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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 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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No sympathy for the environment, huh?
That latter article is talking about how many tons of CO2 could be reduced just by better optimizing traffic in the city so that fewer cars hit red lights.
No argument, getting rid of cars would have the biggest positive impact, but failing that, optimizing lights for cars, while not helping cyclist safety, would be a much better investment if we want to reduce pollution. Idaho stops for cyclists from the OP post would actually be detrimental to the environment based on the conclusions from the study: that allowing it makes drivers more cautious, implying more full stops, more time idling, and more CO2 produced per car trip.
I was talking from the perspective of the effort involved in a full stop on a bike vs a car. You seem to be taking the position that cyclists doing an Idaho stop will never stop or look around, that it should all be on car drivers to avoid oblivious idiot cyclists who will ride out in front of them without warning. I guarantee you any of those states that have this law will still find the cyclist at fault if they run a red light and get clobbered.
If you want to change the topic and talk about whether I have "sympathy for the environment", I also drive an EV. I replaced my gas furnace with a heat pump. I ride my bike instead of driving a car for most of my <10mile trips. Having the ability to roll a stop sign or proceed through a red light when it's clear has nothing to do with any of those things.
OK, let's look at only the effort, then.
"Effort" is energy. Whether on a bike, in an EV, or in an ICE vehicle, it takes energy to stop and then accelerate. The arguments in favor of Idaho stops applies equally to all vehicles: if the study does prove it increases safety by making drivers more paranoid - and it's not clear that it does, as others have pointed out - then it applies equally to all conveyances. Drivers being more careful at stops because anyone else could be legally rolling through a stop sign applies whether it's a bicyclist or a semi truck. If the argument is about less energy use, then the argument is even stronger for cars because it's far more energy expensive for them to come to a complete stop than it is for a bicycle.
Basically, if Idaho stops are good for bikes, they're even better for cars. If they're legal for bikes, they should be equally legal for cars. But the study is flawed, and before we legalize rolling stops or drive-through-red legal, we'd need far more, and better, studies.
As an aside, we now know that you're going to burn about the same calories whether exercising or not. Calories not burnt in exercise get used by the body to produce fat and to overdrive expensive biological processes, contributing to disease. The difference in total energy consumed through reduced food intake by legalizing rolling stops is negligible; it'd have almost zero environmental impact.
That's a lot of words to say, "I don't want someone on a bicycle to get something that makes their life a little easier. In fact, cars should get it and not bikes!"