In brief, UK reporting on “ebike” collisions and battery fires confuses lawful, UK/EU-compliant electric bicycles with illegal, unregistered, uninsured electric motorcycles. As a result, public perception is deeply skewed compared to the actual risks posed by bona-fide electric bicycles.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in California, but there is drafted legislation to mandate accurate advertising of “e-motos” versus ebikes, with fines accruing to vendors that fail to correctly represent what they’re selling.
IMO, it’s hard for me to blame consumers whom, given high gasoline/petrol prices, need some form of transportation that gets them where they need to go and minimizes external harms (eg automobile risk of injury). Evan correctly identifies vendors and importers that flout the law and push the legal risk into riders. At the same time, e-motos are legit for off-road use and here in California, they’re great fun in that regard. At bottom, fair advertising isn’t controversial; it’s no different than wanting to know the ingredients in food products.
On a separate note, Evan also flagged a case of police misidentification and confiscation of a lawful e-bike. Which I find particularly surprising, given that UK police tend to be more uniformly instructed than their American counterparts. No doubt that Californian police have also confused ebikes with electric motorcycles on occasion, but the result in the UK seems is to go immediately to confiscation and destruction without any meaningful system of review. Which seems problematic, at best
Some of this confusion seems to be created or exacerbated by the industry itself, particularly in North America. The standard European ebike is limited to 250W and 25kph. But the standard North American Class 1 or 2 ebikes are limited to 20mph, with up to 750W in the US or 500W in Canada. Some Class 3 ebikes in North America are just slightly faster Class 2 bikes, but there are an awful lot of grey-area bikes that look and feel more like e-motos, and it seems like that segment of the market is popular.
I think e-motos are part of the transportation future–I own one–but I do think it would be reasonable to exclude them from sidewalks, walking paths, greenways, etc. I’m not against better regulation of this space, so long as it continues to leave actual ebikes to be treated like other bikes.
Honestly i think the big problem isn’t regulation, it’s the lack of good bike infrastructure.
People only ride on sidewalks because they feel unsafe on the road and don’t have any other option, so if you make sure there are bike paths (even if they’re shared with pedestrians, just make them wide enough) that take people where they want to go, then they’ll generally stop being a nuistance for pedestrians.
And people get these pseudo-mopeds because they want the benefits of the e-bike format (lighter, less regulated, can go on bike paths) but feel a need to go fast, which isn’t helped by forcing them to share space with drivers of gargantuan vehicles that consider 30km/h to be frustratingly slow…
Another big problem is people having to travel ludicrous distances all the time, which surely contributes to this problem being so common in big cities (and the entirety of the US).
My town has a really decent bike network and yeah, i don’t really ever see people going upsettingly fast other than e-scooter riders (and even then it’s not that common). People who want to go fast just get actual mopeds or motorbikes, and people who want the form factor of an e-bike don’t feel the need to go faster than 25km/h, which generally works fine since there’s enough space on the shared paths.
Then look at london, where Evan lives… Infamous for generally having bike infrastructure summed up as “slightly better than nothing” to the point where some basic fucking bike paths got branded as “bicycle superhighways”…
At least here in California, the presence of operable pedals is being rapidly adopted – in terms of consumer advice and police warnings – as a quick-and-easy distinguishing factor between an ebike and an e-moto. And it does track with the law, since there are no legal ebikes without pedals. As a way of cutting down on e-motos being sold and ridden as if ebikes, it’s a workable definition.
The drawback is that it leads to under-enforcement if that’s the only factor considered. That said, I’m less enthusiastic about focusing on enforcement when there’s genuine confusion in the marketplace about the thing that parents are buying for their children. I hazard to guess that a fair number of them would regret their purchase if informed that they actually bought a motorcycle capable of freeway speeds.
This aspect of enforcement, I can agree with. And indeed, California strikes some sort of balance with class 1/2 being allowed but subject to the general 15 MPH limit on trails and multiuse paths, and class 3 being prohibited on most off-street surfaces.
This works fairly well for me, since I use my class 3 ebike for traversing long routes between suburbs, so operating in on-street bike lanes is simultaneously faster and more efficient for me than using the sidewalk. I’m a big fan of giving different users the space they need. And the USA is sorely in need of allocating more space for people than for cars.
so wait, are normal bikes allowed on sidewalks and walking paths? That sounds insane to me, what’s the point of pedestrian-only things if they’re not pedestrian-only?
