Comment by Closi
4 years ago
> I see the two as totally different things: I've tried pedal-assist e-bike and they're great. But... Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
Eh, it depends if you see pedal assistance being the defining difference between a bike and a motorbike.
From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
Speed (or better, momentum) is important. But pedal assistance is definitely material to me. Switching from pedal-assist to throttle-controlled changes the proportionality between impulse and real-world results.
As a kid my first response to pretty much anything with a dial was to turn it up all the way and see what happened. That's a behavior I saw quite a bit during the brief plague of VC-funded scooters: novices at 100% motor output rocketing down sidewalks, etc. That's much less likely to happen it they have to pedal hard to get the top speed.
E bikes also have a dial, all it does is it limits the speed when it stops accelerating. You can dial the bike all the way up, peddle but not apply any force and still accelerate to top speed.
Where I live that would be illegal for an e-bike, that vehicle would be classified as an e-scooter.
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Interesting. So you're saying that they have to keep pedaling, just not very hard? My only experience is with the Lyft e-bikes, where high speed required actual work for me.
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I think something like average real world speed and weight are the two important metrics. Maybe this is the intuition with petal assist vs throttle controlled e-bikes. I do sort of think it should take some work to get a bike up to it's top speed so that riders don't just cruise at that speed.
> so that riders don't just cruise at that speed.
Do you actually ride bikes on roads? This is there because if you're going slow on an actual road you're more likely to get killed because of a car hitting you.
I'm honestly exhausted at this FUD when it's actively fucking with my life as a bike rider on a main road. Even Netherlands allows fully motorized vehicles that are small on their bike paths.
Stop thinking of this as a "free pass" and more of "what's actually the safest for bikers and pedestrians.
The OP, jacquesm, just mentioned throttle-only ebikes are not legal in the Netherlands.
Anyone who's comparing ebike speeds to rider speeds: most people new to riding bikes cannot sustain riding at 30kph (18.5mph) for probably more than 5 minutes, less if there's any gradual elevation. As such, bikes are "safe" because there's an inherent speed limiter. You pedal really fast, go fast, then you get tired and chill out.
By having a throttle-only mode, the rider never tires and will just want to go fast all. the. time.
> Stop thinking of this as a "free pass" and more of "what's actually the safest for bikers and pedestrians.
What's safest for bikers and pedestrians on multi-use paths (MUP) would be if ebikes actually followed the Class 1 rules and were limited to 32kph/20mph on these paths. (imo, 20mph is already pretty darn fast.) If folks want to go faster, then do it on the street. If you want to rip the throttle wide open, don't do it where a child is learning how to ride their bike or where people are just enjoying a leisurely stroll.
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In the US a lot of places don't have sidewalks or bike lanes and you're encouraged to cycle in the middle of a road lane so that you don't get killed when a driver hits you at full speed from the side. Also, you're legally entitled to a lane.
In most other places that don't have dedicated bike lanes drive on the side of the road, same places scooters normally drive.
I didn't mean to cause quite as much of a controversy as it seems I have. I do actually ride a standard, non e-bike on SF streets, admittedly only somewhat timidly and in places with low speed limits and or good bike infrastructure. It just strikes me that if you want a machine with a throttle, and that can operate at road speeds we have that. It's a moped. If you want something that can operate in close quarters on shared paths with humans we also have that, but it is scary and potentially dangerous being overtaken at speed on a shared path by a heavy machine with wide tires traveling at speed when you're walking on a path.
What both riders and pedestrians need is better car free infrastructure so we can stop it with the biking means going fast business. An ebike capped at something like the top speed of a human is a very different beast than a normal bike even if their top speeds are the same because the ebike is much more likely to actually be at those speeds at any point in time.
A typical scooter will blow right by my bike, no matter how hard I work at it. Anything over 40 kph is very intense, 36 to 38 is doable over the longer term traffic permitting.
> From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
Or perhaps momentum, which is far higher in motorised vehicles.
While I agree with this, there are the caveats that both light electric bicycles and heavy analog bicycles exist, and that in many cases the additional mass of the motor and battery may not contribute much to the overall momentum once the mass of cyclist and cargo are factored in.
Note: I commuted by electric bicycle before I switched to working remote, and I have to say that riding a vehicle that tops out at ~30mph when you're slamming the throttle _and_ pedaling as hard as you can on a road with cars and trucks going 45mph (or faster) is a harrowing experience. The few miles where I rode on bicycle paths, though, I capped my speed at 15-20mph (around what a decent cyclist would do) and slowed to 5-10mph when I was approaching foot traffic or other cyclists - and nobody ever batted an eye (except a few people who wanted to know where they could get one, heh).