> The fact that you have to put human effort into accelerating in a pedal assist e-bike absolutely curbs your behaviour, reduces your average speed, and makes you much less reckless.

We have a 40 mile bike trail near me, on which I would frequently bike or walk with my kids and wife. Before e-bikes, 100% of the "closes calls" and rude/reckless behavior experienced on this bike trail were from "road/racing bike" operators, clad in full spandex and very upset that I'm "in their way" and slowing them down from their ideal speed of 15-25+ MPH

Since the proliferation of e-bikes I've yet to have a single negative encounter with an e-bike operator, and continue to have potentially dangerous situations with high speed road/race bikers.

I chatted with one of these road bikers yesterday and he confessed he "hated" e-bikes because of their speed and reckless operators. I told him my experience and he was genuinely surprised, like he had never even considered it.

It's the people, not the bikes.

I've never seen a popular MUP (without delineated lanes for modes) in the US that is anything more than a compromise between each of the modes. I live along a fantastic, popular MUP that turns into an on-street protected bike lane. During evening commute hours the on-street protected bike lane becomes filled with dog walkers and joggers who don't want to use the sidewalk. The US culturally treats public spaces too poorly to be respectful on an MUP; we need to offer more safe space to alternate transportation modes on streets instead of dedicating all that space for cars.

What is a MUP? Not familiar at all with that acronym, believe others might have the same issue as me.

multi-use path, full of walkers, runners, and cyclists. Contrast to "bike path", where the expectation is that it is used by human-powered, wheeled vehicles moving at 10-20mph...and not used by dog walkers.

I'd guess multi-use path?

^ Yup multi-use path

I’m staying in a French seaside town at the moment, where a new MUP has been installed from sea front back through the town within the last year. It’s fucking crazy dangerous. I’ve had to yank my 6yo out of the way of some asshole riders a couple of times this week. It’s taken the place of the footpath that was here before…

I’m all in favour of new cycling infrastructure, but I reckon we need to go full Netherlands and put it on both sides of the road and have directional lanes, leaving the footpaths intact.

Guess it's not just an American thing then. I agree, we need more space devoted to separating out modes. Group them by speeds. "Pedestrian" paths would be 0-6 mph, "biking" paths from 10-20 mph, and high speed vehicles 20+ mph. A beginner cyclist just learning can go on the pedestrian path, an electric moped user that wants to go fast can go in the high speed vehicle lane.

> It's the people, not the bikes.

1000%. In over 5000 miles of riding e-bikes to work daily in SF, the ONLY times I've been accosted was from the full spandex "road/racing bike" groups.

It's always the people. They suck.

I have a road bike and an e-bike (though I don't go "full spandex"). On the road bike, I both go faster on level ground and it's more of a pain to slow down, so I often will time passing more closely.

That being said, the most reckless riders I see are invariably teenagers on e-bikes (often illegally modified to go over 20MPH). Teenagers being reckless is nothing new I suppose.

Pedal assisted e-bikes are a more complex design that leads to more cost. This is fine in the west where everyone is rich, yet they are rare in the developing world (especially china where cheap e-bikes are popular) where people are less rich. Putting so many restrictions on a cheaper to produce product could be seen as anti-poor.

Aren't you confusing hub vs mid motors ? There is no reason for pedal assist to be more expensive, some of them are as dumb as "is pedal turning > assist". I've even seen people remove the chain of their bike and still get the electric assist while providing next to zero effort

https://wheretheroadforks.com/mid-drive-vs-hub-motor-e-bike-...

Even the pedal/chain setup is an extra cost that doesn’t make sense in a cheap e-bike. We are talking $2-300, there isn’t a lot of margin for superfluous features.

But then again it wouldn't be a bicycle, and according to a lot of western countries you'd need a license, insurance, plate, helmet, &c.

> We are talking $2-300

Nah, you can get a basic setup for < 100, maybe lower fi you're mass manufacturing, most are fixies, plus you have a backup when the battery dies

I would say $100 was possible 5 years ago, now I’m sure inflation has made the market a bit more dear.

Arguably you could say the same for many costly safety features...

Have you lived this before? In a city like Beijing there are tens of thousands of people commuting via cheap e-bikes, they are slightly faster bikes, that’s it. Just speed limit them if anything and be done with it (and really, how fast do you think a 2000 kuai e-bike can go anyways?).

I’m not opposed to a speed limit if that’s what you’re asking.

A speed limiter is a much cheaper, more direct way to add safety without mandating anything else about the bike.

I’d be fine with a limit.

Yep, and it's illegal in europe afaik, it has to be capped to 25kph and only when the user pedals: https://www.gadgetreview.com/ebike-regulation-in-the-eu-and-....

There are 45km/h ones (speed pedelec), but then they’re classed as mopeds and you need a license.

Agreed. Have a friend who remembers going for a walk on a walking path. Woke up in the hospital. Nobody reported seeing the incident but police believe based on some debris left behind at the scene that someone on an electric bike hit them at a very high rate of speed. They are home now and generally functional, but it's been a couple months and they're in for a long road to recovery.

I'm all for electric bikes but some are amazingly fast and equally dangerous.

Not sure if you are saying 32 Km/h is too fast or too slow.

It's both imho. Too slow for the street, too fast for anywhere where other bikes are

In my experience not a lot of human effort is required to operate a modern pedal "assist" ebike. Unless I'm going up a very steep hill the vast majority of the time I find myself "ghost pedaling" just to keep the motor going.

I actually vastly prefer throttle-control as I consider it much safer. You can ask for the exact amount of speed you need as well as cut the motor instantly any time and there's no "herky-jerky" feeling like you get from some pedelecs.

I've had pedelec-controlled ebikes shoot away from me when I am trying to walk them somewhere or dismount, or just trying to adjust the peddle position at a stop, but this has never happened to me on a throttle-controlled ebike.

I disagree a bit on both the classification and taxation fronts.

Classification should not be based on motorized/unmotorized, but rather on sustained kinetic energy as that would be correlated to damage caused in a crash. A small folding electric commuter bike may belong on a pedestrian path, but a tandem road bike might not. This is largely an edge case, but would play a larger role in separating EBikes from electric motorcycles.

Taxation should be based on infrastructure costs IMO. Unless we are building separate ebike lanes or repaving bike paths significantly more often I don't think it's fair to tax EBikes at a higher rate.

You can easily go 30km/h with a regular bike. You simply adjust the speed based on the situation. I see electric bikes all the time and they are never unreasonably fast. I normally pass them.

I weigh over 100kg and can trivially get my e-bike to 32km/h to 20mph pedaling on flat ground on the "standard" assist level. FWIW, I usually have it on the "eco" setting because I like getting a light workout.