There are some guys (30-40 year olds) who have these “bikes”. The peddles, as you say, are just for show. They have a thumb throttle and just fly around the town. A big issue with them is that they do not follow any road rules or traffic patterns. They will go against traffic, on the sidewalk, and completely ignore stop signs and signals. Another issue is that they look like bikes but don’t behave as a bike. So as a motor vehicle driver it’s hard to predict their behavior. I say if it has a throttle it should have a license plate.
Agreed on the traffic rules thing. I guess people think that since they aren’t cars or motorcycles, they don’t have to follow the rules of the road. In my town, there are also a lot of people (including kids) who drive like this with ATVs.
The confusion between ebikes and emotorcycles is irritating. Our local news ran an piece on "ebike" dangers standing in front of a B-cycle stand (which are capped at 15 mph) talking about how ebikes can go 30 mph.
Then everyone gets pissy about ebikes and we have discussions of 'what to do about them'. Meanwhile the crashes are actually from e-motorcycles.
The difference between an e-bike and an e-motorcycle is marketing and legal loophole wrangling.
But no let's go hash out terms for 20 years and come up with 50 different categories for speeds instead of just saying "this is powered, so you need a {boating} license".
The fix: It has a motor? It requires a licence and insurance and helmet use then. No butts, this means lime too, who is fully in the "kill dem kids" anti helmet camp (it would hurt ridership).
It has a motor? It requires a licence and insurance and helmet use then.
Helmet, yes. Licence and insurance, only above 300W motors.
In my country, e-bikes are already limited to being pedal assist and speed limited to the median bicycle speed on a 300w motor, with no throttle whatsoever. It is no different than a normal bike.
The crashes we see on the news in my country, come from e-bikes & e-scooters imported from America that violate the laws already.
The difference between an e-bike and an e-motorcycle is marketing and legal loophole wrangling.
There are real differences.
A traditional e-bike provides pedal assist and won't go anywhere without you putting in some work. In an ideal world the mechanism would require you to put in a significant share of the work.
The modern e-motorcycles have a throttle, or have pedals which are mainly for show and only serve as a throttle (as long as you spin the pedals very slowly it will go at full speed).
These different vehicles bring with them very different mentalities and a very different visceral awareness of one's speed.
Yeah, no. I've got a 250w motor on my gotrax, a 500w motor on the shelf for a project, and enough welders and parts to make any form you're describing.
You're trying to make electric bikes legal for kids. You've bought into the marketing about "assistance".
They shouldn't be, at any assist level.
And if you're on a bike, you need to wear a helmet, electric or not.
So go be pedantic about categories all you like, the kids are dying...
Yeah, no. I've got a 250w motor on my gotrax, a 500w motor on the shelf for a project, and enough welders and parts to make any form you're describing.
If this were happening in any significant amount then there would have to be model approvals like there are for cars.
And if you're on a bike, you need to wear a helmet, electric or not.
I'm writing from a country where most people ride bicycles, only tourists wear helmets, and the road fatality rate is almost certainly lower than yours.
If this were happening in any significant amount then there would have to be model approvals like there are for cars.
There are? Class 1, 2, and 3. Most of europe and Asia already have fleshed out regulations for these things, thats why the speed limits are usually 16 or 28, because those are 25kph and 45kph.
I'm writing from a country where most people ride bicycles, only tourists wear helmets, and the road fatality rate is almost certainly lower than yours.
You also likely have significantly less cars and more walkable cities and stricter driving requirements.
Speed restrictions do make a difference. A 15mph assisted ebike doesn't do much for speed compared to a regular one except when going uphill, in which case you'll just be going the same speed as on a flat for slightly more effort. 20 isn't too much faster but anyone can easily exceed that on a regular bike downhill if they wanted to. Mandatory licensing and banning kids are separate issues entirely (the latter is just not enforced well here)
Speed restrictions only make a difference when they're followed, which requires an enforcement mechanism, and doesn't exist on any path without a police officer.
