First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.
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@RaceProUK said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@accalia said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
i bought mine because i wanted a small car
Pfft. That's not small.
This is small:
and my other requirements?
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@accalia said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
and my other requirements?
Well, it gets decent MPG, so you won't need to fill it up often (it;s a 50cc two-stroke).
I will admit, however, that luggage space is at a slight premium.
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@accalia said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
and my other requirements?
Get a trailer, I guess.
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@RaceProUK on the plus side, you'll always be able to find a parking spot!
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@bb36e Who needs a parking spot when you can drive around Television Centre?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJfSS0ZXYdo
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@TimeBandit said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
Get a trailer, I guess.
A trailer for cars?
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@RaceProUK I could see a use for that car.
- Strap a 5 gallons to the back of it
- Put that thing in the back of a pickup
- Use it to go get some gas when you run out of it
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@bb36e said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@RaceProUK on the plus side, you'll always be able to find a parking spot!
On the minus side, it will take a lot less wind than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx7s3Hn9oVw
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@RaceProUK said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@accalia said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
and my other requirements?
Well, it gets decent MPG, so you won't need to fill it up often (it;s a 50cc two-stroke).
I will admit, however, that luggage space is at a slight premium.
And as a bonus, it may be low-powered enough to be allowed on bike paths.
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@PleegWat said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@RaceProUK said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@accalia said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
and my other requirements?
Well, it gets decent MPG, so you won't need to fill it up often (it;s a 50cc two-stroke).
I will admit, however, that luggage space is at a slight premium.
And as a bonus, it may be low-powered enough to be allowed on bike paths.
Are mopeds allowed on bike paths out there? Since that's basically what it is just looking at the engine.
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@Maciejasjmj When limited to 35 km/h, yes. Not sure on 45 km/h. Electric bikes at 45 km/h are allowed on bikepaths, but that's different™.
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@PleegWat said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Maciejasjmj When limited to 35 km/h, yes. Not sure on 45 km/h. Electric bikes at 45 km/h are allowed on bikepaths, but that's different™.
Not in Germany. E-bikes where the motor still supports you after reaching 25 km/h have to always drive on the road. Helmets are also mandatory in that case.
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@Rhywden Not sure if they've made that one consistent yet here.
Also the bike path thing depends on whether you're inside or outside the built-up areas. And I'm not sure on the lot of it anyway because even though I'm technically allowed to drive all that (comes free with a car license) I have never actually even considered doing so.
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@dcon said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
On the minus side, it will take a lot less wind than this:
That strikes me as something that would be hard to explain to your insurance company.
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@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Rhywden said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Polygeekery Or he was at just the right speed between "into the pothole but no damage" and "fly over the pothole"?
If it were a large truck, and it bent the axle, I have to presume it was not the pothole that bent it but the Prius that had fallen in to the pothole.
The flaw with that reasoning is that it was 1988, and the Prius was far in the future. :) And yeah, at the time, Massachusetts roads did suffer from epic potholes.
All I know about the case was that he said he'd hit a pothole, and the service manager said the axle (half-shaft, duh) was bent.
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@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
I cannot even list the large things I have hit with a pickup
SJWs, protestors, foxes...
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@HardwareGeek said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
Vaguely relevant: When the car was first introduced, every time I saw "Prius," I thought of Priapus.
I always thought of pious, seems to fit the kind of people who buy them
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@TimeBandit said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
A nice anti-theft device is a manual transmission
By that logic there shouldn't be any car theft this side of the pond
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In another, odder case, a man in a St. Louis University parking lot was robbed at gunpoint of $24 last Sunday. The thief then ordered the motorist to slide into the passenger side, after which the thief attempted and failed to operate the manual shift and clutch, says the St. Louis Dispatch. The victim, who wasn’t harmed, offered to drive the robber to his destination. After a short trip, the robber thanked the man and exited the car.
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@RaceProUK Makes sense to me. The robber was probably getting frustrated and angry. The victim figured, apparently correctly, that he was less likely to be shot if he cooperated.
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@Maciejasjmj said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
Are mopeds allowed on bike paths out there?
