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🚨 New York City is holding a public hearing on Mayor Adams's controversial proposal to cap e-bike speed-limits at 15 mph. People can file a written comment until 5 p.m. 📢 (rules.cityofnewyork.us)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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Today is a big day for the future of e-bikes in New York City. A hearing starts at 10 a.m. You can file a written comment until 5 p.m. You can also send an email to rules@dot.nyc.gov until 5 p.m

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[–] 72 points 1 year ago (4 children)

16mph is the limitation in germany. If your bike is faster, you have to register it an pay tax, and cant use dedicated bicycle infratructure anymore.

16mph is exactly the speed where I'm fast enough but dont feel like I would die in a crash.

Everything above would require protective clothing like on motorcycles Imo, and that kind of defeats the purpose for ebikes for me. I want to ride my bike but don't want to have to fight against wind and going up the hill.

If an ebike is as fast as a motorcycle, it should get treated as one.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah this proposal is reasonable. I wouldnt want to share my bikepath with old people driving more than 25kmh. They just dont have the reaction time to safely drive at speeds like that and even that is actually waaay to fast for the oldest. If you wanna go faster, use your muscles and/or drive on the road.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    if you want to go faster use your muscles

    Okay but the fact that you can say this without it being a joke proves how stupid this limit is.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Not at all no. This used to be a sort of self regulating system. Peoples ability to go fast with muscles alone usually goes away around the same point where their cognitive abilities become a hazard to the rest of traffic. The difference is that most young people could easily go 18mph or more while old people wouldnt even get past 10 without e-bikes. Basically e-bikes allow people to go beyond their limits. While that sounds cool, in this case it isnt.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, much better for old uncoordinated people to go back to using cars.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Said literally nobody. 15mph is plenty fast for getting around :) The more important part is making biking more attractive by building better infrastructure for it and actively restricting car traffic by slowing it down or diverting it out of cities.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    So limit cars to 15 mph. I'm down.

    Or do you just hate bikes?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I like being alive and not being rammed by a 200kg combination of e-bike + human at speeds higher than 25kmh while riding my bike to work.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I like not being rammed by 2-10 tons of steel and lithium while i cross the street. Yeah. Lets limit cars to 15mph.

    If you don't do that, but do limit ebikes, you're just an auto industry shill.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And you're a troll, this isn't a zero sum game, making bikes safe matters, you complete weirdo.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    But making cars safe doesnt.

    So you're just incentivizing a much more dangerous behavior. You are the problem.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In a city with buses, subways, ferries, light rail... Shut up.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Oh so there are no cars?

    Please go back to c/fuckcars@lemmynsfw

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    "drat my bike won't go at unreasonable speeds, my only solution must be abandoning my still perfectly functional bike and laying down several grand on the single least practical means of transportation in the city. What's a MetroCard?"

    Shut. Up.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The thing with pedelecs and 25km/h is complicatedâ„¢

    • we distinguish e-bikes and pedelecs
      • self-driving electric bike
      • bike with electric pedal assist
    • motorized bikes are already a thing for a century
      • motorbikes… (driving license; 16 years+; real number plate; but 20 years+ for >45km/h)
      • moped has 45km/h limit and a kickstart pedal (driving license; 15 years+; insurance plate)
      • mofa has 25km/h limit and (can have) real bike pedals (driving test; 15 years+; insurance plate)
    • every motorized vehicle that can do more than 20km/h and doesn’t have a seat belt, mandates helmets
    • bike paths are only for bikes
      • outside of built-up area mofas were already allowed to use bike paths
    • at least one state banned motorized vehicles from forests

    It probably was always possible to drive them as moped/mofa, don’t think it was specified what kind of motor.

    Pedal assist doesn’t just stop at 25km/h, it also decreases with higher speeds.

    But the point is that pedelecs effectively count as bike and not motorized vehicles. That means somebody younger than 15 can drive them, but you have to be at least 10 to be allowed to drive on streets/roads. Helmets are only mandatory for <12 years old kids on bikes.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If you're not limiting cars the same, you're just anti bike. Fuck off carbrain.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    It’s the same. Those are motor limits, not driving speed limits. If you don’t meet them you just have to follow the stricter regulations.

    Theoretically if you get an e-bike classified as a motorbike you could do 200 km/h on the motor way, just not on bike lanes. It just needs to be registerd, insuranced, have a proper motorbike license, wear helmet etc … like it’s the case with a car where it’s seat belt instead of helmet.

    The speed limits are the same, I still have to follow regular 30km/h speed limits with my pedelec when I could do 45km/h downhill otherwise. Unless there are special signs somewhere, but so far I’ve only seen those for trucks/buses. Bikes are also entitled to street parking and parking lots since those are rules for all vehicles, it’s just impracticable. There is only a general rule to park space-saving.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    This proposal is for the road, which is why it's crazy. 25kmh limit on a bike path is fine. A speed limit on roads that is lower for bikes than cars is insane, when the justification for pedal bikes having a higher speed limit is that they're lighter than ebikes. Cars should have a 5 mph limit in that case.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Yeah but blinking bike lights are also illegal to sell in Germany because you realized that drunk drivers target fixate on them and you apparently found that ban to be a better solution than aggressively cracking down on drunks. So I don't give much credence to the rational integrity of German vehicular law. I go faster than 16 MPH literally every time I get on my bike. A regular non-motorized bike, powered only by me.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It’s the exact same in the Netherlands. The pedal assist is capped at that speed, but nothing stops you from powering though that and going faster. Not that it makes any sense to do so for the average daily office commuter.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    Right, I think most of these delivery ebikes are throttle-operated. And they're trying to get to their destinations quickly, because a lot of people tip their delivery guys based on expediency. I wish we had curb-separated cyclepaths like in the Netherlands because it would make this debate so much more straightforward and speed-capping would be a simple yes, but in NYC delivery cyclists are usually rolling down 3-4 lane wide avenues among cars going 25-35 MPH (~40-55 km/h). Like almost all other bike problems, the issue is actually the cars.

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