NYT gift article expires in 30 days.
It’s worth noting that the top picture in the article is of a kid on a $4400 Sur-ron X, which is strictly not road legal and is capable of up to 45mph and can accelerate to 30mph in 3.5 seconds.
Anything over a class 2 should be licensed and require insurance. In the US if you are traveling faster than 12mph you are required to follow traffic laws. Some states even require vehicle insurance if there is an incident above 12mph.
You think teenagers care about insurance? Even if they did, they certainly can’t buy any.
I’m pretty sure the teens my neighbourhood that go as fast as they can at night on the wrong side of the road around blind corners with their lights turned off are uninsured. I love my eBike. Not a fan of how I see other people riding them every day though (and not just kids).
99% of the danger on roads is caused by motor vehicles. Once we’ve solved that problem we can have a conversation about whether licensing improves e-bike safety. But until that day, creating barriers to car alternatives directly makes people less safe. If you prevent teenage hooligans from biking, they will drive instead and will be an actual danger to people instead of this imagined one.
People on bikes and scooters here just blow through red lights without even looking. Sometimes I won’t even hear the scooters running the reds when I’m on foot because they are so quiet.
People I know have unfortunately died or become vegetables from non-traffic related crashes on bikes and escooters without helmets. :/
I love mountain biking, but I’m super anal retentive about always wearing protective gear, and I never ride with traffic because it’s so dangerous. I feel similarly uneasy about heavy and fast ebikes and emtbs.
States have no licensing/registration infrastructure for bicycles. And any changes must happen state by state (c.f. the chaos that is motorcycle registration).
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I think you and the article have this wrong. 45mph is with the speed governor removed. The article doesn’t make it clear whether the parent misspoke and the reporter didn’t fact check or that the reporter just mistyped, but you can’t get anywhere close to 70 mph with a 6kW peak motor. There are people who have modded the hell out of these and poured thousands more dollars into them to get those kinds of speeds, but that’s not possible with a stock bike.
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I looked it up… it’s 70kph, not mph. Comes out to be about 45mph.
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I swear these technology subs really are anti-technology, it’s all old-man-yells-at-cloud whining and complaining. What a joke.
Who’s complaining in here?
Parents!
They’re the worst.
Please kindly point to the whining and complaining.
It’s safe if there’s safe places to ride bikes? More bike lanes are needed everywhere, especially as cars get more and more out of reach for people.
Overall they are a very good thing.
(Maybe just … do some public safety campaigns for sidewalk sharing etiquette haha)
Bike roads are pretty safe so better than metal coffins going 130km/h… ohh right this is america there arent any bike paths.
Very true.
However I wouldn’t want to share a bike path with individuals riding carelessly at 40kmh/30mph. At least here where there is some semblance of ‘bike culture’, unrestricteds do ride slowly on paths and walkable areas, and usually only let it rip in the road.
Teens might not necessarily abide by that, or understand the risks. They tend to prefer escooters here anyway, and those top out at a much slower 20kmh/15mph… could be worse I guess 🤷♂️
I think electric scooters are a curse for everyone. They dont wear protection and a lot of them are reckless.
Since North America is poorly designed, it isn’t a good thing. If North America was better designed then biking and walking would be safer. #NotJustBikes
Even better is that you wouldn’t need an e-bike either, as frankly the high speed ones are incredibly dangerous especially when there’s good infrastructure for bicycling.
Sure, they’re incredibly dangerous. But they’re still way less dangerous than cars. I’d rather be complaining about ebikes injuring people than the countless deaths caused by motor vehicles.
Ebikes will need some regulation to limit speeds, of course.
I’m lucky to live in a country where e-bikes and electric scooters and such are a bigger talking point than cars.
At that point, wouldn’t they be in the road with cars barreling down like they are on a crochrocket?
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Freedom is inherently dangerous, so, yes. We accept the risk of course because not being free is fucking terrible.
Freedom is inherently dangerous
Only to a degree. Letting your child run free on a playground is significantly less dangerous than letting them run free in a hazardous waste landfill. We can absolutely design safe and free places. We just need to stop designing our cities for the sole use of hazardous waste (cars).
I think the pros outweigh the cons? Anything that steers us away from car culture is desperately needed at this point, and this is one of the only practical alternatives in suburbia.
