Too many people in here are perfectly fine with all movement outside of their home being ID’d, documented and monitored. A plate on a bike does absolutely nothing to make the road safer. It just normalizes the “safety” of constant surveillance by your benevolent overlords.
Put normal regulations on e bike performance and build bike safe infrastructure. “It would be too dangerous to chase them”… get on your own bike you fat lazy pig.
The number of children I see zooming around the neighborhood without helmets and not even stopping at stop signs (I legit almost hit one kid one time who blew through a stop sign in front of me), is pretty horrifying. Their parents have basically given them all small motorcycles and let them go free with no supervision. It just seems so unsafe.
The issue here is that we have no way to verify from your text whether you almost hit them because of their lack of responsibility, or if you weren’t paying enough attention.
As someone with extensive experience with bike commuting on a regular bike, I have had multiple near death experiences while obeying all traffic laws properly and using multiple light sources. Even with my new 10 minute walking commute, the simple act of crossing the street safely when the street lights tell me to cross, has proved to be asking too much with multiple near hits in only a few months.
Humans are not remotely responsible enough to drive.
Lol I was paying perfect attention. Only reason the kid was ok was that I was far enough back to slam on my breaks (and was going the speed limit). I doubt he even realized how risky the move he pulled was.
In all fairness, I’ve also nearly been hit by asshole pickup trucks blowing the same stop sign. Guess it might just be that intersection that makes people think it’s optional.
Kids having independence is a good thing. They are probably the first in their family to be independent from cars and so their parents don’t teach them cycling etiquette.
Yes independence is a good thing. If they were riding normal bikes, I’d have few issues with them. However, the way things currently are, I see a decent number of dead or disabled children in the future.
Not just children, but adults too! They’re more likely to have a helmet on, but stop a stop sign? Nah, they don’t have to stop, they are immune to traffic laws!
Not seems, is.
People are fucking stupid.
Hell, I’ve had kids riding down the opposite lane of traffic riding wheelies and swerving around. Absolutely no accountability.
Cause its stupid. Regulate the bikes so they perform like regular bikes and forget about it.
People don’t buy ebikes to go fast, they buy them to make hills easier.
This is a weird take.
Some people are definitely buying ebikes to go fast.
And a kind of stupid take. If the bike can go up hills easy it can go fast easy. The limits are all in software and there’s abundant evidence that software limits are easily circumvented.
I’d say stick a 30mph limit as a cutoff for needing to be licensed, with anything above that to just be considered a scooter (the 49cc kind that need licensed but aren’t allowed on freeways) and anything faster than that a motorcycle, and be done with it.
There already is. Class III e bikes end at 28mph. Beyond that they’re supposed to be plated.
Just as an inspiration: in Germany the cut-off is 25 km/h (I’ll leave doing the math to you). I think that’s almost reasonable. Personally I’d favor 30 km/h, because that’s a common speed limit for residential areas over here and that would allow them to better flow with traffic.
30mph is FAST, A 49cc moped is going to be able to hit a top speed of 30 miles per hour.
I’d say a speed limit for no licensing/registration/insurance should be 15mph. Thats about the speed an average cyclist would be able to go without electronic assists.
I can do 30+ on a road bike, and you can get a 49cc scooter to 40. The ones that cap at 30 are big or have limiters put on them. 30 is pretty fast, but not crazy fast. My little brother has a tricked out Onewheel that he races. It does 40mph. Now that’s crazy fast.
You’re sustaining 30 for over an hour on a road bike solely by pedaling? I didn’t know we had olympians in the comments
You are misreading that he said he could keep it up for an hour
True, I did exaggerate. But the reality is sustained motorized speed is entirely different from a cyclist’s burst speed, which is exactly why they shouldn’t be regulated the same way.
I’ve put 4000 miles on my e-bike in the past 2 years. Even though I follow traffic laws, I’ve seen far too much fuckery by other e-bike riders. I’m seeing children riding e-bikes and scooters, without helmets, doing crazy shit in the middle of the road almost cause accidents. I have narrowly avoided hitting such children on 3 separate occasions. I see plenty of adults on these things also not following traffic laws and riding these things on busy sidewalks.
I really do not want e-bikes to be regulated like cars. Being forced to register and carry insurance makes an inexpensive thing expensive. That being said, there are tons of dumb assholes out there that will ruin it for the rest of us.
Registering is fine, a lot of people voluntarily register their expensive bikes with local police that have those programs anyway.
