this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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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.
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.
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).
States have no licensing/registration infrastructure for bicycles. And any changes must happen state by state (c.f. the chaos that is motorcycle registration).
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.
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.
I looked it up... it's 70kph, not mph. Comes out to be about 45mph.