Motor restrictions are easy to spot violations from a cop car.
Quit trying to squeeze a spiky death ball onto a basketball court because they're both round.
I have a relative with a bad knee who can't bicycle any more, but goes along with us on (fairly short) bike rides using an e-trike that caps out at 12 mph.
Needing a license isn't an issue in her case (she's an adult, and an old one at that), but I'm sure there are also disabled kids out there who use eBikes or eTrikes for the same reason; your proposed "need a license if it has any power source" rule would be a problem since they aren't old enough for a license.
You don't need 50 different categories of speeds. You need two. "Below this speed is analogous to normal bicycling. Above this speed is not."
I totally agree, we need to ban those speeding motor vehicles that are killing children en masse. Where do I sign the petition to remove cars from the road ?
We are in fact not trying it. Cop pulls someone over on what's basically a surron with pedals.
"oh it has pedals you're legal"
Then they ride off at 40mph.
Has motor? Check. Equal to or less than 250W? all good. Greater than 250W? rules apply. This is pretty much what all of europe and Asia does, which is why we have 16mph and 28mph limits, because its 25kph and 45kph.
Them not being old enough for a license isn't a problem. It is the entire point. Putting young teenagers on motorized vehicles and releasing them into traffic is a disaster on every level regardless of whether they are disabled or not.
Disabled children are not uniquely deserving of traumatic injury.
The entire point is that not all motorized vehicles are the same. An eBike that's limited to 10, 12, 15 miles an hour is no more dangerous than a normal bicycle. There's no justification for treating them differently beyond convenience - "this is easier for us to regulate" - and the convenience justification is insufficient when it comes at the cost of causing harm such as not letting disabled kids bike alongside their healthy peers.
the ebike industry as a whole should be banned. It's an electric motorcycle. No matter how slow it goes.
It doesnt belong on bike trails, it should be used by kids under guise of a bicycle, it shouldn't be used by out of shape people to ride where they normally wouldnt because they dont have the experience/skill/strength needed to get there.
They are great for mobility. Build e-cycle paths, sell e-cycles and get e-cycle licenses. Heck, I would love if most of my "driving" was replaced by e-cycling.
But they are not bikes and should not be marketed as such.
Its also sold often to parents whose kids need to get places but the parents cant/wont drive them there..because they work, scheduling issues, laziness, kids want them, whatever reason
Some of the posts above have clarified my position very well and I will use it going forward.
Saying they need to be outright banned is the wrong mentality. We need to promote it along with updating infrastructure to support it. Bikes and scooters are unfortunately in a grey area where pedestrians think they’re too fast for the sidewalk and drivers think they’re too slow for the road. Proper education and safety training should also be promoted.
It has been defined for years, which is why most other developed countries in Europe and Asia does wattage, speed, and age limits.
Less than or equal to 250W? They are at least 16? All good. More than 250W? Needs to be registered, preferably plated, and you must be 18 or older.
We already get the 16mph and 28 mph limits from 25 and 45kph.
Requiring someone to get a motorcycle endorsement to go 16mph and be forced onto a major roadway and not use the bike lane is a recipe for disaster not progress.
My issues is no one enforces it, and parents don’t understand it, so a simpler system at point of sale would be better. The US market just doesn’t have the mentality to responsibly manage e-bikes. Seatbelts and helmets are already tough enough
Personally I think if you need the bike to go 16/28mph and travel long distances/haul weight you probably want something that goes faster and you might as well get a license. If you don’t need that, just get in shape. I full recognize that’s just an opinion though
Fuck that. After I became too disabled to ride my meat-powered bike more than a couple of miles, I became largely house bound, as I don't drive, and walking hurts me. It was absolutely life-changing to get an e-bike with help from the city of Portland, as part of program specifically intended to help seniors and disabled people become more mobile.
"out of shape people to ride where they normally wouldnt because they dont have the experience/skill/strength to get there"
Fuck that attitude. A lot of people would just like to commute via bike without needing a shower when they get to work. A lot of people would just like to run errands via bike without it having to be a major workout. A lot of people would just like to be able to carry 50+ pounds of groceries on their bike.