I would be for bike safety being taught at schools, though I feel licensing for minors would be a quagmire? Let’s not go there. I would be for speed limiters that are harder to bypass. For example, I can disable mine by phone app. If I had any trouble I could ask, well, a teenager? lol
But perhaps most importantly, cycling infrastructure, at least in North America, is a joke and there is so much that can be done on the safety front it’s not funny. I wish the decision makers were all bike commuters. Then they would understand the level of impracticality in their well-meaning but futile attempts to improve the situation.
This basically sounds like the regulation in Germany. Bike safety is being taught at schools, and there is a discrete distinction between e-bikes and Pedelecs. Pedelecs, which only support while pedalling, are legally bicycles with a speed limit of 25 km/h (15 mp/h). Everything above this limit or with the capability to drive without pedalling are called E-Bikes and need insurance and some sort of license.
No they don’t
No they don’t what?
I love the idea of e-bikes, but I think people are acting dangerously on them. I think a modest amount of training and licensure – at least to tell people to obey traffic laws, wear helmets, and not go 30 miles per hour on sidewalks or pedestrian zones – would respect freedom while removing a lot of danger.
We are at a point in time in which we can’t afford to wait any longer to switch away from fossil fuels, and e-bikes are one of the ways to do so. The barriers to entry should be minimal.
The majority of e-bike injuries are to the rider themselves, and due to inattention/falling off. That’s not something that training or a license will really help with. Speeding and not wearing a helmet on the other hand, those are things easier to catch/deal with.
I don’t think safety courses and licensing are a huge barrier to entry though, unless we let them be. And on the other hand the safety benefits seem to be enormous.
And yes, training and a license would indeed make a difference with how riders conduct themselves. Including wearing a helmet or paying attention.
I don’t think safety courses and licensing are a huge barrier to entry though, unless we let them be.
Training and licenses generally aren’t free, and e-bikes are already pretty expensive. It would add quite enough of a barrier to entry to dissuade more people from switching to them, which is something the environment cannot afford. We honestly need to be doing everything in our power as quickly as possible.
And yes, training and a license would indeed make a difference with how riders conduct themselves. Including wearing a helmet or paying attention.
I’ve seen plenty of car drivers on the road who presumably have a license, yet they don’t wear seat-belts, don’t pay attention, turn in places they shouldn’t, speed, etc. The first step should be infrastructure changes to increase the number of protected/dedicated bike trails (which in turn allow accidents to happen safely), built in speed limiters, rules on helmets and speed, mixed use zoning to reduce trip count/speed/cars, etc. Such changes don’t have an impact on barrier to entry or and only a negligible effect on our freedom.
Traveling by bike is one of the few ways you can travel without having the government involved in some way, or at least minimally involved. I’d like it to stay that way.
And like I said earlier, most of these injuries are to the rider themselves, which means they were probably doing something stupid in the first place. People are going to be stupid even with a license and training, so we may as well design around it as a first step.
I have a cat. It likes to get into things I don’t want it to. I could theoretically teach it not to do so, but the far simpler option is to keep the layout of my house and my things such that it can’t get into things in the first place. If I keep the closet doors shut, it isn’t getting in. People are stupid, and similarly, we should design our infrastructure to account for that. It’s why speed bumps exist after all.
We need more infrastructure dedicated to micro-mobility options like ebikes and escooters so that they don’t have to mix with pedestrian traffic as often. We need to allow more mixed zoning so that we don’t have to travel 20 minutes by bike to get to the store, alleviating the drive to ride as fast as possible.
We need to allow more mixed zoning so that we don’t have to travel 20 minutes by bike to get to the store, alleviating the drive to ride as fast as possible.
Not only would that eliminate the need for speed, but it would also reduce the overall number of trips taken by bike. Less trips means less crashes. Same goes for cars.
Add it to the never ending list of benefits to mixed use zoning.
I think they would be a lot less issue if people wore gear more like motorcyclists, the only wearing a half helmet approach that most bicyclists go with only makes sense because pedaling a bike in full motorcycle gear is hell. People should be encouraged to wear much more extensive gear on an ebike.
100%. For reference, Virginia Tech rigorously tests bicycle helmets and rates them…based on 16mph impacts, and the recent NTA 8776 certification for ebike helmets has safety ratings based on 28mph impacts.
