Wired: What's an Ebike?

[ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org]

Wired: What's an Ebike? California Wants You to Know

Cities want to stop kids from getting hurt. A lawmaker thinks warning them away from legal gray-area “e-motos” could help.

(paywall, unfortunately)
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-an-e-bike-california-might-find-out/

#BikeTooter #ebikes

[isthmus@infosec.exchange]

@ai6yr
I use both an electric bicycle and a normal bicycle.

A lot of bicycle infrastructure in the UK is shared paths, therefore while it would be nice to have a higher speed limit than 15.5MPH on the roads (for example 20MPH), 15.5MPH is a reasonable speed limit if they are going to be using sharing paths.

For this reason I'm not against the UK law and think it's a well thought out sensible approach. I.E.

https://www.gov.uk/electric-bike-rules

Despite the law, it's not uncommon to encounter illegal e-bikes – and they are way too fast for shared paths.

The only real advantage of an electric bicycle should be going up hills and into headwind. Or a way for non-athletic people to be able to use an electric bicycle as an alternative/primary mode of transport.

If people want to travel faster, than 15.5MPH, then they need to use roads and therefore be subjected to moped legislation.

Therefore, I think point-of-sale needs to be more heavily restricted/regulated.

What seems odd is that certain country legislators (the USA) allowed consumers to spend their hard-earned money before legislating.