From sidewalks, sure. I try not to ride on the sidewalk, and if I must, will dismount and walk past pedestrians; the sidewalk is for walking. It’s in the name. I would agree with a law saying no motorized vehicles on sidewalks except for wheelchairs.
Bike lanes? What’s bike lanes, hobbits? There are not any of those on my way to work. But if there were, I think ebikes should use them.
I can get to just over 30mph on my allegedly locked to 28mph bike if I turn it to maximum assist and pedal like the devil is chasing me, and prefer the road at that speed, and only use that speed on the road. I wouldn’t ever go fast on a sidewalk because that is insanely dangerous.
Now ban high-speed vehicles from cities. Anything that can go over the speed limit.
Only cars with speed limiters can enter the city.
Ban 25mph ebikes, I need to be able to go 45mph in my 7,000 lb truck on a 25mph road, as god intended. /S
It’s already the case in France and makes sense to me. In my bike lane, everybody rides at 20 to 27 km/h, there isn’t huge disparity of speed. It makes the bike lane safer IMO.
Sidewalks are made for pedestrians, there isn’t much to argue there.
Bikes are only allowed on sidewalks in the US because our streets are insanely dangerous for anyone not going the speed limit or up, which even class 3 ebikes generally cant managed.
A push for Ebike safety is absolutely just a abject refusal to actually work on car safety like reducing speed limits, reducing lanes via road diets and regulating vehicle sizes, which would resolve all the other issues.
Would it not make more sense to just have a speed limit?
Cycling associations lobby against that, they are not stronger than the car lobby, but they definitely exist.
A lot of places don’t allow them on sidewalks at all.
Bikes are not allowed on side walks in most places, ebike or other wise. Side walks are for walking.
Harder for them to police I guess?
How would it be harder to police than trying to identify a class 3 ebike?
Because they will just single out every apparent ebike rider, which will of course result in people with compliant ebikes (and probably a non-zero number of traditional unpowered bicycles) getting harassed for no good reason.
Most class 3s look like standard road bikes. Class 2s generally look like mopeds, but if it has a throttle it’s limited to 20mph.
I live downtown in a major city where there is a lot of these ebikes and haven’t found them much of a nuisance as a driver. More than anything those things need a mandatory helmets attached to each of the units. When you are going 10-15-20 mph on uneven streets and around corners you’re literally risking your life. I’ve seen some gnarly accidents.
Hard to get a helmet that fits everyone, and keeping it sanitary would be pretty tough even if you could.
Helmets are also generally one-time-use; once its protected your skull from an injury its not necesarily safe to continue using the same helmet
Absolutely!
PSA TO EVERYONE: Any time you crash and your helmet takes a hit, REPLACE IT IMMEDIATELY!
True and valid points, I’m not going to pretend I have the perfect answer. I’m no expert BUT there is definitely a safety problem. It’s wonderful that these are cheap and easy to pick up, but that ease of access has reckless people hurting themselves.
One place I saw just gives you a helmet when you initially sign up, but I’m sure a huge number of their customers do not carry it with them all the time.
Another change SB 471 seeks to make is an addition to ORS 814.430 (“Improper use of lanes”) that would give a Class 3 e-bike rider the legal right to use a bicycle lane or bicycle path, “only when the bicycle is powered exclusively by human power.”
What!? You can’t use a bike in a bike lane when you use pedal assist?
That link doesn’t work for me.
I have no problem with making it safe for pedestrians and cyclists.
The speed disparity is extremely dangerous and ideas like this are likely going to get applied to e-scooter and e-skateboards as well.
With E-bikes it’s not just the “unnaturally” fast speed but also weight and that’s doubly important for powered cargo bikes.
Speed limits don’t really make sense here though. What determines the amount of damage inflicted in a collision or how easy it is to avoid a collision by breaking is kinetic energy; that’s what needs to be limited.
I’d just base this around what a “normal” human on a “normal” bicycle can do on flat ground with reasonable human power alone: e.g. 70kg human on a 10kg bicycle doing 25km/h. That’s
80 kilogram × (25 kilometre / hour)² = 3858.02 Jof kinetic energy.Now we can assume e.g. a 20kg e-bike and calculate backwards:
sqrt(3858.02 joule / (70 kilogram + 20 kilogram)) = 23.5702 km/h
Or with a 50kg cargo e-bike:sqrt(3858.02 joule / (70 kilogram + 50 kilogram)) = 20.4124 km/h.Ideally cargo bikes would also factor measured load into them. If you carried an additional 50kg, it should only power up to 17.1498 km/h for instance.
What conditions would be “safe” under “normal” circumstances and how heavy you assume people to be are debatable and dependent on where you are (welcome to NA, +10kg avg. weight) but the mechanism should be the same.