And how is even the slowest bicycle compatible with people walking on narrow sidewalks? On separate paths i can sorta get it, there’s at least room for people to just walk to the side when a cyclist passes, though still i question calling that a “walking path” when people bike there…
In California, yes, that’s the default rule. Municipalities have limited authority to regulate road traffic, but can prohibit bikes from sidewalks if they post certain signs. As a result, most municipalities here allow it, with some downtown areas having restrictions where sidewalks are in heavy use.
Sadly, the pre-1900 American conception of the sidewalk as a pedestrian refuge – paved, free of mud and puddles, in an era where unpaved roads and horse carriages were the norm – was entirely sidelined in the automobile industry’s desire to move product. It would be great if municipalities actually maintained their sidewalks – in the Western USA, most states make it the responsibility of the adjacent landowner – but seeing as they’re not even required to provide sidewalks, it’s truly a block-by-block situation.
As a result, there’s every incentive to reuse sidewalks for anything that can use them, despite the obvious walkability problems, issues for people that must use the sidewalk (eg wheelchair users), while also eating the risk of sidewalks not being designed for any wheeled device (and sometimes having no regard for sight lines that would give pedestrians a chance to see an automobile running a stop sign). The very existence of sidewalks in some places has been used to justify not building additional infrastructure for separate uses, such as bike lanes, based on the false premise “nobody bikes, so no need to build infra”, which is obviously why nobody bikes. Some places only have a disconnected sidewalk segment because a building (eg school) required it for ADA compliance.
Note that a sidewalk can be properly upgraded to a multi-use path (MUP) that can support mixed traffic (eg bikes, class 1/2 ebikes, (e)scooters, dog walkers, strollers, and pedestrians) but these have to be much wiser (>3 meters) and are only designed for low traffic volumes. MUPs easily reach their design volume if, say, a school has ended class and all the students are walking home.
For the narrowest of legacy sidewalks (ones which would fail the ADA requirements today but are grandfathered if they’re left unchanged since installation pre-1990) of maybe 1 meter wide, you are correct that there’s no way for a pedestrian and bicyclist to fit in this space. The common result is that the pedestrian steps off and the bicyclist gets by. Under the law, it’s supposed to be the other way around, and IMO, it’s a lot easier for bikes to ride over grass or surfaces adjacent to the sidewalk.
I agree that pedestrians should have first dibs on sidewalks. The present reality is that this is all artificial scarcity: there’s plenty of road space that should be rededicated from automobile lanes or parking so that sidewalks are widened and pedestrians and cyclists have the space they need. This simultaneously solves the e-scooter parking issue, reduces automobile congestion and driving speeds and collisions in cities, and improves air quality and civic life.
The modern automobile is quite good at traveling long distances. So there should be no genuine complaint with having cars drive the long way around a neighborhood or business district, so that pedestrians and cyclists can go the direct route to the front door. Through streets for cars don’t need to exist; use movable bollards to allow emergency vehicles to drive into pedestrian areas
Yeah … let me just slap some pedals on my Harley and tear up the bike paths.
It’s more than just the speed and power. The form factor of fat bike mopeds has created a vicious cycle of bikes being heavier, therefore needing more power, and being more powerful allowing them to be heavier, to the point where they essentially require throttles to operate.
My rule is that if you can’t carry it up a flight if stairs or start from a stop on a hill with only the pedals, then it shouldn’t qualify, regardless of power or speed. Really, just banning throttles would solves 90% of the issue.
buddy i’m not sure most people can start from stop on a hill on a normal bike, nor carry it up the stairs (due to size if nothing else).
Are you a sports cyclist?
I like your rule about starting on a hill or carrying up the stairs. That’s a real bike.
Having said that, I do like a throttle on an ebike for getting off the line with a heavy load of groceries. 😄
It’s really only an issue with cadence sensors. I’ve never had an issue starting with a load on a torque sensing bike because the assist is immediate. If we banned throttles, I think we’d just see a lot of the worst offender, shitty cadence sensing bikes become non viable and a lot more torque sensing options. It would eliminate the cheapest segment initially, but I think that’s ok. Eventually the better tech would get cheaper.
The other big problem is that so many people use the throttle as a crutch because they don’t have the basic skills to be in the right gear based on the situation. This is again just very basic safe operator fundamentals.