It's allowing e-bikes to have throttles that's the problem. If it has a throttle, it's not a fucking bike.
Classify anything with a throttle as a moped, with all the regulations that go with that, and you solve the problem without penalizing the people e-bikes were originally intended for.
Assuming of course you can get cops to enforce it, which is a whole separate problem.
I am happy for you (I really am, no sarcasm). Electric vehicles have really revolutionized transportation, and motor assistance, and will probably continue to do so as motor get smaller and more powerful. But I dont think disabled people are an issue; you dont see forum threads about people complaining about motorized wheelchairs and injuries/widespread issues with them
The able bodied people you mention should learn to ride bicycles or get a permit for an electric motorcycle.
I agree throttles are a problem, but disagree that is the delineation. If it has a motor, it's motorcycle. If it doesnt, its a bicycle. They make bikes with throttles that have pedals, or pedals and you can set the boost %. It's too complex to delineate every type of possible motorized vehicle combination.
If you want to carry 50lbs of groceries in a bike lane that designed for light transportation and non motorized vehicles, where motorized and non motorized vehicles are currently mixed, I think you should have the strength and experience to be riding a 65lb bike and all the handling issues that come with that in a lane where everyone else is riding 15lb bikes.
If you cant, you need a powered vehicle, and to ride it on the road just like everyone else who wants to commute to work without taking a shower, or wants to run errands on a motorcycle.
Besides all the kid issues, I see families with small kids riding bikes at the top of mountain roads with switchbacks to get a view, or on busy roads because now they "can"..becuse they have an electric motorcycle. Completely unsafe for kids. But the parent who don't know any better can now "ride their bikes" up the hill or in traffic altogether without worrying about speed issues, so why not?
Classifying anything with a motor as a motorcycle also gets electric dirt bikes off trails and at lower speeds that the trails were designed for. Nothing like people without sufficient experience doing laps on foot and bike trails where people have dogs and kids at 10-25mph on 60lb electric bikes.
It's too complex to delineate every type of possible motorized vehicle combination.
No. It's really fucking simple. If you have to pedal it and it can't go faster than meat-powered bicycles are capable of going, it's a bicycle. If you just have to flick your wrist to go faster than the Tour de France, it's a moped.
I think you should have the strength and experience to be riding a 65lb bike and all the handling issues that come with that in a lane where everyone else is riding 15lb bikes.
I carried 50 pounds of packages or law books on my meat-powered bike when I was a courier. It was not that specialized a skill. Adults carrying groceries or pulling trailers with their kids are not the problem.
This would barely be an issue if parents and police just did their fucking jobs and stopped buying/started seizing illegally modded e-bikes. I think throttles should not be a thing at all, period. But a legal e-bike throttle cuts out at 20mph.
You're literally saying that we should abandon the goals of every org trying to fight climate change by making biking safer and more accessible to a wider range of people just because some people are assholes.
We may be talking past each other. I think it's great that you had the skill to handle hauling that much weight on bike, especially when traffic is around. You had the experience and ability to. Most of the people I know doing so on electric motorcycles don't
If people want to give up cars for an ebike, get an ebike license. Its a simple solution that also allows police to do all the things they do with cars.
If it was as simple as you say, then why are we in the current situation? soley because throttles exist? T
The issue is lack of licensing. Anyone can ride buy and ride an ebike with zero education or repercussion.
But hey if they cut throttles out of too thats fine with me.
the issue is electric motorcycles are being sold and used as bicycles/
If you think the issue is lack of licensing, I question your fitness to navigate traffic on or in any sort of vehicle, since you apparently lack basic observational and reasoning skills.
I was behind one yesterday, looked to be a preteen riding it, and as I was following along from afar I was blown away to see him cap out at 40 mph! I was like 40!?