Insurance is weirder. Cars require as much insurance as they do because they weigh multiple tons and can kill people and destroy infrastructure. A powered bike can do a lot of damage, especially if it rams someone, but it has an order of magnitude less destructive potential than a car. Especially for a limited powered bike insurance “should” be significantly cheaper.
Now limit car speed next? They seem to be the biggest menace on the roads in California. E-motos are not e-bikes and e-bikes shouldn’t be lumped into legislation.
Yes.
But even if they didn’t limit cars. That’s no excuse for not limiting e-bikes.
You don’t need to prove that you know the traffic laws to ride an ebike. You do to ride a car.
You do not need a license that can be revoked to ride an ebike. So if you speed in a car you could just get your license removed, not the case for ebikes.
The thing is, cops can still cite bikers for breaking traffic laws they don’t know. So why aren’t the cops enforcing existing traffic laws on e-bikes? In my town I see kids without helmets drive past cop cars and the cops don’t even take a second look.
I really wish California revoked licenses for stuff like that. On paper they do but really speeding is rampant and not enforced. We should be stepping up patrols to enforce laws we have on the books before making more.
Aren’t car speeds already limited everywhere?
e-bikes and e-scooters where I come from are limited to 25 km/h because you don’t really need a license for those. Vehicles that require a license (and thus plenty of training) are allowed to go faster. If your e-bike is limited to 25, you’re still allowed to cycle faster than that on your own. In fact, cycling speed isn’t limited at all, other than near pedestrians or in designated walkable areas. E-motos have the same speed limits as cars and motorcycles, because they require a motorcycle license and are generally classified as motorcycles.
The idea is that kids with no formal traffic training and potentially not much experience shouldn’t be able to shoot up to 50 km/h in 2 seconds using an electric motor. Achieving speed with your own muscles takes more time and effort, requires a straight enough road, etc.
They are not limiting car speed on the car itself. Which is what they are proposing, a governor on the e-bike that prevents you from going faster.
Yes, on vehicles that require no training or license and have no license plate and usually go pretty fast on pedestrian walkways. The faster ones will get license plates (but no training or license requirement).
Tough. Go back to a regular bike. Around here the cops have been making them follow the driving laws for a few years. There are no state laws but other ways to get them to not be a danger.
Exactly. America could use the exercise.
I would be getting zero exercise in my commute if it wasn’t for an ebike
You can commute on a bicycle… true story.
There are about 9 very steep hills in the way. I would show up to my very professional job absolutely soaked to the nines heaving and hoing. Not happening.
An e bikes gives me some exercise yet I’m not absolutely dead when I get to work.
E-bikes are already capped at 25km/h here. Aren’t they elsewhere?
In the US e-bikes that can reach 60 mph — which is 96.5 km/h — without peddling are starting to become common, especially with children. They are motorcycles.
Those aren’t e-bikes by any legal definition, they just look like e-bikes because they have some technically functional pedals.
E-bikes are categorized into three primary groups based on factors such as motor power, availability of pedal and/or throttle assist and maximum speeds. Familiarizing yourself with the e-bike class allows you to anticipate its performance characteristics. Depending on the class, certain areas may permit riding a Class 1 e-bike while prohibiting the use of a Class 3 e-bike for instance. These regulations vary across states with many states having their own e-bike classifications or lack thereof. California, for example, has legislation specifying three e-bike classes. There are generally accepted definitions for e-bike classes, and we provide an overview of these standard classifications below.
Class 1
A Class 1 e-bike, also known as a pedelec, relies on pedaling to propel forward. It features pedal assist but lacks throttle assist, limiting its speed to a maximum of 20 miles per hour. In most cases, Class 1 e-bikes are permitted in the same areas as traditional bicycles such as bike paths and bike lanes. However, the specific regulations governing their usage depend on local government ordinances.
Class 2
Class 2 e-bikes offer both pedal assist and throttle assist, allowing them to move forward even without pedaling. Generally, Class 2 e-bikes are not designed to exceed 20 mph. Many jurisdictions allow the use of Class 2 e-bikes on conventional bike paths and lanes.
Class 3
Class 3 e-bikes are slightly faster, reaching speeds of up to 28 mph. They often come equipped with a speedometer, which may be required in certain states like California. Class 3 e-bikes are typically permitted on roads and designated bike-only shoulder lanes. However, due to their higher power output, they are generally not allowed on standard bike lanes, paths or trails.
https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/carbapps/ebikeincentives/e-bike-basics/index.html
That’s nothing a cheap EEPROM reader from China cannot solve…
25 mph here
Reading what the law actually says, these seem to be sensible changes, bringing the rules in line with European standards.
Yeah, works pretty well over here.
