3 ms·

Why should cars not have governors, but ebikes should?

gambiting 5y ago
Because you can't drive a car on public roads without mandatory training and passing an exam - so the assumption is that you know and understand the standing speed limits and obey them, but you ride a bike/ebike anywhere without any training or licences so the barrier to entry is lower . Same way how(at least over here) anyone can ride a 50cc motorbike without any training whatsoever, but to ride something more powerful you need a proper motorcycle licence. I'd be happy with some sort of process where you can only ride a 250W ebike with no self-drive without a licence, but more powerful motors are available after passing a licence and with mandatory insurance.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Before we go hog wild with regulations, let's wait until there's a database of vertifed major injuries to innocent people with these rascals on their electric bikes. (I am not a fan of overregulation. In the USA we have made practically everything illegial.)
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Just so I get this straight - you're saying let's wait until people get injured and only then regulate this?
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      That's right. Not just minor injuries, but major injuries. And not just to guilty people, but innocent people. Then once we have a database (definitely a heavy duty one like Oracle with lots of consultants to nurse it), we'll need a consortium of independent auditors to verify that all those injuries were major, and all the injured people were innocent. Only then will we be able to embark on developing a standard VerifiedInnocentPersonMajorInjuryRecord interchange format, and begin the debates about whether it should be based on CORBA, XML, YAML, JSON, or CSV, and if we can't come to an agreement on that, then we'll have to develop converters between all the different data formats. Because the free market trumps government regulations every time. For some definition of "Trump".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- stefan_ 5y ago
  The "mandatory training and exam" are an utter joke in the US. The reality is that of course cars should have speed governors, but we have turned cars into luxury goods so now peoples fragile ego centers around how big and fast their transportation is. Reasonable people want to simulate a PID controller for hours as much as they want to shift manually - not at all.
  - bsagdiyev 5y ago
    Cars typically have speed limiters. Not sure why people think they don’t.
    - wffurr 5y ago
      Not at a meaningful speed for safety.
mh- 5y ago
Many (most? all?) cars absolutely have governors from the factory. And they're often related to the rating of the tires factory-installed.
PeterisP 5y ago
You definitely should be able to (and can!) have e-bikes without governors, however, an unlimited e-bike is (and should be) legally treated as the equivalent of a moped/motorcycle, not as the equivalent of a bicycle.

Because you can't drive a car on public roads without mandatory training and passing an exam - so the assumption is that you know and understand the standing speed limits and obey them, but you ride a bike/ebike anywhere without any training or licences so the barrier to entry is lower . Same way how(at least over here) anyone can ride a 50cc motorbike without any training whatsoever, but to ride something more powerful you need a proper motorcycle licence. I'd be happy with some sort of process where you can only ride a 250W ebike with no self-drive without a licence, but more powerful motors are available after passing a licence and with mandatory insurance.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
Before we go hog wild with regulations, let's wait until there's a database of vertifed major injuries to innocent people with these rascals on their electric bikes. (I am not a fan of overregulation. In the USA we have made practically everything illegial.)
- gambiting 5y ago
  Just so I get this straight - you're saying let's wait until people get injured and only then regulate this?
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    That's right. Not just minor injuries, but major injuries. And not just to guilty people, but innocent people. Then once we have a database (definitely a heavy duty one like Oracle with lots of consultants to nurse it), we'll need a consortium of independent auditors to verify that all those injuries were major, and all the injured people were innocent. Only then will we be able to embark on developing a standard VerifiedInnocentPersonMajorInjuryRecord interchange format, and begin the debates about whether it should be based on CORBA, XML, YAML, JSON, or CSV, and if we can't come to an agreement on that, then we'll have to develop converters between all the different data formats. Because the free market trumps government regulations every time. For some definition of "Trump".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
stefan_ 5y ago
The "mandatory training and exam" are an utter joke in the US. The reality is that of course cars should have speed governors, but we have turned cars into luxury goods so now peoples fragile ego centers around how big and fast their transportation is. Reasonable people want to simulate a PID controller for hours as much as they want to shift manually - not at all.
- bsagdiyev 5y ago
  Cars typically have speed limiters. Not sure why people think they don’t.
  - wffurr 5y ago
    Not at a meaningful speed for safety.

mh- 5y ago

Many (most? all?) cars absolutely have governors from the factory. And they're often related to the rating of the tires factory-installed.

PeterisP 5y ago

You definitely should be able to (and can!) have e-bikes without governors, however, an unlimited e-bike is (and should be) legally treated as the equivalent of a moped/motorcycle, not as the equivalent of a bicycle.