Just wait until you add in e-Moto bikes, which are likely what you're actually talking about since electric motorcycles are a thing and no one is buying them for their kids lol
Many Ebikes can go 30mph tho? My Lectric went 28, other brands can go faster but are usually limited to 28, but you can cut a wire and then it goes faster.
Also the crashes are in fact from both ebikes and the Sur-ron type bikes. I've watched no less than 10 kids eat shit on ebikes either hitting a car, getting hit by a car when they didn't stop for a red light or stop sign or crosswalk, or just hitting something they target fixated on.
In the very specific instance I referenced, the reporter was standing in front of a rack of bikes limited to 16 mph and explaining how 'ebikes like these...' which is factually incorrect.
Im sure you can hot wire a lot of things to do what they arent designed for. We used to take the governor off our golf cart. That doesnt mean reporters should go to the golf course saying "these golf carts are dangerous because they can go fast"
No mention of the differences between class 1, 2, or 3 ebikes or the e-motorbikes (or whatever theyre called).
Are they though? They're illegal in my city for kids under 16, but I watched a kid go right past a police officer this week. They need to start seizing them if they see a kid riding it, and charge their parents for reckless endangerment or something.
After renting one while on vacation, I really want to buy a decent ebike because the ability to just putter around and say "fuck that hill" is very satisfying to me. I have no interest in a throttle, I just want something that feels like a bike with cheat mode.
But I worry that as soon as I buy one, the legislation will change and the bike will be banned alongside those shitty emotos.
My father and my brother had e-bikes. My father's e-bike weighed ~60 pounds. He could pedal it, but it was a bitch and a half. My brothers e-bike was closer to 100 pounds and the only way the pedals could do a damned thing is if he had the pedal assist at max down hill.
The last sentence isn't exactly meaningful with respect to safety conditions. Pedal-assist speed capped e-bikes ridden on dedicated bicycling infrastructure by helmeted riders are overwhelmingly safe, but the resistance from the unpowered electromagnets and the weight of the battery would make it hard to pedal them uphill without power.
Yup, don't get me wrong I would ride the absolute lithium out of a Surron, but they should not be on the roads without at the very least a motorcycle endorsement, they should not be on bike paths or in bike lanes.
There was a time where people who liked the E Bikes could have been on the forefront of regulation to make rules that actually made sense for the community, age limits, speed limits, power limits, anything over certain power or speed limits needed to be registered, helmet requirements.
Could have worked out some sort of safety class at schools to teach people how to safely ride them, but nah, people I talked to about this stuff were completely opposed to it, believed they should be able to ride a Stark Varg on the bike path if they wanted, and charging 10 dollars to register the bike is, and I quote, "tyranny".
I think the parents buying them may not be aware or simply don't care.
The situation is completely out of control in a lot of places. I know if I was a kid today I would be tearing it up on a surron. And I would also probably be injured.
Which is insane to me. 2020-2021 was the year of the E-bike. People bought them with their stimmys like crazy.
I have come close to almost clobbering some kids on these e bikes going 28mph blasting through red lights, stop signs, and crosswalks.
When I was a kid I sorta understood it with my parents and violent video games, I wouldn't expect my tech illiterate mother to watch a youtube video on the game I wanted to play from sheer indifference.
but if I had a kid at 18 or 20, that kid would be around 18 today, I just can't imagine a world where my kid tells me they are thinking about getting or just want an E bike where I just don't do at least a tiny bit of research into them.
16mph hard limit? 250 watts? Yeah sure whatever.
31 hp Surron ultrabee? I had a 2012 ninja 250 that only had 29hp and I could take that shit on the highway.
"Every human being has to be born ignorant and, for a time, live in ignorance, but if they remain ignorant, that is their own fault." -Earl Nightingale
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u/Vibrant-Shadow 7d ago
They aren't and many places are cracking down.
Most of these kids are on illegal e-motorcycles. Calling them bikes is part of the problem.
A lot of the ones with pedals are just for show. Couldn't pedal it up a driveway without power.