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Comment by Neeek | Hacker News Reader

Get a moped. Safer than your pushie if your lacking the infrastructure, the only reason riding a bike is so dangerous anyway is the amount of cars on the road. Notice that basically all the cars on the road have 1 person and 4 empty seats every morning? You're burning all the fuel to basically move an empty car around, a 50cc moped is burning 36 times less fuel per power stroke than my corolla (ignoring combustion efficiency, I'm sure the car is better but you lose basically all in moving the damn thing).

Without the thing being electric it isn't the perfect solution (also can't do highway travel), but I feel like it's something not a lot of people consider for short, city/suburban commuting.

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While I love mopeds and bought a 1980 vespa grande in college, I would not advise this.

As the song goes, "mopeds are always broke, but they easy to fix".

A moped WILL break down on you and be underpowered. My grande with a 70cc kit, performance variator and multiple breakdowns tops out around 41mph.

If you are not interested in repairing bikes or paying for their repair (if even possible in your city), avoid mopeds.

I'd recommend a 125cc+ scooter though. Reliability, fuel efficiency, and a bit more power which can increase safety. They also have more storage.

Don't forget to add in the fixed cost of gear!

I'm currently trying to transition to a Honda CT110 with a 140cc conversion as my commute vehicle, it was in sorry shape when I got it and I've been slowly getting it back together, so I guess that tells you how I feel about home repairs. The only reason I recommended the 50cc (49 technically?) is because under 50 here in AUS you don't need a motorbike licence to ride one.

Can't argue with the gear part though, probably going to cost me as much as the bike did pre-repairs.

My 10yearold 50cc has never failed.

I have a 50cc Yamaha Aerox for 12 years and it never failed on me. I recommend a japanese scooter instead of some vintage italian moped.

50-60 mph on a non-enclosed vehicle violates my requirement for safety. I'm not going to use something that can't be hit by another vehicle without killing me. There's an aggressive attitude toward driving here, and it disproportionately impacts small vehicles like scooters, bikes, mopeds, motorcycles, etc.

Mopeds generally don't do 50-60 mp/h. You would need a larger bike for that, hence the highway comment.

They make a lot more sense for suburban/city commutes where there is plenty of slow moving traffic to filter through at a comfortable 40-50 km/h.

Highway speeds here are more like 65-80mph. 50-60 are the streets that I'd be driving on during my commute. Almost my entire commute is made of thoroughfares going between suburbs and commercial areas. I suppose that's why I don't see many mopeds around here.

Woah, that is crazy to me. here in AUS you get 110 km/h max on the highway, everything else is 60, 50 in unmarked suburban streets. My whole world is like half as fast as yours!

Assuming they are in the US (because of MPH), your world probably has a much lower death toll:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

By half, according to this.

It's only 37% worse, when measured by vehicle-km (I say in an optimistic tone, trying to hide my displeasure at the number).

I lived in Germany for a few years. I was too young to drive at the time, but I remember that my parents were impressed by some of the behaviors taught there, and I've always wished that American driver education was less half-assed than it is.

Btw Germany has no speed limit on the highways

On specific, incredibly well maintained highways. I think they also have an age limit for the cars that can use them? I'm less clear on that one, that may have been lost in translation speaking to my Dutch friend.

110 is closer to what the actual highway speed limits are. Usually 105-112. But that's different than the speed of traffic on that highway, which may range between 40 and 125, depending on traffic levels, time of day, and such.

I live in southern California, which has its own particular brand of insanity, when it comes to the roads.

I have a Kawasaki KLR 650 and a Toyota Prius. My Toyota uses less fuel than my motorcycle. A lot more energy went into making the Toyota, so maybe over the lifetime of the vehicles the motorcycle is still better. On the other hand, I can carry four people in the Toyota along with quite a bit of cargo in the trunk and the fuel consumption doesn't change all that much.

I think we can all agree that comparing a Prius is not the same as comparing a non hybrid car, not to mention 650 is rather large compared to the bikes I'm suggesting but still cool to hear that out of the Prius. Just out of curiosity, how much fuel are we talking here for the Kawasaki?

The Kawasaki gets 40-45 mpg to produce a stunning 38 HP. I don't know the torque number, but it's pretty good in that department.

It's fuel economy and power production sucks in large part because the motor uses a carburetor rather than fuel injection. At first I thought that was a benefit, in practice I can understand why every other bike maker uses fuel injection.

But hey, you can usually buy a brand new one for $5500. That's one benefit of them selling pretty much the same bike since 1987. Plus there's a huge aftermarket parts market.

The Prius gives me a pretty reliable 45 mpg (I drive the same road every day). If I really baby it, I can get closer to 50.

My mate is looking at getting one of these, interesting bike. It's a single huge cylinder which is probably part of the problem as well as the carby, at least until you hit the highway. The carby is just a relic I think, these things stay in production a long time, the CT110 for instance only had it's first major redesign a couple years ago which moved to fuel injection, before that it was pretty much unchanged since 1980 (and even then it's pretty much identical to the old C90's that preceded it).

Sorry for the rambling, I've been really getting in to bikes since starting this project, hahah. I'll abstain from asking any more questions about the bike or Prius, thanks for taking the time to reply!

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