4 ms·

pedal assist ebikes in bike lanes are quite dangerous. They are just faster, heavier bikes with less braking power. I'm not saying your point is wrong, just th

• geofft 7y ago
  Yeah, I somewhat intentionally picked it because it's ambiguous whether it's a good thing. I personally as a young(ish) person with a bicycle and a ham license would like both legal e-bikes and legal encryption :) I share a bike lane with e-bikes fairly frequently and I feel way, way, way safer than I feel when sharing a lane with a truck.
• silon42 7y ago
  Aren't they limited to 25km/h in most places (at least in Europe)? That's slower than many bikers can do.
• giobox 7y ago
  Starting to see these arguments that ebikes should somehow be banned from cyclepaths or bike lanes a lot and not sure I agree at all. Virtually all ebikes sold in North America are limited to speeds achievable on a conventional bike, with most limited to 20mph. An average cyclist on even a cheap road bike can comfortably hit 20mph too if gradient is not too severe. The faster “class 3” ebikes with 28mph top speeds are already banned from cycle paths pretty much everywhere. I think we should just be happy more people are getting on bikes regardless. Pedal assist by definition is not a throttle - it’s not like the rider has a gas pedal they can leap on and accelerate like a sports car. As others have said, I’d much rather share a lane with an ebike than a car or motorcycle! Huge speed differentials in the bike lane at times is already a fact of life given varying levels of rider fitness. Just do what most cyclists/ebikers do already - be a considerate rider. Your argument that they have worse brakes is especially silly - almost all ebike systems only add 7-10kgs to total bike weight vs equivalent non ebike. There are far bigger variances just in rider weight alone. I’d argue ebikes typically have better brakes given most of them are sold with mid to high end hydraulic discs. Typical road bikes are often sold with significantly inferior rim brakes. Modern bicycle disc brakes are extremely good.
  • ouid 7y ago
    The question is not whether they have a higher top speed, but whether they are usually traveling the speed of traffic. Pedal assist bikes are usually going significantly faster than bikes in the same area. That's the point of them. Additionally, that 20 pounds of extra weight is in an uncontrolled projectile. Person to person collisions are not as injurious as bike to person collisions even though bikes are just a fraction of the weight of the person, and that extra 20 pounds triples the weight of most bikes. Talking about rider weight misses the point.
    • giobox 7y ago
      Now you are really making things up as you go. 20lbs triples the weight of most bikes? That implies most bikes only weigh ~7lbs. You realise that is completely absurd, and would likely be close to a world record holder for lightest production bike? Going faster than other riders is absolutely not the point of pedal assist. Most of them basically can’t thanks to the 20mph cut out. Of course many will find they can sustain a higher average speed below 20, but the point is travelling much the same kinds of speeds with much less effort. Of course rider weight matters. One is rarely hit by a riderless bicycle. Rider weight is especially relevant in your claim that the brakes are worse too - whether the mass is in the rider or the bike frame is going to be largely inconsequential to stopping distances - the brakes still have to stop the combined weight of rider plus bike. Hence relevance of the small additional mass of small motor plus battery being dwarfed by variances in rider weight on normal bikes.
• komali2 7y ago
  The fact that there are danger obstacles to the given mode of transportation shouldn't be considered as good enough reason to ban them outright - bicyclists regularly run red lights and stop signs, sometimes even striking and killing pedestrians. Yet, we still create bike lanes and don't ban them outright, because they are good. Same for trucks, which run over pedestrians and bicyclists with startling regularity. Same for motorcycles, which kill their drivers with startling regularity. I don't think "quite dangerous" is valid for banning outright. Maybe "dangerous all of the time no matter what," such as drunk driving, or driving the wrong way on a road, or cycling on the freeway. Anyway, you can always add regulation. Requiring passengers in cars to wear seatbelts made cars less dangerous. Requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets made motorcycles less dangerous. Giving bicycles bicycle lanes and their own signals made bicycling safer. Etc. Put a speed limit on the bicycle lanes - no faster than 25mph, say. Maybe force e-bike companies to put limiters on the bikes, but that sucks for when they want to ride on the road at whatever speed they can pull off. Then, actually enforce the rules, which I don't know how to go about doing, because the cops in my jurisdiction for example don't give a fuck about neither cars parked in bike lanes (even in "no parking at any time" zones!) or bicyclists sprinting through reds/stop signs. I say this as someone that owns only 2 wheeled vehicles, motorized or otherwise.
• vkou 7y ago
  If the 30 extra pounds of weight of an e-bike is a safety issue, we should ban overweight people from bicycling. If an e-bike hitting 25 km/h is a safety issue, we should, likewise, ban fit people from bicycling.
• krageon 7y ago
  The ebikes sold where I live go no faster than a very low speed (think ~20km/h) and have very robust brakes (double, not sensitive to weather conditions). They are in every way safer than the racing bike people who frequently go 40-50km/h and have brakes that are sensitive to weather conditions. And they are actually fine also.