Comment by jacquesm

I don't think you need to defend yourself so vigorously in this thread. But I would say that what you're seeing is distinctly the American experience with e-bikes and bike enforcement.

Americans are generally clueless about e-bike laws. This includes police and e-bike owners. American e-bikes are marketed as having throttles, being to bypass traffic at high speeds using the bike lanes and bike paths, and not needing licensing/registration. As an analog cyclist, my experience is that e-bikers jump the lines at red lights, sometimes shoving you out of the way. With the bulk of my cargo bike, they sometimes instead jump around me on the sidewalk instead, which is kind of funny-terrifying to watch with their heavy bikes. On bike paths, e-bikes stand out for their high speed in crowds and you wonder if the "assist" from the motor is a binary on/off.

If all bikes were given more room and more consideration from drivers, this may not even be a real problem as each type would be able to spread out. But the infrastructure is pretty poor and police enforcement against drivers is even worse. So all the "alt transportation" people need to cram together in whatever meager space was won at the last road reconstruction meeting. E-bikes look great for converting drivers to bikes so no one wants to talk about banning them. But they also end up keeping their car driver mentality of me-first and objectifying everything else on the road around them.

I know, I'm just clarifying for readers who are.

This appears to be incorrect. In NYC e-bikes with a throttle are permitted, and subject to the same limitations as pedal-assist bikes, as long as they don't exceed 20 mph (~32 km/h). [0].

[0] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/ebikes-more-engl...

On the day that daylight saving time changes so it's dark an hour early, the Dutch police sneak out all around the city, hide behind bushes, and jump out to surprise unsuspecting bike riders who don't have their lights on yet, and write them traffic tickets.

> it's a moped, you need a driving license, insurance, a license plate, and all the legal equipment of a moped (e.g. lights, rear view mirror), and commonly type approval (which is going to be very, very expensive).

The amount of bureaucracy in Europe for completely mundane things is completely unbelievable.

Getting a Driver's license in France, for example, is an uphill battle against a very hostile administration. I can completely see why some tried to dodge some of these absurd regulations by innovating in the e-bike space.

Having a tiny bike barely able to break the 25mph limit be considered a moped just because it has a throttle as well as pedal assist is completely ridiculous.

Same in Belgium, and they are pretty strict about that.

At a certain point, you've added enough extra mass to the vehicle in terms of batteries, motor, beefed up brakes and frame, etc that you need to start asking questions about how much kinetic energy it's carrying and what happens to it all in case of a crash.

Silly comparison, but we wouldn't let a car drive on the sidewalk even if it had a special module that limited it to 5km/h.

I think it's insane this is allowed on the streets without a license or anything. I'm afraid of riding my regular bike if there's no bike lanes, let alone something like this in the middle of all the cars. Insane.