Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Maz,
It may be a hassle and much more expensive, but there is definitely something to be said for learning from a professional.
Totally. I initially learned from my mother, which was great for the basic mechanical business of driving a car, but after that my folks paid for professional instruction by the AA. My instructor was also a defensive driving instructor. He constantly kept opening my eyes to the hazards I hadn't noticed, and instilling important habits.
Perhaps the most powerful lesson, though, was that despite this guy's experience, and the dual control nature of the instruction vehicle, we still managed to have quite a bad prang. I was not at fault, the other guy admitted he was very distracted (he had just been visiting his sick wife), but he also said "I had a look and I didn't see you", which was not believable - the AA car was bright yellow and exactly where you'd expect cars to be driving along a main thoroughfare.
The lesson was, even with the very best practices and training, you're still going to have accidents because of other people doing stupid things. That accident would most likely have killed a cyclist. A little infrastructure goes a long way.
Driver training is quite costly, though. Hard to see any way around that.
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Keep up the good work, Christopher. That Grafton Gully connection will be much appreciated. It will also border on a surreal level of cycling infrastructure to cross right through the middle of the busiest motorway junction in the country, without even having to slow down. There's a thrill seeking side of me that imagines the stretch down to Wellesley St being long and straight, completely devoid of vehicles and pedestrians, and wonders how long before it becomes a popular spot for extreme sports types, conveniently located right next to the hospital.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to James Butler,
That sounds like a frustrating death-trap. I know how I'd get to the stop-box. I'd ride on the road to it, amongst the traffic. If I couldn't do that, due to car speeds being too high at the time to allow a cyclist to take the right lane, I'd stay in the left lane, and do a hook turn onto Gt South Rd.
Current compromise is that I ride with him all the way there and back which does erode my working day somewhat.
Hard one. It's the most dangerous age - physically competent to go fast, so the footpath is not safe, but with very little practical awareness of traffic. Again, the idea of available courses in defensive cycling spring to mind. Maybe if you take his route with him, and labour to point out the main hazard points and coping strategies, he'll develop good road-sense, so that you'll feel safer letting him go.
But it's very hard to give advice when my own method of learning to ride on roads was just to do it - parents didn't consider the dangers anywhere near so much, and there were less cars on the road. From the age of 11, I was riding to school solo, and on weekends would often ride up to 10km from home. Once, I foolishly talked a mate into taking the 50km bike route, which passed right by my house, saying it was a loop and would get us home. We lost the route somewhere in Onehunga, at least 20km from home. The other kid was super staunch, poor guy, he was riding a heavy old fixie. His respect for me went up a whole lot when I was able to negotiate our way back to Herne Bay after being lost in South Auckland. I phoned my mum just to tell her why we we'd been away for so many hours, but even then, I insisted that we were fine to get ourselves home, despite being totally lost. And we were.
Things just aren't like that any more. I'm not lamenting it, just noting that people of my generation or older don't really have a clear model in mind for teaching kids how to use bikes that is actually viable today
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to James Butler,
Using the one dedicated footpath/cycle lane on my commute I'm pretty sure would increase my risk; Tamaki Drive is another terrible example.
I'd almost go so far as to say that the very presence of a lane like that increases your risk, because it makes car drivers angry at cyclists who don't use it. But it's a Catch-22 - the lane clearly is useful to some cyclists, and you're not meant to ride on footpaths that don't have such lanes. On Tamaki Drive there are a lot of cyclists who are just dawdling along looking at the scenery, riding with their children, etc. Good on them, that's what it's really for. But it's useless for anyone using the bike to get from A to B.
There are some good stretches on the city-bound side, but they peter out in all the worst places.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
BBQ it until nicely charred at the edges and you just made a whole load of benzopyrenes, which *are* proven carcinogens.
Burnt bacon is definitely my favourite carcinogen, steak is nicer rare.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
50-80km with pedalling but the hills will reduce that and we don't yet know by how much.
I'd be interested to hear, when you get a better idea. It's really hard to get a straight answer on mileage because "with pedaling" is inspecific. But more importantly, your weight/load is a huge factor, when you hit the hills, and what grade those hills are. My gut feeling is your bike will be sufficient to the task if you charge it at work. The road to the Hutt is flat for most of the way, isn't it? Nice scenic ride too.
Nice bike, btw. Stylish, with most of the add-ons you want for commuting.
That's the plan, long may it live.
Indeed. The worst that can happen is you'll get fitter. Watch out for cars...
On that note, I think electric is marginally safer, because you tend to ride it in a less grim way - losing momentum isn't such a concern, and you accelerate faster, so you spend less time in that wobbly state. The bike is stabler because it is heavier. But a flipside to watch out for, get in the habit of checking the brakes - they seemed to wear out faster, probably because they are stopping more load and from higher speeds than other commuter bikes.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Stephanie,
I came off sounding like I'm down on electric bikes. I'm not - they have their place, and one of mine served me very well. I know there are higher end bikes than I used, but the prices put me off quite a lot. Also, I was never using it for commuting myself - I work from home. Two of mine would have served for any commute less than 15km unless it was all uphill, so long as it could be recharged at work. I frequently took my son for rides up to 20km.
