Ah so these are the people riding down sidewalks where I live
The problem isn’t the speed, there aren’t speed restrictors on motorcycles or cars.
The problem is there’s no safe lane for them to be ridden. There’s no infrastructure accommodation for them. They can’t be ridden on the sidewalk, and they’re unsafe in regular traffic. Bicycle lanes aren’t ubiquitous enough or designed well enough for bicycles, let alone these mixing with bicycles.
As usual, rather than raising taxes on the filthy rich to fund better infrastructure for the good of the people, they limit what we can do because it’s cheaper and we have less power to resist, or at least, aren’t organized well enough to exercise the power we have.
In some ways speed is an issue, for instance if you could go the same speed as the rest of the traffic you could avoid situations where you’re biking on a tiny strip on the edge of the road and cars pass you very close, by staying in the middle of the road instead. Of course just adding adequate bike lanes would be the better solution since then you wouldn’t have any safety downsides for going slower.
Just fine them. Set up speed traps.
Weird you missed another key distinction: testing, licensing, and associated age restrictions.
At these speeds they’re electric motorcycles. They should be treated accordingly (and I say that as an avid cyclist who’s incredibly supportive of e-bikes).
I know this is a Canada thread, but surely one of these stores is City e-Bike in the small Colorado town of South
ParkAmericaThey are an amazing technology. Slowly they will change transportation in cities. A 120 km/h and a 100 km range is a game changer.
I get annoyed by them all the time because people rip them around in places you wouldn’t take a car, and they’re getting powerful enough to be dangerous. Still, the potential is huge. They use so much less space, infrastructure, and energy than cars. They’re also significantly cheaper.
Bicycles are supposed to ride on the road (not sidewalk) yes? So why are they being limited to a speed that is actively disruptive to traffic? Going 30 in a 50 zone means you are going 20km/h under the limit, which is considered disruptive and is actuality a ticket-worthy offense if you are in a car. So why are bikes being limited to that? This makes no sense. If you don’t want bike lanes and want bikes to ride with traffic, then they need to be able to flow with the speed of traffic. Absolute mindless nonsense! It’s safer to be going the speed of traffic than to be going slower and have an impatient car try to get past the slow AF cyclist.
That also seems really slow, to me.
On a modest downhill on my POS rusty mountain bike, I’m pretty sure I get up to about 50 km/h, and can go the speed of traffic. I sometimes need to brake so I don’t pass cars! On an efficient road bike, I imagine I could sustain speeds above 32 km/h on level roads, too.
I just looked it up, and indeed: 1 km cycle speeds of 40+ km/h are fairly pedestrian.
A 32 km/h level-ground limit seems really slow.
I am an experienced (adult) driver, cycle defensively, about major roads, drive according to conditions, etc., so I know how to use roads safely. If I had one of these, I imagine I would be really frustrated to be going slower than I could cycling, so I’d probably disable the limiter myself, too—but I wouldn’t be going north of 50 on any bike, electric or not.
Going highway speeds on a bicycle is insanity, regardless of age. And children shouldn’t be operating motor vehicles at all. (Well, aside from walking- or jogging-speed toys, not on roads). But 32 km/h seems overly restrictive, and inviting non-compliance.
The solution is to reduce the speed limits then, not give every kid a motorcycle
I unlocked the speed limiter on my ebike soon after I bought it. It was easy to find out how by reading the instruction manual - hold down some key combo on the display box and enter secret menu.
Did some testing on my rural road and got up to 45 MPH going downhill in its top gear. It felt very unsafe so I only tried that once.
No, I’m not doing that on sidewalks or around any people. Also I am licensed to drive a motorcycle on public roads.
It’s illegal to ride on sidewalks at all. No new law needed for that.
Is that part of the highway act?
It’s always been illegal where I’ve lived, rarely enforced, so I just thought it was municipal.
It’s municipal. Mississauga had riding on sidewalks. Not sure if that’s still the case.
The speed is fine, the stopping power is the problem. Like the musclecar guys with 50s front drum brakes. 😕
I’d be more upset about this if cars were also fitted with speed limiters.
My car is governed to 100mph. It could go faster but it won’t.
Okay, but 100 mph is crazy fast…
But we also wouldn’t want it to be much lower since passing on 2-lane roads is generally safer at faster speeds, so putting a, say, 120 km/h speed limit on cars might be less safe than no limits.
“Crazy fast” is contextual to be honest. Going 100 mph in a school zone is crazy fast. Going 100 mph on the unlimited sections of the German autobahn is pretty tame.
