Instead of just electrifying vehicles, cities should be investing in alternative methods of transportation. This article is by the Scientific Foresight Unit of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), a EU’s own think tank.
A recent study found that a single unmuffled scooter driving through Paris at 3am can wake up 10,000 people.
So sure, scooters have low CO₂ emission but I would like to see a ban on non-electric scooters for their sound emissions, at least during certain hours.
The European Union should push electric motor scooters and allow them 55 km/h (kph). Gas-driven motor scooters are only allowed 45 km/h. They should be discouraged by higher taxes as they are in Asia.
And what, only wake up 8,000 people instead? I’ve never heard an unmuffled one, but those little 50 cc fuckers are screaming loud in the high pitch frequencies - a perfect recipe for wakefulness. I often wake up when one of those assholes drives within a block of me at night. It doesn’t even have to traverse my street.
Even if it wakes 5,000 people, who then take 1 hr on avg to return to sleep, 5,000 man hours per scooter per day of lost sleep has to have a measurable loss of productivity and even quality of life.
Related fun fact: most of the noise cars produce at highway speeds is from tire noise, not from engines.
The related fun fact to that would be that high-pitched sounds are more annoying and perceived to be louder than low frequency sounds with the same db.
I’m sure my sleep is more disrupted living in a city with an occasional 2-stroke engine screaming by than it would be if I lived next to a highway with that relatively constant and relatively distant ambient tire noise.
The scooters they mention in the article are the e-scooters you ride standing up in the bike lane. Not mopeds.
I also think mopeds are a good replacement to cars, much more appropriate for 1-2 people in urban areas. But it needs to be the quieter models. The two-stroke-engine ones are just really too loud for a city. (and they burn motor oil as well as gas)
The scooters they mention in the article are the e-scooters you ride standing up in the bike lane.
No they are not. That makes no sense. Stand-up e-scooters are relatively quiet. Quotes from the article (emphasis added):
“worst of all, the high-pitched wail of motor scooters that speed by every few seconds.”
“Motorcycles and scooters — often with their exhaust systems illegally modified to boost noise and power”
“The noise can be ear-splitting,”
Obviously you would not describe a stand-up scooter as ear-splitting or capable of waking someone up. They’re talking about gas small gas combustion engines, most of which are the worst variety on scooters: 2-stroke.
Or if you meant the OP’s article is talking about e-scooters, that article actually covered both:
“Weight rates are usually over 10 times more favourable for the average motorbike or scooter and, of course, even better for lighter vehicles such as electric bicycles or kick-scooters.”
My reaction was to the idea that motor scooters are more favorable by a factor of 10 due to the weight – which is true, but my criteria is more complex than just ecocide-avoidance… I want my sleep too!
True, I was talking about OP’s article but you’re also right that they mention both. I was thinking of the mentioned ban of scooters in Paris, this one only refers to the stand up e-scooters.
