"Bikes are unsafe" says Mike of the Ford company, known for its "ChildCrusher (tm)" trucks.
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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I'd rather my kid cruise around on an e-bike than kill someone in it's Maibatsu Monstrosity.
Look.
Just because pedestrian deaths went up 70% between 2010 and 2021, much of which is attributed to light trucks, and just because trucks have gotten significantly larger and more geared towards NOT doing the things they were designed for, that doesn't mean Mike here is a clueless jackass who is also complicit in making life more unsafe for pedestrian-wait
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I think there's some merit to this, but:
-Saying teens should just ride regular bikes in a country that, for the most part, has shit cycling infrastructure and a car-centric culture that is hostile towards sharing the road with cyclists is a non-starter, unless you are also advocating for changing that.
-If you want to whine about how dangerous it is for teens to ride e-bikes that can go over 20mph then surely you would have a problem with the states that allow teens to drive vehicles that can go much faster than that and cause way more damage to those involved in an accident with them.
cars, dead pedestrians, unwalkable cities and communities, >42,000 deaths/year from car accidents in the US: freedom
threats to car manufacturers' net worth: danger
I commute in my child crusher™ gigatruck that somehow has a worse mpg than if I were to chug diesel and walk the same distance by foot
ebikes are 'gay' or something idk
Oh man, when I was growing up, kids used to ride all sorts of weird things, like fucking gassed up go-karts. An e-bike would have been a relief.
Yeah, kids were all about the terribly, terribly illegal petrol scooters, though I was a bit young for that fad.
Car accidents are famously a negligible cause of death amongst teenagers
Speaking as a curmudgeon, “Today’s Teens” will inevitably find a way to use any new technology for something stupid and dangerous, judging an invention by its misuse is the definition of bad faith.
The only reason I ended up in the hospital from an ebike accident is because a fucking car hit me lol
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bit waiting to happen. 
Okay, then change design and zoning to make bycicle transportation feasible for more people.
"we can't because biking isn't currently feasible for enough people." –local politicians
rinse, lather, repeat.
How many children were killed by collisions with Ford vehicles last year?
20mph
Omg this is so dangerous, I am so much safer with a 2 tons machine that goes 180mph and needs the driver to pass a exam that a monkey would pass.
I wish a monkey could pass the test, then maybe I'd be able to. I keep failing it because I'm disabled. That's why I need and love accessible infrastructure.
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modified to go more than 20 mph
Pretty sure e-scooters can do that without modification already
Regular bikes are good.
E-bikes are also good but not as much as mountain or road bikes.
this guy sucks but he's not entirely wrong. There's a memorial on my street from a bit over a decade ago when Chinese quads were really popular. All the tweens in a local neighborhood used to ride them around with their even younger siblings on them, usually 3/4 of them not wearing helmets, doing wheelies, etc. It was extremely unsafe, but for whatever reason (either ignorance or stupidity) their parents allowed them to ride them when they weren't home. All of that stopped after a little group of them were hauling ass on the side of the road in tall grass and one of them tried to outrun the line of them next to the trail in the tall grass. He ran head-on into a telephone pole, flat out, without a helmet, and died instantly.
They're not comparable. Average ebikes can't really go any faster than a fit rider on a good road bike.
I can easily go 50km/h on flat ground for a short amount of time in a mountain bike if I want to and I'm almost obese - an ebike that can go appreciably faster than that for more than 10 minutes is very expensive and very much looks like a motorcycle.
Just copying my reply to the other user here:
There's a lot of "ebikes" that are just electric dirtbikes with vestigial pedals. It's easy to modify them to put out way more power than they're sold with, too. There has to be some kind of grappling with this new category of things that can pretend to be a bicycle but still spin tires, rip past 30mph, etc. They need to either be hard limited or treated more like motorcycles than bicycles.
Those are already legally considered motorcycles and since they look exactly like motorcycles the law often ends up getting enforced (cops don't like unplated motorcycles). In fact I just saw one of them get impounded yesterday.
The ebikes I'm talking about don't look exactly like motorcycles, and to be clear, they have bicycle pedals and are considered e-bicycles. Glad to hear your local cops are enforcing it, either way.
Can you give me an example? I built my own ebike so I'm familiar with the componentry, going something like 40mph (ripping past 30mph) requires a serious battery and a very expensive motor. You can't just modify a normal legal ebike to go that fast, the motor will overheat and the battery won't last 20 minutes on a charge or long in general.
Also, nothing that can go past 28mph is considered an ebike in the US. The moment it goes any faster it's an unplated scooter/motorcycle
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I understand, but quads and ebikes are quite different. They're much smaller and aren't gas powered, far less force. They can be modified to go up to like 30 miles an hour, but normally cap out around 15.
If mopeds and cheap quads like that can be driven and easily bought by children, ebikes are a form of harm reduction.
There's a lot of "ebikes" that are just electric dirtbikes with vestigial pedals. It's easy to modify them to put out way more power than they're sold with, too. There has to be some kind of grappling with this new category of things that can pretend to be a bicycle but still spin tires, rip past 30mph, etc. They need to either be hard limited or treated more like motorcycles than bicycles.
He ran head-on into a telephone pole, flat out, without a helmet, and died instantly.
Well...
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auto execs get the wall
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