When I built a class 4 ebike years ago to replace the need for a car in an area with no bike infrastructure, limited public transit, and extremely limited pedestrian infrastructure, I used a full-face motorcycle helmet rated to ECE R22.05 spec. It saved me when a car cut me off and sent me flying. Proper safety gear is very important.
It’s a culture issue, too.
Cyclist etiquette is not a problem whatsoever in cities built for them.
But when they are introduced into a city without cycling infrastructure, or existing riders setting an example, there will be idiots testing the limits.
Denmark already have regulations that stipulate that ebikes and escooters can’t go faster than 20kmt and i feel that’s reasonable. For scooters you’re also required by law to wear a helmet.
It’s 25km/h. There is also a 45km/h category with stricter regulation.
We have the same/similar regulations in norway as well. I don’t have an e bike, but I guess the speed limit must be annoyingly low. I often pass them on my regular bike in like 30 km/h.
I could be wrong and the speed limit is only for scooters but honestly I don’t care to look into it. I prefer my regular bike and until I’m old and incapable of using that I won’t change.
Edit: Learned a lot about this today. Cheers fellas for the replies!
IIRC motor power has to be limited to 250w, and the speed gouvenor is set to 24km/h.
I have one of those E bikes that only run the motor when the user pedals, and it wasn’t hard to remove the speed limit. The bike paths here in Oslo are a bit sketchy sometimes, so I usually dont go above 30km/h, though my bike can reach 40 at full battery.
“As teens take to cars, parents ask: Is this freedom or danger?”
“As teens wear shoes and leave the house, parents ask: is this freedom or danger?”
“As teens start doing homework, parents ask: is this freedom or danger?”
As teens take to sidewalks…
As teens take to malls…
As teens take to wilderness trails…
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, we live in a society that threatens to take kids away from their parents for letting them walk to the post office.
Danger, clearly. We shouldn’t have encouraged them off the ebikes.
Why do perfectly healthy teenagers need electric bikes? I understand the case for less physically able to use ebikes, but why can’t these kids just use regular bikes? Has everyone forgotten how to use their bodies?
Edit: carbrains have arrived
Why do perfectly healthy adults need cars? Or regular bikes? Has everyone forgotten how to use their legs?
People need to start pulling themselves across the ground like slugs, as god intended.
In addition to RiderExMachina’s point, an e-bike will get you to your destination quicker, and with less effort. With how hot things are getting, it’s much more preferable to not arrive sweaty as hell due to how much work it can take, plus it’s better to spend less time in the heat.
Crikey, that’s horrible.
Whatever it takes to get fewer people on cars
I am long since past my teen years, but as an avid traditional cyclist who is now an ebike enthusiast, here are a few points off the top of my head:
- ebikes are consistently faster. It is easier to plan your day around ebike trips, since they take about the same amount of time every day. With a regular bike, your trip could be twice as long today because yesterday’s tail wind has been replaced by a stiff head wind.
- Issues involving extreme heat and poor air quality (in my experience, these often go hand-in-hand) have less impact on ebiking.
- Terrain not being an impediment gives you more options. There may be some path you’d never have contemplated before since it is hilly or goes down into a deep ravine you will eventually have to slog your way out of, and so you’d wind up taking busy city streets instead with the danger that entails.
- ebikes do give you exercise. You can usually control the amount of pedal assist or even turn it off for a real workout. When off, you will get more exercise than with a traditional bike since ebikes are heavier. But you can do this exercise wherever it is safest to do so and go electric when you need to move with traffic.
- If your city has a main corridor for cycling in terms of say an off-road paved trail to downtown, but you’d have to go out of your way to an extent to reach it, you will be more likely to do so on an ebike. It is just not as much of bother to seek out the better and safer routes.
Hills exist, sometimes you need to go 20 miles, we have record setting temperatures every day, public transit sucks most places, and a lot of areas don’t have bike lanes so you keep up with traffic or get ran over. E-bikes are good for everybody.
Hills are the main reason I’d love an ebike. I bike pretty regularly, but I’m simply not capable of going 20+ up a big hill. I live in a ridiculously hilly area, trying to ride on the roads as is would be borderline suicidal
Used to bike 12 miles most days for my commute several years ago. All hills. On the real steep ones I’d be going 2-3 mph up them and 35mph down them. Pedal assist would have been real nice back then. I would drive in on meeting heavy days just so I wouldn’t be sweaty in front of clients in the morning.
