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Comment by clairity | Hacker News Reader

> "And gas-powered leafblowers. Oh man, those are the worst. DC was right to ban them."

agreed, but mostly for the atrocious pollution those things put out. here in LA, they're also banned but still widely used. i can smell them, let alone hear them, through my window nearly a hundred feet away.

with electric vehicles still rising, i can't wait for the day we can relegate most (all?) gas-powered machines to well-segregated industrial areas and thereby reduce both noise and air pollution drastically in our living environments.

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Since we are at it, can we ban gasoline scooters? They feature the same leafblower engines, and I have the impression they have been "grandfathered" in emissions legislation so often that the entire population must have been replaced three times over.

China has it right, those prehistoric things have no place anymore.

If you ban gas-powered scooters I don't think it would make much difference. The people who ride them won't care.

How about gas powered lawnmowers? Far more prevalent, awful for both sound and emissions.

Lawn mowers at least have four-stroke engines instead of two. Although, as you say, vastly more prevalent.

Huh, I thought most of them were two stroke.

Not for a long time. My cheap Walmart Murray was like $75 and is a fairly efficient four stroke, but is incredibly weak with the emissions tech and awful engine!

I guess it’s a question of where you live. I meant the actual lawnmowers people use rather than what is on the shelves today - I have only seen oily old two-strokers around me.

Also I thought low power gasoline engines were more efficient, but I guess they tend not to have any catalytic converters

All two-stroke engines require a gasoline/oil mix, AFAIK? I've used a dozen or so lawnmowers going back 40 years and don't think I've ever used one that required a mix...

That’s correct. I had a scooter in Asia that took oil in the fuel port just a couple years ago.

I'm not certain, but I think the inconvenience of premix in two strokes tipped the market to four strokes mowers.

They are 4 stroke, but they put small mufflers on them. Electric lawnmowers make a lot of noise, too. Not as bad as the droning of a 4 stroke at full throttle, but still noisy.

I long for the day we ban lawns. Do that, and lawn mowers and weed whackers would vanish overnight.

My neighbor started a new lawn. The amount of water he has been using during the last few weeks with this automated sprinkling system is staggering. There should be a more natural and robust solution, some mix of weeds and small flowers that's also walkable, but also gives bees and other insects a place to live.

I'm big into water wise landscaping, but there aren't really any species of groundcover that are both highly tolerant of foot traffic and also very water thrifty.

Mostly shaded bluegrass actually uses less water than full sun buffalograss. (And buffalograss can't handle shade) So tree plus grass is actually pretty water thrifty as well as keeping your house cool...

Depends on where you are. Lawnmower density decreases as population density increases. Scooter density is the other way round.

I'd ban them immediately. The noise and air pollution is insane. Have the government co-finance replacement electrical scooters if it helps.

Plus a clear replacement exists: electric lawnmowers. People may argue that they're not as good, but they're certainly good enough for almost every case.

The upcoming battery powered models are getting pretty good. In some cases they have even more power than you can get from a gas motor, and of course the agility, quiet, and easy starting of an electric motor.

As obnoxious as they are, no. Leaf blowers are WAAAAY worse.

I mean I do agree that gas lawn mowers are noisy obnoxious smokey things that blow dust around. But a leaf blower's whole purpose in life is to blow dirt around - and at full blast they're way louder than the loudest lawn mower.

Plus the lawn mower takes like 10-30 minutes to mow a yard in most yards out here. Probably 15 if the person operating it is doing it quickly.

Leaf blower though? I can see those jerks using those things for a good 45 minutes or so! Ugh.

Leaf blowers have always fascinated me as an example of a technology that seems to create more work than it saves. I grew up in the country, and I am pretty sure that I could rake our 2-acre lawn by hand in less time than it takes my current neighbor to chase leaves in circles around his half acre lot with a blower.

yes, especially when the "landscapers/gardeners" just blow most of the debris into the street for it to blow right back onto the sidewalk/into the yard later. just take 5 minutes to rake that shit up and put it in the trash or compost bin!

i have no idea why anyone who pays for such a service can't see, and correct, that obvious problem immediately. i see that and watering the concrete (usually by unattended sprinklers, but sometimes by someone with a hose) all the time in my neighborhood.

I'm curious how much of the USA's annual gasoline consumption is just neighbors blowing leaves back and forth among each other's yards until brownian motion eventually moves them all to the storm gutter, which promptly becomes clogged.

My Yamaha 150 BWs gas powered scooter is 4 stroke and has a catalytic converter.

Are 2 stroke scooters even a thing anymore?

They were in the EU until 2018, when two-wheel vehicles that didn't comply to the EURO 4 emissions standard were phased out.

There are still many 2017 and earlier units on the roads, but give it a few years and they'll be gone as well.

in summertimes there are a lot of old, loud and stinky 2-stroke scooters in german citys.

motorcyles usually don't have dampening around the engine or a silent exhaust because it doesn't look/sound as cool. i'd wager to say your bike is louder as a modern gasoline car.

They're a lot less antisocial than cars in terms of how much space they take up, and in terms of pollution per person-km as well. We could build much more liveable places if we embraced them.

I live in the inner city of Grenoble, France, and briefly stayed in Paris too. Scooters are the worst because there seems to be no effective way to keep them out of pedestrian areas at night. I'd like to see studies of how many lost hours of sleep a single scooter ripping through a quiet night causes when it traverses the inner city here.

But I do love the new generation of electric scooters. They're great!

Or we could embrace electric mopeds instead.

ice-scooters are the most antisocial vehicle available.

they're loud as hell, stinky, smokey _and_ slow, especially the two-cyle engine type. imo loud motorcyles are kind of 'recreational vehicle' and should be banned.

I'm all for restrictions on loud or polluting vehicles, but they should be applied equally to cars as well. Plenty of people use two-wheel vehicles for commuting or essential journeys, and that's something we should encourage, since it's a lot less wasteful than a single-occupancy car.

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