I'm not convinced you could commute in work clothes easily on any bike with less than a 300 watt motor. Which is more than is legal, I understand. Practically, you'd get away with it. If you're going to change clothes, then the advantage over a simpler pushbike is pretty much around how daunting you find the exertion of the commute. If you're elderly or haven't ridden for a while (this was my situation), or have to be careful about your heart rate, then they're a good thing.
But I got a normal pushbike to compare with, and found that the exertion overall wasn't much less, and my range went up hugely - both bikes weren't good for much more than an hour, so any ride longer than that wasn't feasible. After all three bikes sitting side by side in the garage for 6 months I realized I simply wasn't using the electrics any more - I'd become accustomed to pushbiking again, and the convenience of not having to ever think about the battery, or any other points of failure, meant I sold the EVs. I actually made money on both of them, amusingly.
What kind of bike did you get?
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I know whose contribution to the air I breathe I prefer.
For sure, especially in a really crowded city.
I also suspect the battery technology will improve with time, as it will with electric cars.
It has been and it will. But the irony is that also means that lead acid batteries are improving and being driven down in cost, and they're still the battery of choice in electric bikes, for the vast majority that are actually being used. ie in China.
Petrol prices are only going upwards...
Yup, but driving a scooter is extremely affordable. They get amazing mileage and can be parked for free nearly everywhere. In the long run, maybe one day petrol will be unaffordable*, but that's probably not a big factor in the choice to buy a petrol vehicle today.
*I think the price of petrol will always be bounded above by the price of biofuel, which is on the reverse trajectory, it's getting cheaper. So it's not necessarily the case that the ICE will die a rapid death. Demand will probably keep driving prices up, but that will drive up demand for the most fuel efficient ICEs. Even the very best hybrid cars these days are only about the same as the most efficient pure ICEs (which are a hell of a lot simpler and cheaper). Only the pure EV wins on total fuel efficiency, and they're very much range constrained. The more constrained, the better the efficiency (because they don't have to lug heavy batteries around). They're coming, but not that fast.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Yeah, from what I've seen they're for flat cities.
And small people. Who don't have enough money for a real scooter. Which is hundreds of millions of people, LOL.
It's actually borderline whether they're more environmentally friendly than a petrol scooter. Most have lead-acid batteries, which eventually die and become waste.
Motorized pushbikes have been around for a long time and never really made much of a transport solution for the first world. People prefer either the simplicity, reliability, cost and exercise value of a pushbike, or they want something that is built professionally to be safer on a road, and no exertion, and buy motorbikes/scooters. Things in the middle get squeezed out as being a combination of too expensive, without good performance, poor reliability, too dangerous, and too much effort to use. You have to be a tinkerer/hobbyist to keep them going, a lot of the time. I had fun for a while, but in the end, the good ole' safety bike won me over.
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Some of the comments were sympathetic. There were still people whose views were that nothing should be spent on cycling infrastructure and cyclists should STFU, and deserved what cars dished to them <sigh>. Most of those people wouldn't seem to have been on a cycle for years, saying things like "no one is ever on the cycleways". Which even 1 minute standing beside the Northwestern cycleway would disabuse any time near rush hour. But that's a really good cycleway, completely separated from all but foot traffic, and taking a particularly sweet line straight towards the city, flat for many kilometers at a time.
On totally shitty cycleways, like the one on Tamaki Drive, you only need to ride on them for a few minutes to realize why it seems like the least that you could do for everyone's benefit to get off it and onto the road. Considering that anyone who rides a bike anywhere in Auckland is accustomed to riding on roads because they're the only option for 99.99% of destinations, it doesn't seem that risky. Except at those bad points, where no real consideration has been given to what actually happens until someone dies.
To my eyes that spot was about equally likely to claim a pedestrian at some point. When I ride along Tamaki Drive, it made me so nervous that I did actually use the cycleway, braving the glares of pedestrians, avoiding unleashed dogs and children, inline skaters, weaving in and out of slow moving pushchairs and mobility scooters, and pedestrians walking 4 abreast, or walking backwards to take photos of the water, riding around the lamp posts planted right in the middle of the cycle lane, avoiding car doors on that side, and children coming out from between cars. When pushed to the sea-side, I had to consider the chance of pitching over a low wall to a 10 foot drop onto jagged rocks, and rolling down into the sea.
In other words at that point, there is no cycleway at all. There is a footpath, and if you can't ride slowly (many people don't have this skill, because it is actually difficult) then you'd be safest to walk your bike - for about 800 meters. The cycling infrastructure has to be improved.
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