I think you’re being needlessly judgy, ebikes are great and it’s never been about whether you “need” one or not.
They’re faster than regular bikes, allowing you to cover a larger distance in the same amount of time, especially if you’re fit. They’re very fun to ride in general, and they can take some of the misery out of climbing hills or otherwise challenging/tedious parts of your commute. Cargo ebikes can carry a decent amount of stuff and even one or two small passengers in some cases, and in other cases they can replace your need for a car (like quickly getting to a store for something small). And they give you the ability to balance exercise vs convenience as the situation or your personalty demands (you get to decide how much work your body does and how much the motor does).
Finally, ebikes open the door for people to get into using active transportation instead of cars for people who normally wouldn’t want to, whether they need help because of fitness, want help because of living in a hilly environment, or because they just want to get from point A to B in a reasonable amount of time. Riding my ebike in an urban environment, I find that I can actually get around just as fast as in a car, if not faster due to traffic.
Because I’m not super fit and live in a very unforgiving and hilly American neighborhood (where I also have to ride on curvy roads where people drive too damn fast) I would have never ever considered getting a regular bike. I’m now riding a bike somewhat regularly, getting a bit of exercise (or not, depending on the circumstances), and having a great time riding on roads, bike lanes, sidewalks, through parks (at a reasonable speed for pedestrians), etc.
Yes, they’re more expensive than a regular bike.
Yes, they’re heavier than a regular bike.
Yes, having to worry about battery charge is inconvenient.
Yes, it can be dangerous to ride any bike at >20mph.But as the old saying goes “don’t knock it until you try it”. Even if you think you’re a cycling purist, I recommend at least giving ebikes a try before judging others for using them. I think if you did you’d find that ebikes are an ally of and complement to normal bikes, and just like an electric guitar amplifies your strings, ebikes are amplifying your legs and not rendering them obsolete.
With my e-bike I’m as fast as cars in city traffic, which means they don’t attempt to do horribly dangerous overtakes, keeping me alive for longer.
I was going to say, when I was a kid, growing up in the 70s, I had a dirt bike with a spedometer and I regularly pushed that thing to 25mph just with the pedals.
My first thought was “faster than 20? No big deal…”
But then I hit this:
“in fact, the Talaria can hit 70 miles per hour. His mother gave him her blessing, she said, and even helped him clip a wire that removes the speed “governor” that ordinarily limits the vehicle to 20 miles per hour.”
Having an eBike that can go that fast with relatively no modification at all does not seem wise to me, and it’s irresponsible of the parent to assist in that.
1 year after graduation, one of my high school friends got into an argument with his girlfriend, was riding his motorcycle too fast without a helmet, and crashed straight into the back of a garbage truck, killing him instantly.
A bike helmet wouldn’t have helped, maybe a DOT approved motorcycle helmet would have.
Edit I looked up the mod, it brings the bike to 70Kph, not mph. So about 45. Still faster than I’d want my kid going.
FWIW, I used to have an ebike that went up to 70, as an adult, that I used to commute to work and do shopping. New regulations came in restricting all new ebikes to 25 km/h, and now a shopping run takes an hour one-way.
How long did it take before?
I never actually timed it but I can work it out. Back of the hand maths says 25 is a third of 70, roughly, so the journey used to take a third of the time, twenty minutes.
Parents said the same things about rollerblades, skateboards, and regular bikes.
The difference here is we already have motor vehicles, and already have 2 wheeled motor vehicles, they’re called motorcycles and they’re highly regulated and require a special license. Just because the motor is electric doesn’t make it not a motor vehicle.
There was literally a mother in the article that helped her son remove the speed governor on the bike and allowed it to go 70mph and even admitted that she thinks these companies make them easy to remove for better sales and no liability. She said she got him the bike when he was 14.
Rollerblades, skateboards, and bikes only go so fast. Even at the regulated limit of 20 mph that is a speed kids are not hitting on their own. Have you ever tried to ride your bicycle at a sign that detects your speed? It is REALLY hard to hit 20mph let alone sustain that speed. And that’s the speed these kids are going all the time if they haven’t messed with the bike to make it go even faster. There needs to be better regulation with these.
The most hilarious example is that 80s video about snowboards… ah, here it is:
