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Anything on wheels is going to go downhill real fast. Terminal velocity under gravity is not what we use for classifying vehicles because it doesn't serve as a
by zaphar 1y ago
Anything on wheels is going to go downhill real fast. Terminal velocity under gravity is not what we use for classifying vehicles because it doesn't serve as a useful bucket because it's not a feature of the average mechanism of propulsion. And that's the part we care about. The presence of top athletes doesn't change the average users experience of the vehicle.
- RhysU 1y agoSo, if I put a pro rider on a bicycle you're cool with me having them scream around crowded areas? Traffic regulations are fundamentally about tail events. Most of the time, vehicular traffic is boring. The right metric is kinetic energy. But, it'd be unpopular for speed limits to depend upon vehicle mass. Or, in the case of bicycles vehicle and rider mass since the rider mass isn't negligible.
- zaphar 1y agoReckless endangerment covers the case of pro-riders being idiots. Classification of the vehicle should rely on the vehicle's properties instead of the operators capabilities.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RhysU 1y agoAgreed. However, that shark is jumped as soon as the classification criteria involve operator-dependent properties like maximum speed of a bicycle. It has no operator-agnostic answer.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago> Reckless endangerment So maybe we can enforce that part a little better. If I tried to drive a car on pedestrian path at even 10kmh I'd be chased by police helicopter and appear on national news.
- namibj 1y agoTypical bicycle geometry is just tire limited in it's high speed cornering performance; a 4-wheel car with a center of mass relative to size anywhere near as high would just fall over before really hitting tire limits. Coasting down switch-backs at whatever speed the car traffic on the road feels like, and not giving any car incentive to overtake by matching the speeds.