Even some one-car households ditched vehicles in favor of cargo bike-sharing.
  • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    This seems kind of a weird study as they’re polling the self-selected group that has already chosen to use these bikes anyway. This pretty much excludes all the people that didn’t like using the bikes.

    I live in Finland and I love mountain biking but it’s a bitch when there’s snow on the ground so I bought an eFatbike so I could ride year around. And I mean a proper full size one. It does what I intented it to which is keeping me on the trails year around but last winter I thought I’d give bike commuting a chance aswell. My conclusion was that it fucking suuucks. If I had to choose between a bus and a bike then I’d perhaps favour the bike but compared to a car there’s no competition. There’s zero chance I’d replace my car with a bike. I’m more than happy to pay extra for the luxury and freedom it provides. If I lived in a big city then perhaps this would be a different but most of the trips I use my car for I couldn’t reasonably do with a bike.

    Another effect I noticed bike commuting to cause is that I no longer had the desire (or battery charge) to go for joyrides after work. It turned an enjoyable hobby into chore.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    That makes sense. Biking feels more real than driving. Like you’re actually part of a place. I’ve had huge mental benefits from switching to biking and walking for my groceries when I can

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      I feel like it’s not spoken about enough. There’s something fundamentally weird and off about driving around town in a car. You don’t really see it until you stop using a car for a while and then get back into one … it’s a weird experience … more weird IMO than flying on a passenger jet.

      Also the deep frustrations built into the experience. Traffic, stop lights, navigating obstacles, bad drivers, pedestrians etc, while in a car that is relatively big, sometimes too big for its environment and that naturally wants to go much much faster than is often practical or safe. It can really be maddening. We talk about road rage in terms of how crazy some people must be, when in reality it’s obviously the experience of driving that’s like being forced to play an unenjoyable video game … all the time.

      In retrospect I think the future will look weirdly on the idea that we all did this all the time and how stressful it must have been to do something that takes up so much of our time and to do something so dangerous everyday.