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Sam7919
Sam7919
08:30
Fatbikes should really be compared, like cars, on their 0-100 time — or maybe their 0-25. They’re harder to move from a stop and harder to stop, as you’d expect from the massive wheels with massive inertia — but once started, they’re not particularly harder than any bike to keep going.
But yes, getting to 35 is “not easy”. Downhill, though, a fatbike always makes me wonder, yet again, how the Tower of Pisa experiment does not apply to bicycles. Fatbikes are ferocious when they roll downhill.
Willeke
Willeke
09:14
@Sam7919, are those fully human powered fatbikes? The only kind I see here are mostly or fully electric powered. Nobody here is against human powered fatbikes, they are just invisible on the streets.
Sam7919
Sam7919
10:07
@Willeke In Canada it's the other way around. I don't recall seeing electrically powered fatbikes (well, the e-bikes are fat, but not their tires), but human-powered fatbikes are a reasonably common sight once the snow starts falling.
Incidentally, compacted snow is quite hard, and so fat tires are not required. Any tire with treads is good. On ice spikes are needed, whether on fat or narrower tires. It's just that somehow the idea has entered the collective conschoucness: fatbikes are needed for snow or sand, and this notion has stuck.
Fresh snow is simply too fluffy. A fat tire will not distribute the load to a stress that can be lifted on fresh snow. It anyway needs compacting to support even a rabbit or a squirrel.
* consciousness
 
4 hours later…
Michael come lately
Michael come lately
13:45
@Sam7919 Maybe not fresh snow, but isn't there a middle ground between fresh and compacted?
I don't see that many normal fat bikes around here. There's just no reason to have them. But we do have a number of the 20" e-fatbikes zipping around. Not quite the scourge that Willeke describes, but they sometimes do dangerous things.
My suspicion is that most of these e-fat bikes are just some of the annoying e-scooter people who moved up, so the result is not too different from before.
@Michael We do have some people riding motocross on city streets, which has been a problem for years. I don't think that's getting solved, though. After some police chases resulted in bystander harm, I think the authorities just put up with the hooligans.
 
3 hours later…
MaplePanda
MaplePanda
16:25
@Sam7919 Really? You've never encountered those swarms of feral Doordash cyclists with their electric bikes electric motorcycles?
 
1 hour later…
Sam7919
Sam7919
17:36
@MaplePanda I've seen delivery folks (not sure about Doordash specifically) riding e-MTBs, not e-fatbikes. Have you seen them ride the latter?
 
4 hours later…
Criggie
Criggie
21:25
I think the distinction is blurry.... e- meaning electric, fat meaning "ridiculously wide tyres of at least 75mm/3" in width" and MTBs having suspension and flatbars.
I can imagine an "efatmtb"
Willeke
Willeke
22:19
To make it more confusing, when a ban on fatbikes was proposed the producers showed a skinny bike, same tech as a fatbikes, basically the same frame but with tyres which would just be under whatever limit the law gave for a fatbike.
The fatbikes you see on the roads here cannot be ridden efficiently without the electric engine. Wrong seating position, too wide (and wrong shaped) seat.
Test
encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/…
Pic does not show for me but the link works.
nieuwsfiets.nu/2024/09/25/…
This is one of the newspaper articles on the skinny bike.
 
1 hour later…
Criggie
Criggie
23:49
Yeah its often amusing when someone tries to make laws without comprehending the details.

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