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I love mine, I think it opens up some opportunities to work on relations with cars and pedestrians. I feel less in the way when I can maintain a better speed up
by paiute 5y ago
I love mine, I think it opens up some opportunities to work on relations with cars and pedestrians. I feel less in the way when I can maintain a better speed up hill. and on trails it's not a burden to slow down when passing pedestrians on foot. Nothing is worse than a bike whizzing by when you don't expect it. I just wish they'd remove those stupid speed limiters.
- multjoy 5y agoIf you remove the speed limiter you are riding an electric motorcycle, which needs to be somewhere other than with pedestrians and cyclists.
- zip1234 5y agoExcept in many places pedestrians and cyclists have no choice but to share the road with cars and I don't see too many people clamoring for speed limiters on those...
- multjoy 5y agoIf you remove the limiter and pedal assist requirement, you have an electric motorcycle. If you want one of those, then you'll need to be licensed to ride one. Do you want an e-bike you can ride like a bicycle, or do you want an e-bike you can ride like a motorcycle?
- paiute 5y agoonly because we have brain dead laws on e bikes. why not 24.5 mph? I see actual electric motorcycles on our bike paths all the time, I have never seen them cause a real problem. People on normal bikes cause all the problems because they have so much invested in their current speed.
- sgarman 5y agoI don't think this is a fair take. People on normal bikes do cause problems because of the reason you listed but it's surely not ALL of the problems.
- Arainach 5y agoBecause kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, and 25mph is 56% more energy which is a huge problem in a collision with a pedestrian or a crash. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-explain-why-20-mph-should-be-the-limit-on-city-streets/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-explain... It's also a big issue with response time and with the rate pedestrians expect bicycles to be travelling. You shouldn't bike on the sidewalk because no one is looking for vehicles going more than a few miles per hour (walking). You shouldn't bike more than 15mph on trails/lanes shared with pedestrians for similar reasons. 20mph is a tolerable compromise, 25mph is flat out dangerous.
- pmontra 5y agoThis matches my experience on shared pedestrian / bicycles low density roads in countryside. 30 km/h (a little less than 20 mph) is the limit between okish and dangerous. Actually pedestrians start to worry a little before that speed but of course half of them don't see the bicycle approaching. The cyclist see them a long time before overtaking and assesses whether they are safe to pass or require a slow down.
- paiute 5y agoThis is a good example of how we get bad laws... Should overweight cyclists be forced to have a lower speed? I can still get my ebike to 25 mph down hill, I would never dream of passing a pedestrian at that speed. I picked 24.5 for a reason and not 25 BTW.
- White_Wolf 5y agotbh I wouldn't mind the peed limit being higher but introduce some sort of driving lic and exam for it with periodic re-testing. Also re-testing should be mandatory for car drivers too. Both theory, practical, reflex testing. I ride a bicycle, bike and drive a car and the ammount of crazies on all sides leaves me speachless sometimes. I see cyclist cutting off cars and shooting into a roundabout just because cars will avoid them. I actually had a crash becasue of a retard like this and I chased him until I caught him. Took him to court and won. On the other side of the coin - I see cars taking turns without checking their mirrors, overtaking while in a queue without making sure no cyclists are passing by. Smashed a bike to bits because of 1 twat. His insurance paid for the bike and treatment. P.S. I'm not a perfect driver but people these days lack consideration and defensive driving(even the notion of it is foreign now)
- jacquesm 5y agoThat depends on the conditions. If you adapt to the conditions then that would be fine, if you don't then even at normal e-bike speeds you are a danger. I never got why we have 200 Mph cars but a moped that can go 30 over the legal limit gets confiscated.
- nradov 5y agoOnly a tiny handful of expensive sports cars can actually reach 200 mph. While there a few limited exceptions, in most jurisdictions anyone caught driving at 200 mph will be arrested and the car impounded.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoIn this context 200 or 150 mph are the same: illegal, and instant death if anything goes wrong.
- multjoy 5y agoBecause a moped that can go 30 over the legal limit is no longer a moped, it is a motorcycle and needs to be taxed, insured and tested as such.
- jacquesm 5y agoMy e-bike is taxed, insured and tested to the same standards as a light e-moto (in Germany, a Riese & Mueller 'charger'). The only difference with the bicycle version is the speed limiter setting.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago>with pedestrians Do some cities actually let cyclists bike on sidewalks? I bike 24/7 but this seems crazy. Bicycles needs their own, separate, protected paths, at the road level. Period.
