Like most ambiguous topics, this one has plenty room for people to self-justify their position and scrutinize and find a way to discount others positions, so agreement is difficult to reach. The CA DMV gives legal guidance in that state, but it is just what the humans who created it came up with based on their biases and input they received. It could be revised at any time. It states that an electric bike shall not have greater than 1kW power and not be capable of traveling greater than 20 mph on level ground without pedal assistance (actually it says "ground level"). A 1kW bike will easily go faster than 20 mph on level ground unassisted with pedaling, so to comply with this law would require some type of speed limiting on the bike.
There has been conflict over electric bikes for a few years now in places such as China and the EU where they are far more common than here in the US. There are the "slow" types (usually walkers) on one side, and the "fast" types on the other, with the former invoking law and order for strict rules and compliance with them, and the other wanting freedom to do what they want. The main complaints are of people going too fast on bike paths or sidewalks. This certainly seems a valid point, since *bike paths* frequently have many walkers on them, and sidewalks were originally made mainly for walking. However, in my area it was the bicyclists who organized and persevered through political hoops for years to get the bike paths made, but once they were made the walkers claimed them as their own and complained about bicycles going too fast, e or not. Same thing is true of mtn bike trails. My attitude is if you ride your bike on the road expect motor vehicles, if you walk on a bike path expect bicycles. I have about as much sympathy for those pedestrians on bike paths who take up the entire path walking 2 or 3 abreast engaged in conversation and paying no attention to their surroundings (including a bicyclist repeatedly shouting "on your right"), as I do for bicyclists who ride 2 or 3 abreast on roads. In my opinion both need to be more considerate of others. I also have little sympathy for fast riding bicyclists who refuse to slow when passing pedestrians. We need to realize and respect that not everyone wants to go as slow or fast as you do, and show some consideration. Clearly collisions between pedestrians and bicyclists could be serious at higher bikes speeds, so I agree they should be limited. I guess I would suggest posting speed limits on bike paths, as we do on roads. You can have an electric bike that goes faster, but you have to obey the posted speed limits, which like roads, would vary. Of course now we have to agree on the limits. My straw man would be 10 mph in congested areas, and 20 mph in less congested ones. But in these days of very limited budgets, I expect enforcement would be spotty at best. -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/Re-EVLN-Questions-answered-Should-you-buy-an-electric-bike-tp4677586p4677640.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