It’s about expected speed and who you’re sharing a path with.
If I’m a cyclist, I don’t want to share a cycle lane with some idiot doing 40mph on a Temu deathtrap. By all means have those as an alternative to cars and petrol motorbikes (because cheap transport is still transport), but you’ll need regulations, registration plates, and mandatory safety equipment, and they need to share the road with other vehicles.
deleted by creator
It’s more about liability, if someone is riding around on an unregistered ebike and cause some sort of incident then they (or they’re parents, since IMO it’s a lot of kids who are ripping around on these) are the liable party
Then I would say it doesn’t matter because they’re not riding like a bell-end. The system will have done it’s job.
Does it matter if the coo knows or not? If they do something stupid and get stopped, the cop will realize and fine them for not being registered.
You can also drive around in a car without a license and a cop would never know unless you drove stupidly and they pulled you over.
It’s not that bad. Little accountability never hurt anyone!
If I had to have a dismissive opinion though, if the license plates do not increase safety and reduce bike thefts, then it’s just another meaningless cog on the machine.
California bike riders are some of the most entitled idiots iv ever seen. Of every state iv driven though or lived in. Cali has the worse bikers. Frequently breaking the law, endangering themselves and others, and causing general issues for everyone.
Removed by mod
I’m not the commenter you’re replying to, I’m just a stranger who likes to play devil’s advocate.
Last summer I visited San Francisco, and there were a bunch of e-bikes around. One almost plowed into me in the walkway at Golden Gate Park. It looked like it was going faster than all cars on the road next to us at the time. The guy was not wearing a helmet, didn’t honk any kind of a horn or ring a bell, and barely called out a warning. It was a near miss, right after he swerved around the people in front of me.
I was looking up at the trees in the park (as you do in parks), when I hear a slight scream from one of the pedestrians in front of me, followed by a frantic “LOOK OUT” from the guy on the bike. I quickly stepped off the walkway onto the gras, so no accident happened, but it was still scary.
I can see the reasoning behind this law. There’s no reason that the motor on that bike should go that fast without requiring inspections and some kind of license. Certainly no reason to be driving it that fast in a walkway, but I think that’s already illegal.
Removed by mod
That person was literally walking though?
walkway at Golden Gate Park
I was looking up at the trees in the park (as you do in parks)
hear a slight scream from one of the pedestrians in front of me
I quickly stepped off the walkway
I guess pedestrians are also disgusting polluters to you?
To be fair to them (even though I don’t think they are engaging with me in good faith), I did take a plane to get there. Hard to bike across California, even on one of those e-bikes lol.
Removed by mod
How does someone flying make them in any way dangerous in traffic, compared to someone who rides an unlimited speed electric motorcycle on a pedestrian walkway though?
I do hope you at least keep your money where your mouth is and only take bikes everywhere, even if it’s several hundred or thousand miles.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the proposed legislation is taking the wrong approach and I think e-bikes are overall a good thing. I’m just saying that I see the reason why California wants to add some additional regulation to a motorized transport.
I have no problem with people riding regular bikes on sidewalks. Roads are scary as a cyclist surrounded by vehicles several times heavier than yours. People are riding e-bikes on the sidewalks everywhere I go. It makes walking scary on infrastructure made for walking. If you get hit by someone on a bike going 20 mph (~32 km/hr), someone is getting seriously hurt. This guy was actively endangering pedestrians.
Also, no matter how you look at it, e-bikes (individualized transport) are a worse thing for the environment than public transportation (communal transport), and certainly worse than walking (what I was doing in the walkway).
Motor + bicycle = motorcycle.
Removed by mod
Except the house on fire doesn’t share the pedestrian walkway with them, but the stove is speeding down the walkway lol
I’m whining about someone swinging a bat at people on the sidewalk while the whole neighborhood is on fire. The fire is a worse problem, and we should take care of it before it burns down everything. But someone should really take that bat away from that guy or at least replace it with a wiffle ball bat before someone gets hurt.
While my knee-jerk reaction was that they’re going to over regulate, all those changes are already in effect in the EU and it didn’t destroy the e-bike market there. So I guess California will manage.
Class 2 and 3 requiring license plates makes sense to me.
And class 1 would be pedelecs in the EU, where they are capped at 250 Watt and 25 kmh. Class 1 being capped at 750 Watt and 16mph (25kmh) seems okay, might be inconvenient with how much further apart everything is over there, but reaction times are the same all over the globe.
