It’s not an electric bike craze. You’re looking at the future of transportation

Re:It’s not an electric bike craze. You’re looking at the fu... by Kon-Peki on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @05:05PM (#37228508)

I had a positive impression of this article all the way until I came to the quote "Studies have shown that a mere 10% shift from car drivers to bike riders has resulted in a 40% reduction in traffic congestion" which links to another article on the same website(!) - which has a quote "In one such study, a shift of just 10% of commuters from cars to motorcycles resulted in a 40% reduction in traffic congestion", which has a link to some other blog post that has the quote "if 10% of all private cars were replaced by motorcycles, it would reduce traffic congestion by 40%" but no link at all to any study.

Doing some searching I found a link to the study, but couldn't read it because about half a second after loading it uses some Javascript or something to completely blank the page.

But I did find a page that does link to the study (that you can't read) and has this quote "The results came from a case study for a stretch of highway between Leuven and Brussels in Belgium and may not translate directly to other road scenarios, as the report states quite clearly that the effects of a modal shift are dependent on the local traffic situation."

So basically this study has no applicability to bikes, was done on the only kind of road you wouldn't ride a bike on, and the authors cautioned that you shouldn't extrapolate to other kinds of roads.

Man, what a disappointment.

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Re:It’s not an electric bike craze. You’re looking at the fu... by throw310822 on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @05:37PM (#37228859)

> the quote ... which links to another article on the same website(!) ... which has a link to some other blog post that has the quote ...

This is the norm everywhere nowadays, including the most respected newspapers. I think it deserves a name- maybe something like "pretend citation" or "Chinese links". I think its popularity is due to the impression it gives of factual accuracy coupled with nonchalant confidence; someone who simply turns a sentence into a blue link has done his homework and dares you to doubt him. In fact usually the links point to other articles- often from the same publications and author- wherein one can find, buried somewhere, a similar but different statement, which in turn can be either totally unsupported or again link somewhere else, to even more remotely related factoids.

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