That confused me the first time I ever went to The Netherlands. The second time I went, I ended up walking somewhere and the pavement for pedestrians ended up merged into the "cycle" path. I was not a fan of that.
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@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
Plastic manhole covers?? Why? Why would you do that?
Cheaper and lighter weight. They cost about the same or a bit more for the cover itself, but it's cheaper and easier to transport them en masse, easier for the workers to install, and easier to remove and replace when it's necessary for workers to gain access to the manhole. Workers can handle them faster and more easily, with less chance of getting injured.
Iron is used for manhole covers because it is heavy. If you make lighter manhole covers, you would have to lock them in place to keep them from being sucked off the manhole from the airflow of passing traffic.
The weight of the covers is also currently the main thing preventing unauthorized people from opening them to see if there's any copper inside that they can steal... or any fiber that they think is copper. It doesn't work very well; any able-bodied person can pretty easily remove one (well, actually picking it up and carting it away is pretty damn difficult, but you can pretty easily lift one side and roll it off the manhole). Making them lock is actually beneficial, because you can make them so that they require a special tool to unlock.
And, it's relatively common for regular metal manhole covers to be dislodged, either partially covering the hole (leaving it precariously balanced) or not at all (leaving a gaping open hole). Someone steps on it, falls into the hole, gets injured, and sues the city. Making the lids lock helps keep them securely on top of the hole where they're supposed to stay, even when you have something like a sewer backup or a water leak. A 24" manhole cover has ~450 in2 of surface area, and a tiny little bit of pressure underneath can easily lift a 200-300 lb. lid and move it off the hole.
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@masonwheeler said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
Asphalt and concrete are very literally infinitely recyclable.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics begs to differ...
Doesn't apply, because recycling requires adding energy and/or materials. It just takes less energy and/or materials to recycle something than it does to manufacture it brand-new.
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@Polygeekery It's an oil product.
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@aapis said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Polygeekery It's an oil product.
: Not always. Some asphalt is simply refined from naturally occurring bituminous asphalt deposits.
Even discounting natural asphalts, many plastics are also oil products. But so what? If you use hydrocarbons to make roads, then they aren't being burned to generate CO2!
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@Jaloopa said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
I cannot even list the large things I have hit with a pickup
SJWs, protestors, foxes...
For the record, I am perfectly OK with legitimate protestors. They stop being protestors when they start rioting and destroying property. Or...trespassing. But that is Garage discussion. :)
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@RaceProUK said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
In another, odder case, a man in a St. Louis University parking lot was robbed at gunpoint of $24 last Sunday. The thief then ordered the motorist to slide into the passenger side, after which the thief attempted and failed to operate the manual shift and clutch, says the St. Louis Dispatch. The victim, who wasn’t harmed, offered to drive the robber to his destination. After a short trip, the robber thanked the man and exited the car.
It would have been cooler if he had pulled a "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" on the robber, complete with repeatedly slamming his head in the car door.
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@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
But that is Garage discussion
TO THE GARAGEMOBILE!
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@loopback0 said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Polygeekery said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
But that is Garage discussion
TO THE GARAGEMOBILE!
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@aapis said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
@Polygeekery It's an oil product.
If we leave the oil on the ground (as asphalt and/or plastic manhole covers), is that like leaving it in the ground?
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@abarker said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
Should replace the bat with a , but that would be work, and you're a mod, so...
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@Steve_The_Cynic I hit a pothole on what is admittedly a bit of a back road through the Scottish Borders deep enough to entirely dislocate one of the rear airbags from the rest of the suspension of my old Range Rover.
It coped admirably with an Army training range that got military-spec Wolf Landrovers thoroughly stuck, it coped with competition-grade offroad courses, but a good-sized South Lanarkshire pothole pulled the rubber away from the plastic seat.
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@HardwareGeek said in First there were SolarRoads, now there will be PlasticRoads.:
If we leave the oil on the ground (as asphalt and/or plastic manhole covers), is that like leaving it in the ground?
Yes. Any carbon that's part of the polymers of the plastic isn't being burned and turned into carbon dioxide.
You can cycle on the asphalt roads and plastic manhole covers if it makes you feel any better