I personally don’t even drive the full 25kmh, in the city I’m capped by the manual cyclists in front, which I don’t need to overtake. And outside I’m too worried about my battery to go full power. I will say, cargo bikes in particular could use a higher powered motor than the 250 Watts we have here, but I have no idea what a good cap would be.
Removed by mod
Then get a more powerful electric bike and a motorcycle license? Or perhaps don’t go out of your way to annoy other road users, have you considered that as an alternative?
The idea is that someone without proven traffic knowledge and experience shouldn’t be able to zoom to 50 km/h in 2 seconds. Plus with that kind of speed available on tap, you become a danger to pedestrians so it makes sense to require a license plate so it’d actually be possible to find you if you fuck someone up and decide to escape.
Or perhaps don’t go out of your way to annoy other road users
There are basically two ways that bicyclists annoy motor vehicle drivers and wind up being threatened with deadly force on the regular:
-
By following the rules
-
By not following the rules
I hope this clears things up.
I mean if you read that particular user’s other comments, I’m pretty sure they try to swerve into cars and pedestrians on purpose. There was a comment saying it’s basically ok to take your 40 km/h+ e-bike into pedestrians in San Francisco because they’re tourists and therefore must’ve taken a plane there, making them as bad as car drivers.
FWIW I’m a driver and never have I felt like running a cyclist off the road. I also used to cycle and never did anyone try to run me off the road. This whole issue is pretty USA-specific IMO.
He doesn’t seem like such a nice fellow online here. I don’t think that means he tries to hurt people in real life.
I’m glad you haven’t experienced the rage that drivers often express towards cyclists. I don’t think its exclusively a US problem.
I’ve been riding bikes and driving cars for 30 years. It seems to me that any circumstance that requires drivers to slow down and consider how to respond to other people’s needs is a guaranteed rage trigger – for some fraction of the driving public. That seems to be carrying over into electric bikes as well.
-
Removed by mod
I never said that. I just said that if you want a vehicle that’s fast enough to use as a getaway vehicle when you smash someone’s window in or something, you should be prepared to live with the consequences and have a visible license plate on it. If you want zero consequences for your actions, like the ability to literally kick someone’s shit in and then just leg it without anyone catching you since there’s no license plate… Be prepared to be limited to a lower speed.
Removed by mod
No, it’s not. If you want a fast getaway vehicle for whatever crime you’re planning, it’s illegal to not have a license plate. Boo fucking hoo.
Removed by mod
Accelerating out of danger is both a last resort, and mostly ineffective. By the time you realize you need to accelerate, it’s too late in almost every case. Also, in any situation where accelerating might help, braking would probably help as well. The entire argument that vehicles of any type need more power to be able to accelerate out of danger is mostly BS, as anyone who drives, or rides responsibly can see.
Removed by mod
Considering your comments on this thread (this isn’t FuckCars btw) i don’t blame them.
Yeah judging by your comments, you probably go key people’s cars or even punch off their mirrors and then get surprised when they try to chase you down lmao
You’re thinking on the right questions…
It took years, but finally I realized the appropriate threshold is simply to have people go on an exercize-bike/meter, for a 90-minute-session, & have them sustain what they can, for that duration, then multiply their RMS-output ( root-mean-square rounds-down ) by 3x, & make that THEIR motor-limit:
This means that you don’t get flimsy 50-lbs children with 750-w of bike-motor, & you also don’t hobble linebackers ( I think that’s what they’re called: NFL tackles? ) with the same limit you’re putting on small/flimsy ones.
Proportionate to the strength you wield when managing your own body, see?
So, for many reasonably-strong riders, it’d be … around 300-w, tbh…
Alot of people would hate me for making the limit sooo close to their own physical-strength, but … live longer.
& simply make another limit, higher, & require license-plate for that category.
I’d make it so that within the 25-kph & 3x-sustained-90-minutes-wattage, no license-plate is required: you get a photo-ID card which says you don’t need a plate.
More power, more speed? then you need a plate.
Some cities need 40-kph to do the parkways, & that’d have to be one of the limits.
60-kph would be needed for other parkways, but that’d be absolute-limit, & some body-armor would be reasonable at that speed ( since crash-energy goes up with the square of the speed ).
Having been a courier, I’d put an either-speed-XOR-weight limit on them, so the fast-light people can get that, but the heavy-cargo couriers get a slower-speed, … I"m not the only courier who discovered that it’s … an experience that many couriers have had … to discover that one has been biking, in traffic, while unconscious. Sleep-biking. And I want that NOT happening at high-speed.
So, this is all like graduated-licensing, but done vertically, instead of temporally.
