Here wondering how steep I need to back off the idea of finding out who uses the MAX BOOST (ne’mmind pedaling) lever half the time and giving them some kind of song and dance to care about their other multiverse selves who might be in the way.
More pedestrians carrying umbrellas with sharpened tips?
I’m really fed up with those of us on two feet always having to be the ones to suffer the effects of more vehicles at higher speeds taking up ever more public space.
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Similar situation here in Oz. To be street-legal as an e-Bike, it must have power less than 250 W, and provide no boost at speeds above x (35 km/h, I think?) [1].
In other words, it can’t make you go faster than a fit person could on a bike.
[1] 250 W = 0.335 hp. 35 km/h is about 174 furlongs / h, or about 2.4 hippopotamus-lengths / second.
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The laws in the UK (which I think are inherited from the EU) seem reasonable, but the reality is more complicated. The US, or individual states, could do better with some sensible regulation, but getting it right is going to be difficult.
When researching eBike conversion kits, I learned that wattage limits are enforced by firmware. So, the 250W street-legal motor you get in the UK could be run at a higher wattage with a little hacking, or available open-source firmware:
In the UK, legal motors are identified by a sticker like this:
Living London, I see delivery drivers on every variant of electric bike and I can’t imagine they’re all legal. Given the financial pressure to deliver quickly, I’m sure there is plenty of knowledge in the community about tweaking these bikes. I think it would be hard for the police to test the actual output of motors. And, with a racist police force like the MET, it is inevitable that laws about eMobility will be applied unfairly.
There’s also a problem with fires:
That delivery driver with the tweaked eBike conversion kit is more likely to be sleeping in the same room with their charging bike when it explodes.
All that said, it does seem like eBikes will be a positive part of low emission transport in the future. But, there’s a long way to go.
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Imagining a low-emission future gets harder without things like eBikes.
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What is required is much more strict regulation of retailers - to ensure they properly advise customers what is and is not legal. Frankly, people should not be allowed to purchase non-pedalled e-bikes without proof of insurance and (in the UK) a DVLA registration.
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Ridiculous…drivers trying to take bikes off the road in the guise of ‘safety’.
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Came to say something similar. BC has been struggling with the entire proliferation of wacky electric vehicles that now exist. Scooters, OneWheels, MonoWheels, Hoverboards, etc, now all trying to share path, sidewalk, and road space.
Some of these are very fast. Some don’t stop very well. Some have rather dangerous failure modes in the event of pothole or gravel. Figuring out the license, helmet, and path access rules for all this stuff is going to take a long time.
I think it’s a good problem to have though. I’m happy people are inventing ever more alternatives to cars and it’s all quiet and all carbon friendly.
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100% this. Infrastructure is far more important than licensing to tackle the e-bike “problem”. Pedestrians have complained about bicyclists and skateboarders and rallied (alongside local businesses obsessed with free parking) against bike lanes for decades before ebikes appeared on the scene. This is just another situation of car-centrists forcing all other modes of transport to fight for scraps among themselves. An E-vehicles only lane in the road, similar to the Bus-only lanes would be much more effective.
I ride a standup e-scooter to work. Part of my commute is the “park loop”, a 2 (car-sized) lane road through the park that used to be for cars. In the past few years they finally managed to get rid of cars on the park loop, which is great. Due to a high level of complaints about e-scooters, though, they’ve now banned them from the park. I have to imagine that the actual complaints were about the sudden uptick in electric Vespa-type scooters that cruise around on the internal walking paths of the park, which definitely needs to be dealt with.
Of course, I got a ticket going 8mph on the big 2-lane park loop because that’s where the cops can sit in their SUV and wait for a slow scooter to go by to roll after. While waiting for my ticket, pods of racing cyclist 20-30 strong blew past us (and the traffic light) going 20+mph without issue. I said to the cops: “Listen, I ride this part of my commute through the park because there’s no bike lane on the street and the traffic is crazy on that road” and they responded “oh yeah, that’s what everyone’s been telling us.”
I also got a ticket years ago on my regular old pedal-powered bicycle on a short stretch of empty sidewalk to get around a particularly dangerous intersection where cars have killed numerous bicyclists. The cops who issued that summons told us “I heard a kid got their tooth knocked out by a bicyclist once!” I told them about the bike death stats from cars, and they kinda looked sheepish and said “sorry, they just told us to go after bikes this month.”
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I want my Outlander to sound like that when it’s in full EV mode!
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Thank you. I want to emphasize that.
Get those vehicles on the streets. Rake the room from cars. Nearly everyone wins.
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It indicates some degree of road awareness training at least though of course the quality of the training will have varied considerably depending on where you get your license.
In Tokyo if you want to rent a e-scooter you need to have a driver’s license but if you are renting a pedal assist e-bike you do not.
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I haven’t felt the need (yet) to try a pedal-assist mountain bike on my local trails given the particular terrain, but for now my vote is to have e-bike only trails rather than sharing the same trails with all the various class e-bikes. “Accoustic” bikes and hikers on the same trail can feel crowded/dangerous enough as it is.
Given all the new variety of e-vehicles for personal transport, I could imagine an electric only lane on the roads for folks using one of them (scooters, e-bikes, e-skateboards, etc.). Also it makes sense why mass is so relevant; enough speed and weight, and the chances of someone getting seriously hurt shoot right up.
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To amplify what you and @LutherBlisset are saying, yes, all of this.
Wherever I’ve lived or visited, where a municipality puts in bike/pedestrian paths that actually go places, they basically fill to capacity within a year, and then get crowded, because they are wanted and very much needed.
It’ll be messy sorting out usage in the interim, but the long-term solution is revisiting our infrastructure to allow for more than just “cars and trucks” and “everyone else.”
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No, this is about cyclists trying to take overpowered motor vehicles off bike paths. Very different.
ETA: Also, if our goal is to get more people out of cars and onto bikes then we need to get serious about creating spaces where cyclists of all ages actually feel safe riding their bikes. Allowing what are essentially unlicensed motorcycles on bike paths is just going to make more people want to stay in their cars.
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Neoliberal isn’t a thing on the left. The label was grabbed by the right for their trickle-down Chicago School economic theories. (Which are not political because they say that it’s not political.)
Two things to keep in mind:
The right generates or colonizes a large number of labels, which are usually of no difference from previous labels.
There is a tendency to assume that for every label on the right, there must be an equivalent label on the left, even if there isn’t.
Alt-Right => Alt-Left
QAnon => BlueAnon
Neo-Conservative => Neo-Liberal
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I think that’s tough because these vehicles all have radically different performance characteristics. Road usage is grouped roughly by speed and stopping ability. Bikes can go on roads with cars because they’re mostly as fast, and accelerate and brake within the same general range of performance. The same crosswalk structures, hill grades, turning radii, traffic light timings, etc, work for both.
But take something like an electric skateboard- it’s capable of a lot of speed, but they need a lot of room to stop, accelerate gradually, and don’t turn all that well. Putting that on the same lane as an e-bike which is effectively a motorcycle would be pretty scary. Or those OneWheel things- they accelerate and turn well, but can’t stop suddenly for a pedestrian who crosses in front. That needs to affect crosswalk design, traffic light timing, hill grades, etc.
I’m not sure there is a single road design that could accommodate all that. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I’m glad smarter people than me are working on it.
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Not that those rules are observed, or really enforced, at least not where I live. There’s loads of kids blasting round on pedal-less ebikes that are frighteningly quick. They look like electric versions of trial bikes, and they bool around on them wearing balaclavas generally being dicks and interfering with traffic. Cops, even if there were any round here, and they gave a shit, wouldn’t be able to chase them or catch them
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