Should your next car be an e-bike?

[syke6]

@OrmontUS

I guess if I lived in some primitive part of the country, like some small town in Idaho or Los Angeles

Heh. I see what you did there.

[UpNorthJoe]

lol, I am a senior citizen myself. I ride aggressively to get out of sketchy situations that vehicle drivers might be getting ready to put me in. Otherwise I try to be very respectful of cars, pedestrians, and other bike riders. And young drivers are just as likely to be driving and staring at their phone as senior citizens are likely to have a lapse in concentration, so my paranoia towards vehicles is not directed at seniors only. I spend a lot more time on trails than I do sharing the road, so I’m not flirting with danger all that much.

[buynholdisdead]

@OrmontUS

it simply makes you an attractive target without the benefit of getting any exercise.

What makes an e-bike a great mode of traffic is that you can get exercise , or not, as you see fit.
You have the option of turning the e part off anytime you wish, but if you get to far along on a ride and start feeling tired you have the option to turn it back on.

But I suppose alternate modes of travel like a taxi cab can be great ways to get exercise also, because after all you do have to hold your hand up and wave.

Andy

[OrmontUS]

@UpNorthJoe

how hard would it be for the cell phone manufacturers to engineer a feature into cells phones that would stop/freeze the ability to use texting or web surfing while the vehicle is moving ?

Well, just thinking out loud:

A phone has a number of receivers/transceivers which are independent from each other:
Wireless telephony, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. Being that telephony likely observes the inverse square law, I would think a pretty low wattage jamming signal (at any time the car is in gear) could keep phone calls from being made and, if the car had a Wi-Fi connection, this could have services like VPN’s and Whatsapp blocked at the gateway, but would allow real-time traffic to route to the GPS.

Yes, it keeps your shotgun rider from playing on the internet but still allows you to pull over to the side of the road and use the phone.

I’m guessing that someone would sue about it interfering with their constitutional rights, but it is no different than forcing people to follow traffic lights for safety.

Jeff

[PucksFool]

I guess Paris is one of those primitive parts of France.

[mschmit]

@UpNorthJoe

Jeff, you are pretty technical, how hard would it be for the cell phone manufacturers to engineer a feature into cells phones that would stop/freeze the ability to use texting or web surfing while the vehicle is moving ? Of course there would need to be an exception for mapping, and for hands free voice, but it doesn’t seem like it’d be a massive engineering feat to build this in.

I’m not Jeff. But it would be very simple to use the sensors in a phone to disable any or all apps that require user input or even turn off the screen and only give voice navigation commands. But it would also prevent you from using your phone while being a passenger and no one would want this. And what if there was a bug and you couldn’t use your phone when you stopped in a parking lot to reply to a call or text?
Mostly Darwin will fix this, I hope.

Mike

[RonBurgundy]

iPhone already has some settings for this.

Use the Driving Focus on your iPhone to concentrate on the road