We need to define some limit of kinetic energy that is reasonably safe for pedestrian and bicycle collisions and in line with what typical human on an unpowered bicycle would net you. Powered bicycles (or any other powered vehicle for that matter) then need to enforce that limit by way of cutting off power once the maximum kinetic energy is reached.Speed’s contribution to kinetic energy is exponential, whereas mass is just a direct multiplicative component.
So speed is absolutely the largest contributing factor.
Your equation actually highlights a good point where that speed should be kept.
While velocity is certainly the larger contributor, it’s not like mass is insignificant either. Especially for the cargo bike case where even unloaded the mass difference requires a ~5km/h change in velocity for equal kinetic energy.
When you get to very high absolute velocities, mass becomes less and less significant but we’re very much at the low end here in that regard.
Class 3 e-bikes are pedal-assist only, with no throttle and a maximum assisted speed of 28 mph.
That’s fast, though. Why would they need to go 50km/h? I don’t like banning things like e-bikes, but realistically, this is like double the speed that other e-bikes tend to be allowed to travel at with power.
High torque for something like a cargo e-bike I can get, but 50km/h? Are these race bikes, motorcycles, or something in-between?
You can get to that speed on a regular bicycle with gears on a flat without much training/conditioning (though sustaining it can take effort lol)
Oh, come on now. 50 km/h on flat without much training? For what, a few seconds?
These two guys are ex pros and couldn’t average 50km/h with high end bikes, on flat terrain, while drafting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuiPqbbIHH8
My point is, giving your average Joe, who may not have the skill or experience to be at those speeds, “effortless” power to sustain those speeds is problematic in bike lanes.
For what, a few seconds?
More or less, yeah lol
I hope you feel the same about cars…
Why would they need to go 50km/h?
To keep up with cars on city streets. Most cars will break the law and will pass you without giving you sufficient side clearance. So if they can’t keep the pace, the riders are in danger.
I’m torn on that idea.
E-bikes don’t need to go faster, but they do need to accelerate quickly out of intersections. That keeps them safe, higher speeds do not.
The problem with e-bikes is that it gives people super-human powers, so getting to 50 km/h is “free”, while trying to do that on a regular bike for any given amount of time takes years of training.
I’m of the opinion that we should punish the rider, not the vehicle, when it comes to e-mobility devices.
But we know that a few riders behaving badly ruins it for everyone. This is why e-scooter programs have been cancelled or banned, and why e-bike laws are coming down hard all over the place.
We can ban this, and cap speeds, and all that… but someone who wants to ride like a jackass will find a way to do it!
How can we punish them without creating more barriers for everyone else?
The problem with e-bikes is that it gives people super-human powers
So do cars and bikes, and it’s not like we licence cars with any degree of scrutiny either.
The problem is that we as a society don’t punish antisocial behaviour enough. Reckless driving should get your vehicle impounded, regardless of it being a push bike, an ebike or a car. And police should be out there looking for it to the point that if you do something stupid, you can expect to be caught.
The problem is that we as a society don’t punish antisocial behaviour enough.
Agreed.
Reckless driving should get your vehicle impounded, regardless of it being a push bike, an ebike or a car.
Also agreed.
And police should be out there looking for it to the point that if you do something stupid, you can expect to be caught.
For sure.
This is why I don’t agree with banning them outright.
But there are too few resources to enforce bad behaviour, and while we can deploy tools like speed cameras, red light cameras, and automated ticketing, how would we do the same for ebikes?
Licensing would unfairly punish the wrong people.
Where I live, asshats on gas powered bikes tear through our trails. And then someone might complain about the “ebike” and we all become targets.
It’s a challenge to find balance. I think law makers ban things when they don’t have others options immediately available to them, especially with fast-moving (no pun intended) technology.
If you think that’s fast, you haven’t seen the Lycra-class in my city, lol. They go way faster than class III speeds on a road bike while on flat trails. One family friend actually got pulled over for doing 64 km/h on his standard road bike (with hills)
Nobody can keep up with them in the bike lanes.
The context is important.
Yes, an experienced road cyclist can go faster than 50km/h in certain circumstances, and while I’d never condone those speeds in bike lanes, there’s a high level of training that acts as a gatekeeper to achieving those speeds. It’s also difficult to maintain those speeds for very long.
Ebikes enable people to go faster than they otherwise would, but it requires no skill or experience, which is where the risk comes into play.
In the elderly, ebikes are causing a massive spike in injuries, even in the Netherlands (ruling out poor infrastructure as the cause).
Speed limits should be common sense in bike lanes, but assholes will be assholes regardless of what the law says.
Fwiw, the average speed of a tour de France cyclist is only around 40km/h, and that’s with the benefit of drafting behind other riders.
