Re: Is there bike snobbery?

raisethe wrote:

Well actually I was referring to healthy people when I asked "what is
the point?" You did not get my meaning, but now you do.

Is Paul Murphy physically belittled? /He/ seems to have found a point for one. Ben Cooper of Kinetics isn't physically belittled, and he is a great enthusiast for electric cycles and has found a point for several and part of his business is making them for, one would have to imagine, happy customers.

Pete, you have misunderstood me here as well. What I was trying to say
is that the electric bike extends the range of an infirm person from
say 10 to 20 miles. If a person is capable of cycling up to 10 miles,
and has no wish to travel from 10 to 20 miles, then what is the point
of putting up with the disadvantages of an electric bike when an
unpowered cycle will do just as well?

It won't do "just as well", because the rider will have to do more work every second of the journey they aren't getting assistance, and if they want that assistance then things have taken a turn for their worse from their POV. Not /requiring/ assistance, and not wanting or using assistance are *entirely* different things.

But if someone wants to buy one,
they can with my blessing. All I am saying is that it isn't very
logical.

FSVO "logic" quite possibly, but not in an absolute sense applying to everyone.

Ahem, I have no reason to do so. I just thought that Paul Murphy was
coming out with a lot of crap and wanted to balance it up a bit.

He's certainly come out with some nonsense (the pedelecs being greener is at best highly dubious and competing in cycling events with time penalties is one of the widest-of-the-mark pieces of point-missing I've seen in a good long while), but it doesn't help redressing this with other nonsense, and I'm afraid your 10/20 mile thing has the look of nonsense to me :-(

No. This assumes that anyone else is healthy (or indeed infirm subject
to the qualifications I made). I have shown that an unfit and inactive
person can exceed the performance of an electric bike in a relatively
short period of time without the disadvantages inherent in one of
those things.

FSVO "exceed".

It would be the case of the electric bike being incorrectly marketed
towards unfit people when it is perfectly reasonable for an unfit and
overweight person to use a normal bike even if he is riding on hilly
routes.

You're still sweeping whole areas of very different people into a same, imagined, basket. It might be "perfectly reasonable" for people to do without the motor, but it would also be perfectly reasonable for them to do /with/ it, for no reason other they want to.
Again, do you know for sure that Paul Murphy is physically belittled?

I don't see the relevance of this. We are talking about bicycles.

It's a demonstration that "needs" and "wants" are two /very/ different things.

If it is not meant for people like me then the target market is tiny.

Even if that is the case, it is still a long, long way from asking "what is the point?" as a rhetorical question to mean there isn't any. The market for adult tricycles is, in real terms, tiny, but people will persist in making, selling and riding them all the same.

You seem to be agreeing with me really. Given that cycling doesn't
take much effort anyway, there is no point in the things, given their
obvious disadvantages. They are for a certain subset of infirm people
and for those who want a novelty.

Or just people who like a bit of a hand with pedalling. What's your problem with seeing that such people exist?

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.clinch@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
.

Relevant Pages

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