It’s not that bad. Little accountability never hurt anyone!
If I had to have a dismissive opinion though, if the license plates do not increase safety and reduce bike thefts, then it’s just another meaningless cog on the machine.
California bike riders are some of the most entitled idiots iv ever seen. Of every state iv driven though or lived in. Cali has the worse bikers. Frequently breaking the law, endangering themselves and others, and causing general issues for everyone.
While my knee-jerk reaction was that they’re going to over regulate, all those changes are already in effect in the EU and it didn’t destroy the e-bike market there. So I guess California will manage.
Class 2 and 3 requiring license plates makes sense to me.
And class 1 would be pedelecs in the EU, where they are capped at 250 Watt and 25 kmh. Class 1 being capped at 750 Watt and 16mph (25kmh) seems okay, might be inconvenient with how much further apart everything is over there, but reaction times are the same all over the globe.
I personally don’t even drive the full 25kmh, in the city I’m capped by the manual cyclists in front, which I don’t need to overtake. And outside I’m too worried about my battery to go full power. I will say, cargo bikes in particular could use a higher powered motor than the 250 Watts we have here, but I have no idea what a good cap would be.
You’re thinking on the right questions…
It took years, but finally I realized the appropriate threshold is simply to have people go on an exercize-bike/meter, for a 90-minute-session, & have them sustain what they can, for that duration, then multiply their RMS-output ( root-mean-square rounds-down ) by 3x, & make that THEIR motor-limit:
This means that you don’t get flimsy 50-lbs children with 750-w of bike-motor, & you also don’t hobble linebackers ( I think that’s what they’re called: NFL tackles? ) with the same limit you’re putting on small/flimsy ones.
Proportionate to the strength you wield when managing your own body, see?
So, for many reasonably-strong riders, it’d be … around 300-w, tbh…
Alot of people would hate me for making the limit sooo close to their own physical-strength, but … live longer.
& simply make another limit, higher, & require license-plate for that category.
I’d make it so that within the 25-kph & 3x-sustained-90-minutes-wattage, no license-plate is required: you get a photo-ID card which says you don’t need a plate.
More power, more speed? then you need a plate.
Some cities need 40-kph to do the parkways, & that’d have to be one of the limits.
60-kph would be needed for other parkways, but that’d be absolute-limit, & some body-armor would be reasonable at that speed ( since crash-energy goes up with the square of the speed ).
Having been a courier, I’d put an either-speed-XOR-weight limit on them, so the fast-light people can get that, but the heavy-cargo couriers get a slower-speed, … I"m not the only courier who discovered that it’s … an experience that many couriers have had … to discover that one has been biking, in traffic, while unconscious. Sleep-biking. And I want that NOT happening at high-speed.
So, this is all like graduated-licensing, but done vertically, instead of temporally.
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You’re not really a “cyclist” if a motor is doing a bunch of the work. That’s the equivalent of those mopeds we had in the ‘70s that you could pedal, too. Probably went 35-40 mph. Nobody in their right mind would call them bicycles or call the riders cyclists. It’s a motorized bike.
Depends, if it’s pedal assist it’s most definitely cyclists. If it’s just a throttle then I agree
As if dozens of bros on dirt bikes and quads roaming about weren’t enough, you have these dumb kids getting their hands on souped-up “e-bikes” where pedals are but an afterthought. These hellions are giving other e-bike riders, including people relying on pedal assist, a bad rep.
I mean if it drives the speed of a motorcycle and is powered like one, it should be registered.
Butttt watch the state overzealously use this to track all the bicyclists. Can’t have those pesky bikers moving around without the law knowing now can we
As a cyclist, I’m all for e-bikes requiring a license.
Most e-bikes in my area are ridden by people who can’t get a driver’s license. This includes people underage, people with their license revoked, and people who have restrictions on their licenses.
And people regularly remove the regulators on those bikes, making them unsafe on the roads.
Meanwhile, they’re also tearing up the mountain bike trails I normally ride on my pedal bike. Many of the people riding these have zero traffic safety training, zero trail etiquette, and zero interest in cooperating with others.
Last week at dusk I had what looked like a 13 year old riding his bike behind me in city traffic, doing a wheelie. Eventually he swerved around me to cross oncoming traffic and hop up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street so he could avoid an intersection.
Sure, there’s probably plenty of well behaved e-bike riders out there, but the volume of unsafe ones I’ve seen over the past month is insane.
Meanwhile, they’re also tearing up the mountain bike trails I normally ride on my pedal bike. Many of the people riding these have zero traffic safety training, zero trail etiquette, and zero interest in cooperating with others.
More money than brains.
Good, they’re great technology. Regulation and legislation will allow them to be used safely resulting in fewer cars on the road.
I’m a bicyclist and I think this is not a bad idea. Class 3 e-bikes have engines which can accelerate to a top speed of nearly 50 km/h which makes them practically slow motorcycles at that point. A collision between a pedestrian and an e-bike accelerated to top speed will send at least one person to the hospital. And the risk of cyclists who blatantly flaunt traffic laws is also present, even though most people in my city tend to follow the law. There’s a bike path in my city which is used as both a commuter route and a recreational route, and some people ride their e-bikes at crazy speeds just centimetres away from children riding their tricycles.
What I wouldn’t support is the extra paperwork burden. Opponents of this law are right when they say that it should be made easier to switch from driving to using an e-bike, not harder. But minimal registration formalities are probably fine, as long as they are made relatively easy. Maybe something like a registration plate which is affixed at the factory and which you have to register using the DMV website or an app. This would also make tracking down stolen bikes easier.
Ebikes here are capped at 25km/h, but many people, especially food couriers, tune them up. And they regularly ride through pedestrian zones. Yes, number plates are a good idea.
Pretty sensible. Brings things nearly in line with EU regs. Personally though I think 20mph is just about right as a limit without really upsetting people. It’s 15.6mph here and I just don’t see the point using one if I can ride faster on most terrain under my own steam.
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Why are they capping wattage as well as speed? Is it important to the Canadian government that people must be unable to climb hills?
That is what the bike pedals are for. /s
I would assume without reading it that it’s because if you have enough wattage, you should be able to make more speed if you know how to get past whatever limiter there is.
This legislative whack-a-mole doesn’t work and tends to originate from those with no understanding of the tech involved. See 3D printer laws that ban certain shapes as “gun parts.” Very silly indeed.
What a stupid idea.
