acceleration doesn't depend on whether the bike did move or the car did move.
For the elastic case, k=1, car and bike are treated as billard balls: For case 1, the biker moves with the same velocity as before, but in opposite direction. For the other case, the biker would move in opposite direction, but with the double velocity as in case 1. Thus, here, the force causing the acceleration must also be twice.
So as long as the impact is not purely plastic, it does matter whether the biker hits the car (case 1) or the car hits the biker (case 2).