this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
267 points (96.8% liked)

Fuck Cars

15754 readers
1521 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
toaster@slrpnk.net
grue@lemmy.world
Toaster1@lemmy.world
267
Overtaking and going fast in urban areas is not only dangerous, but also useless: a mathematical demonstration (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by lgsp@feddit.it to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
61 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Those who use the bike know this very well: in the city, speeding motorists overtaking other cars, only get one thing: they arrive first to the next red.

With a simple model, the author estimated the probability that one car that overtakes another, will then be reached again at a later red light. Then he estimated the probability that the same thing will happen when there are multiple successive traffic lights, as usual in the cities.

The result is that as fast as an aggressive driver goes, the presence of multiple traffic lights makes it virtually certain that a slower driver will catch up

So, if someone aggressively overcomes you, when you reach him at the next traffic light, you can tell him that it is mathematically proven that he/she is an idiot.

In addition, this study has implications for the 30 km/h city, demonstrating how in urban areas the traffic lights determine the travel times, not the maximum speed reachable between one traffic light and the next.

The original scientific article is here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/4/260310/481212/The-Voorhees-law-of-traffic-a-stochastic-model

crossposted from: https://poliversity.it/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/116419204210303856

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 20 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

When you filter at a red light on a motorcycle and the driver that was aggressively swerving all over the place yells about how dangerous and illegal it is.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They just made motorcycle filtering legal in my town, given how much quicker even slow bikes are than most cars it works well

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yup, it should be legal everywhere, motorcycles accelerate faster than cars so it doesn't inconvenience car drivers, its safer since bikes don't get rear ended or backed into, and they spend less time in clumps of traffic.

Its better for everyone, but car drivers instinctively feel its unfair that someone else doesn't have to wait like they do.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Faster than most cars, my ev accelerates faster than the sport bike that probably* challenged me

*They revved a couple of times and looked at me, don't know another way of taking that

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago

Faster than most cars, my ev accelerates faster than the sport bike

They were probably having fun, 3-4 seconds is common for both bikes and evs, but bikes need to work to actually keep both wheels on the ground, flip through the gears on time, and not just burn rubber, so most don't or can't actually get that performance out of the bike, though I hear newer bikes have more rider aids.