this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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Looks like if you ever hit a pebble on the road it would probably flip and kill you. Note also the conspicuous absence of a seat belt. Cute little death machine.
Did anything have a seatbelt in 1944?
Preston Tucker designed his Tucker Torpedo with a safety belt (and a lot of other safety features) in 1948.
And then was driven out of business by the Big Three automakers in the U.S.
There's a good movie about it.
Volvo filed a patent for some sort of seatbelt in 1889. SAAB became the first car company to make any sort of seatbelt standard in 1958. Volvo became the first car company to install modern 3 point belts as standard equipment in 1959.
So yes, but actually probably not.
Gotta love those safety conscious Swedes showing the rest of the world how it's done 😁❤️
I never owned a GM SAAB, and I still refuse to buy anything GM because of what they did to SAAB. I had 5 of the '80s models, and a '90.
SAAB is GM-owned now?? Since when?
1992 till they closed in 2011, iirc
So a patent existed prior, but that doesn't mean they were made. SAAB made them standard 14 years after this car. Do with no other data, I'd say no and no.
Edit: just realized that reads like I'm being pissy, but that wasn't the tone my finger was swiping with. Thanks for the data!
Well the key word there is standard. I'm guessing that seatbelts were optional equipment prior to that, because I have seen a '50 SAAB 92 that had a driver's side lap belt, which I believe was original equipment. I have also seen a '45 Chevy truck that also had a lap belt, but I'm unsure if that was original equipment.
That's why I said yes, but probably not.
Got it, thanks
I think the popular argument against seatbelts was a long the lines of ~~guns~~ cars don't kill people, reckless drivers kill people. Which, I guess, is the same argument that we use for anything that's a bad idea for society as a whole, but is lucrative.
Early seatbelt design
As seen on The Onion News
That's brilliant!
I like it. Why live with potentially life changing injuries, when you can simply have your neck broken by your seatbelt instead.
NO SHOT. That's a joke, right?
Unsurprisingly it was not a successful prototype.
Still, better to have an instantaneous snapped neck/ decapitated than to be speared through the chest by the steering column.
Drug Church?
No, that was before Ralph Nader made a whole ruckus about car safety (and rightly so). Still, we're looking at this from the year 2024 so you can really tell this vehicle doesn't make sense in our time.
I sometimes think about Ralph Nader, and the overall balance sheet of lives he is directly responsible for saving, vs lives that he is (I guess indirectly) responsible for ruining and/or ending due to spoiling the 2000 election.
Interesting thought experiment. I guess.
I admire the hell out of him, even if I resent what happened in the 2000 election. He really did stand for what he believed in.
Velomobiles are a modern thing. Speed records are over 80kmh from human power only, but ebike motors can achieve that easily.
While most are not this "delta trike" format, and instead have 2 wheels in front, the stability is not crazy bad for deltas. Most are weather proof.
Yeah but not instantly. It would drag you around the road grinding your meats and bones into a nice pasty consistency.
I mean, I could see a modern version being made with a rally harness-type restraint system and a windshield frame that doubles as a rollover bar. In this case the biggest danger would be to the driver's limbs.