_ /\ _
I think it makes sense for those bikes that can do 30mph+ and aren’t even meant to be ridden as bicycles despite having pedals. They usually look like a motorcycle and can accommodate two riders. Having bicycle pedals shouldn’t be a loophole for bypassing drivers licensing requirements and traffic laws. These things are usually ridden by 10-15 year olds who don’t yet have formal training. I saw a kid cause an accident buzzing through a 4-way stop. I’ve also heard of them colliding with pedestrians at high speeds on sidewalks. E-bikes are a good thing overall, but it’s the Wild West right now and some e-bikes can go way too fast for something that isn’t regulated.
I agree with all of your points. However, in California, ebikes are already regulated:
https://riding5.com/blogs/news/california-ebike-laws-class-1-2-3
The only “wild west” thing happening is that some people are riding illegal, (they’re already illegal. We don’t need new laws) unregistered electric motorcycles. The 30+ mph “ebikes” you refer to: those are motorcycles.
What makes it the Wild West is there is no good way to enforce anything at the moment, so any existing regulations are ineffective to the point where the current environment is de facto unregulated
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, the East Bay legislator behind the license plate bill, says law enforcement in her district has been raising concerns for some time. Officers told her they are seeing dangerous speeds from electric bikes but have no practical way to issue citations without putting themselves or others at risk. A license plate changes that equation.
She also pointed out that the rise of e-bikes among younger riders has made it harder to know at a glance whether a child is legally riding an age-appropriate e-bike, operating an illegally modified one, or cruising around on an electric moped that is not supposed to be on public roads at all.
It’s really a shame. Ebikes are amazing and have the potential to really bring bicycling to the masses. But these jackasses riding motocross rock hoppers down the sidewalk are going to ruin it for everybody.
I’ve got a skateboard and unicycle myself, I think all these things are great, but you’ve highlighted the big problems that exist today. It’s the kids that have no sense, whip by people walking, being ignorant to traffic rules, etc.
I watched 2 kids on a gravel path whip by on escooters past a 5 year old swaying back and forth on a pedal bike as he was obviously trying to learn. That could have gotten bad.
You’re not really a “cyclist” if a motor is doing a bunch of the work. That’s the equivalent of those mopeds we had in the ‘70s that you could pedal, too. Probably went 35-40 mph. Nobody in their right mind would call them bicycles or call the riders cyclists. It’s a motorized bike.
Depends, if it’s pedal assist it’s most definitely cyclists. If it’s just a throttle then I agree
have you tried “cycling” on stronger electric bikes with the support mode set to “sport” or “highest”? Moving the pedals is pretty damn symbolic on these vehicles, less than 10% of the actual energy needed to move is provided by the legs, it’s almost all motor. It’s like they moved the throttle control to the pedals.
I’m in eu so I don’t think so. It’s not allowed
It’s a motorized bike.
But not to be confused with a motorcycle, which is something different.
Semantics.
Just common usage has made a “motorized bicycle” of yesteryear into its own vehicle class today. It’s exactly the same thing with e-bikes hitting 30+ mph speeds, just electric motors instead of an ICE.
And have them pay insurance.
deleted by creator
As if dozens of bros on dirt bikes and quads roaming about weren’t enough, you have these dumb kids getting their hands on souped-up “e-bikes” where pedals are but an afterthought. These hellions are giving other e-bike riders, including people relying on pedal assist, a bad rep.
Heard from a friend who lives down just down the road from me say how recently this kid at her son’s middle school just put some older substitute teacher into critical medical condition after colliding with this kid on his modded ebike coming down round the hill as the old teacher was crossing the street coming out from work
Yeah those are pretty much motorcycles. They need to be license plated.
Removed by mod
You need a license for those, which requires, at least in sane countries, pretty extensive training. Bicycles require zero training. Hence, electrically assisted bicycles should be limited to sane speeds. If you want it to be faster, it’s legally a motorcycle and you need training and accountability (license plate). It’s not that complex. Nobody’s banning faster e-mobility, you just need to prove you know how to handle it. Just like with the pollution machines…
Removed by mod
The way you talk to people on Lemmy is unacceptable. The name calling and aggression is not okay. Please do better.
But of course you ARE that obese cunt, so why would i expect objectivity from you am I right, fatzo?
I probably weigh more than you, yes. Majority of it, by weight, is muscle mass. In fact I probably have more muscle mass than you have body weight, flab and all. Put it this way, you claim to need a fast electric bicycle to get away from whatever bullshit you pull to make people angry, I could just run away if I punched you in the face for being a cunt to someone and you couldn’t catch me without your pwecious wittwe ewectwic bikey-wikey.
