[Dazzler5648]

This piece seems ignorant of regular people's realities. Many people cannot afford the luxuries of this elusive fancy "safe" bike with well-engineered parts, kept on a professional maintenance schedule. I suspect this really isn't an issue for most HN readers, and the fear-mongering just heats simmering angst. Remember a cure for angst is to 1) ride your bike and 2) donate time and resources your local bike repair cooperative or homeless shelter.

Author seems to forget the most important part of the machinery is the rider. What a glorious machine! He also seems to forget that millions of people in the world are riding bikes, motorbikes, and cars scrapped together from whatever they can afford or find. Forced to accept the risk, they usually get where they're going. I wonder does the author check out the maintenance of every Uber he hops into? "Let me see your torque wrench!?"

I've built and maintained all my own bikes since around 2005 with no training. It doesn't take a genius or a torque wrench to keep a bike rolling. I recently dropped my standards quite a bit on two bikes: One where I took a decent 2021 FS trail MTB I'd maybe ridden ten times on a black diamond downhill singletrack and another where I took a 1998 HT MTB with seized shifters, no grips, crusty, barely-functioning brakes and a sun-baked Hellraiser-looking rear tire held together only by a thin sheet of kevlar(?) around the streets of Portland, Oregon for three weeks wearing no helmet. I know, I'm a monster.

As an aside, I ride a 2005 Yamaha YZ250 (dirt motorcycle) my ex maintains... that feels sorta... dangerous.

[prmoustache]

I think the key is most people are ignorant. If people knew how to maintain such a simple thing as a bicycle, they would maintain them correctly.

Cost is mostly a non issue for most people. It doesn't cost a lot to maintain a non high end bicycle if you do it yourself. If you look at the shimano groupsets on the lowest end of the spectrum like shimano tourney, you quickly realize they need much less bicycle specific tooling as the high end ones. For example instead of socket bolts they are using hex head bolts that can be torqued with simple wrenchs or a single adjustable one. The 2 only specific tools are the threaded cassette tool and the square taper bottom bracket extractor. Everything else can be done with a very basic set of tool and there is nothing super challenging.