This is also been the traditional challenge with speed limiters - You can’t set a single universal “safe” speed. That said, with GPS and traffic sign recognition, we can now use dynamic limiters to adjust to match the speed limit imposed where the vehicle is currently driving.
Cars are fitted with speed limiters and have been for a long time. 160km/h - 165km/h is typical for cars to stop accelerating at.
If it would be up to me, I’d force everyone to get a special driving license for cars going upwards this limit.
If bigger transport requires a special license and an expertise in driving them, so should speedy cars. And it should be harder to pass since it is more dangerous to drive over this limit.
? I’ve definitely exceeded that in cars and pickup trucks
Sorry, I meant reasonable speed limiters. If the bike is capped at 32kph, so should the cars. We’re talking about safety, right?
That…is a pretty dumb take.
Bikes/Scooters are not cars, they’re not insured, they’re not licensed. Children can and regularly do use them.
Now if you want to talk about properly ticketing, charging, and impounding cars/drivers breaking the rules, that’s a different conversation. But an ebike or scooter going 120km/h isn’t the same as a car doing 120km/h on a highway.
It’s more an objection to the typical “personal freedom” argument you get from car drivers who balk at the idea of speed limiters. There is no road in North America with a speed limit of 160kph, so a hard limit of that value is meaningless. I’d be open to a dynamic speed limiter that was context-aware though: we already see that cars have the capability of knowing the current speed limit and chiming to let the driver know they’re busting the limit. There’s no reason why the limit shouldn’t be enforced there in the same way that e-bikes have a fixed limit… even when they’re forced to share a road with cars that do not obey the limit.
I accept your argument that bikes aren’t insured or licensed, and that this can be used as an excuse to limit their capabilities, but as one of the law-abiding e-bike riders who’s been tailgated, close-passed and nearly run off the road by more than a few angry drivers, I can assure you that e-bikes are not the problem when it comes to safety. 2-tonnes of steel and glass being driven by (licensed, insured) absolute maniacs is the real threat.
I think some form of limit aware speed chime or warning is required on new cars sold in the EU. Having driven a few, I would not want to trust that technology to slow the car down.
Many times I have had a car’s camera pick up a speed limit sign from a neighbouring road to the highway and indicate that I was suddenly going 60 km/h over the new speed limit. Same thing if GPS tracking or map data isn’t perfect on cars that use that instead.
Well if technology can’t be trusted to keep two tonnes of steel and glass from moving at unsafe speeds, the obvious response must be to ban such vehicles from areas where they might be used to kill people.
nah, not safe enough. we need them to go 32kmph. thats safe.
32,000 mph?!
That’s the only way they can get far enough away that I’ll be happy.
Darwin has awards to award
Candidates for manslaughter?
What level of car-brain causes someone to use a hidden camera to snitch in hopes of getting non-car mobility shut down or nerfed to the point of uselessness?
None?
My problems are:
- E-bikes going down bike paths and trails at 80km/h
- e-scooters going down pedestrian sidewalks at 50km/h
- 11 year olds on e-devices thinking that since their devices can go 50km/h, they can ride them in traffic at those speeds.
Nerfing non-car mobility brings the speeds down to what is safe for an unlicensed vehicle driven by an unlicensed operator in public spaces.
I have no issue with e-motorcycles, with the appropriate licensing.
“How dare I be asked not to go down a sidewalk at 120 km/hr, I have places to be”
Why are your ebikes being forced to go on sidewalks? Could it be that cars have made riding an ebike on the roads very dangerous or clogged them up with traffic?
- You don’t require a license for a e-scooters.
- As such, most people on e-scooters aren’t educated on traffic laws like drivers are.
- As such, minors who are uneducated on traffic law are also able to use them.
- Going back to point 2, when you pair people ignorant to traffic laws going 120 km/hr on a device with no built-in protection with the fact that helmets aren’t legally required for them, you get a strain on public health for stupid reasons.
- We already set speed limits on conventional bikes for safety reasons.
- “Pedestrians” (which should include e-scooters and e-bikes), are at a 90% rate of injury for car collisions at 90 km/hr . I highly doubt this changes when it’s an e-scooter hitting another e-scooter or an e-scooter hitting a pedestrian.
No matter how you spin this, 120 km/hr on a scooter is beyond stupid.
Quickly adding that where I live, we have designated, separated bike lanes people using these things are supposed to use, and they still go zooming down sidewalks nearly hitting people, no helmet on, without so much of a ring of a bell for warning.
Take cars off the roads and I guarantee you won’t have any problems getting bikes to use the street rather than the sidewalk.
Actually, let’s just remove the ability for humans to be injured in collisions. That’s probably easier.
Congrats on completely ignoring points 4 to 6.
Have a good day.