- fknorangesite 5y ago> Do some cities actually let cyclists bike on sidewalks? Not sidewalks per se, but combined, mixed-used paths are very common. Whether this is a good idea or not is another issue.
- pcwalton 5y agoYes. Several cities in the Bay Area have shared sidewalks; e.g. Embarcadero in San Francisco, and Foster City has a ton of them. I don't know of any cities that allow all sidewalks to be used by bikes, but I'm sure some exist.
- fragmede 5y agoEmbarcadero's a special case since it's so wide, and barely has car traffic crossing it. (It borders the ocean on one side.) San Francisco has many protected bike lanes and if your route is on those exclusively, it's very nice.
- silicon2401 5y agoI live in a city that explicitly allows cyclists to bike on sidewalks, and I'd never bike otherwise. One time I tried road-riding the mere 15m home from the gym and had 3 close calls from drivers. We also have separate, protected paths at the road level. Anybody who wants me to ride on the road can send me a blank check to cover medical expenses in the case of an accident if they are so invested in my riding according to their preferences.
- pmontra 5y agoLuckily it's illegal to ride a bicycle on sidewalks in my country and yet many people do it at half the speed and half the comfort of what they would have on the road (sidewalks are not maintained to be smooth and are cluttered by all sort of things and people.) I'm a cyclist and I really hate them. If they are afraid to ride on the road, it sucks for them but it's only one of the things people would like to do and cannot do. Walk, catch a bus, drive a car.
- TrevorJ 5y agoMore specifically, you have and electric motorcycle with no traction, no safety features and an untrained rider.
- jdavis703 5y agoRiding a motorcycle is easier than a bike. In a motorcycle there’s three evasive actions: brake, accelerate or swerve. On a bicycle there’s only two, and that lack of speed is exactly what causes some of the riskiest behaviors from motorists (e.g. close passing.)
- TrevorJ 5y agoI think it's charitable to say there are even two fully useful evasive actions on a bike. An absolutely tiny contact patch and low weight mean that there's simply not enough traction for any sort of aggressive change in direction or speed without ending up off the bike. What's pernicious about this is, that under normal circumstances most people won't have ridden a bike past these limits, maybe ever, so the first time you realize your bike can go from well behaved to on the pavement instantly is the worst time for it to happen.
- speedgoose 5y agoIt depends on the bike though. I mountain bike with large soft tires, good suspensions, and low air pressure have quite a lot of grip compared to a road bike with tiny super hard tires. You can do a lot of crazy things. But I agree that the average commuter bike has low limits.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"the first time you realize your bike can go from well behaved to on the pavement instantly is the worst time for it to happen." I am always afraid of falling of the bike while there is a bus driving behind me. Could happed with a pothole, random garbage/bottle of the road, etv
- 5y ago
- jacquesm 5y agoThose speed limiters are indeed stupid, especially because on a 'regular' bike you can fairly easily outrun a normal e-bike (though probably not for as long unless you are in very good shape). Normal ones should be limited at 35 or so and speed-pedelecs at 50 Kph so you don't end up holding up other traffic. Where I live a speed-pedelec has to be in traffic but it isn't allowed to go as fast as that traffic, which creates all kinds of dangers.
- namdnay 5y agoWhat are the rules where you live? In France it's either a bike if the assist is limited to 25kmh (you could go above that on a nice flat road, but the gearing usually isn't designed for it) , or a "<50cc motorcycle" in which case it can go up to 50kmh (like all other <50cc vehicles). In the latter case, no bike lanes, you need a rear-view mirror and helmet, and for some bureaucratic reason the brakes have to be inversed
- pmontra 5y agoSame in Italy. It means that a ciclyst on an ebike can outperform a group of friends with normal bikes on an slope but can't stay with them on the way back home and they'll have to wait. I experienced that and it's not nice. The two types of bikes mix well only in low intensity sightseeing rides.
- namdnay 5y agowell, only if the friends are keen cyclists with road bikes. no commuter in shirt and trousers with saddlebags for the laptop etc is going to be running at more than 25kmh
- pmontra 5y agoOf course. We were slowly pedaling uphill with road bikes and our friend was speeding in front of us. But we had to wait on the way back home because we could do easily 30 km/h on the last 20 km (completely flat) and his engine cut off at 25.