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[–] 20 points 16 hours ago (6 children)

The problem isn't the speed, there aren't speed restrictors on motorcycles or cars.

The problem is there's no safe lane for them to be ridden. There's no infrastructure accommodation for them. They can't be ridden on the sidewalk, and they're unsafe in regular traffic. Bicycle lanes aren't ubiquitous enough or designed well enough for bicycles, let alone these mixing with bicycles.

As usual, rather than raising taxes on the filthy rich to fund better infrastructure for the good of the people, they limit what we can do because it's cheaper and we have less power to resist, or at least, aren't organized well enough to exercise the power we have.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 hours ago (1 child)

    Why not just classify them as mopeds? Mopeds have been around for ages, started out as motorized bicycles, are limited to around 28mph, and have standard age, and license requirements. You have to get a license, and plates. I think there is an insurance requirement also.

    I feel like applying all the same guidelines to e-bikes would go a long way to resolve the chaos they have been causing.

    Obviously there would need to be some new parameters around what exactly qualifies and all that.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 hours ago

    Electric mopeds exist, depending on where you are on they're great. But we want there also to be slower ebikes that don't need all that licensing and which can be used in bike lanes.

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  • [–] 19 points 16 hours ago* (1 child)

    Weird you missed another key distinction: testing, licensing, and associated age restrictions.

    At these speeds they're electric motorcycles. They should be treated accordingly (and I say that as an avid cyclist who's incredibly supportive of e-bikes).

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  • [–] 4 points 12 hours ago

    In some ways speed is an issue, for instance if you could go the same speed as the rest of the traffic you could avoid situations where you're biking on a tiny strip on the edge of the road and cars pass you very close, by staying in the middle of the road instead. Of course just adding adequate bike lanes would be the better solution since then you wouldn't have any safety downsides for going slower.

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