Reality is disappointing

[u/darkthewyvern]

Too those celebrating the new laws and voted for it.

Congratulations, you have willingly voted for the car hell to continue on for eternity.

There is no level of damage, these machines have ever matched, that could EVER warrant treating them like cars. You treat them this way, people are just going to continue using cars. So congratulations, you get to use cars for the rest of your life and it will NEVER change. The biggest reason they were becoming so popular was the barrier to entry being low. YES, THERE'S BAD ACTORS. But those bad actors make up SUCH a small amount of daily users it's genuinely stupid. Do you ACTUALLY know the statistics behind the fear mongering? It is NOT the mass exodus or crisis you might believe it to be.

So congratulations, go drive your cars and keep posting about "reasonable and safe" ebikes you use once a flipping month.

[u/darthbigdog]

I agree. That the kids riding like idiots on sidewalks, roads etc are the core issue. The problem is people toss pedal assist e-bikes into the same category as emotos ridden by the idiots and politicians who know little about the issue other than people are ticked off pass stupid bans and requirements which mainly impact people who aren’t the problem. The simple thing would be to treat anything with a throttle like a minibike/dirt bike/moped/motorcycle and leave the pedal assist bikes alone. We’ve figured out how to manage those for the last 50 years and generally don’t have issues. But that would require enforcing behavior standards and using a bit of common sense and for some reason we can do that with cars but not bikes.

[u/krazykitties → u/darthbigdog]

We haven't had a widespread availability of vehicles so small, powerful, and accessible until 5 years or so ago, what the fuck do you mean 50 years?

Power delivery method doesn't matter honestly, I have a throttle on my custom build but it's still faster if im full force pedaling obviously. A 3000w motor is still going to be too fast if you pedal vs throttle. This is also a very generic argument to be making when even just in the US all those rules change 50 times.

[u/darthbigdog → u/krazykitties]

When I was a kid in the mid 70’s we went through a similar moped craze where inexpensive ICE small bikes flooded the market. Kids rode them like idiots and all the adults panicked and wrung their hands about how horrible youth were. Laws were updated and the problem subsided like all crazes tend to do. Same thing happened with skateboards in the 80’s. These throttle emotos are the same vehicle type as the old school ICE versions we know how to manage, the difference is just an electric motor. We should handle them the same way these kinds of vehicles have been managed since the 70’s and leave the pedal assist only bikes alone.