Would it not make more sense to just have a speed limit?
Harder for them to police I guess?
How would it be harder to police than trying to identify a class 3 ebike?
Because they will just single out every apparent ebike rider, which will of course result in people with compliant ebikes (and probably a non-zero number of traditional unpowered bicycles) getting harassed for no good reason.
Most class 3s look like standard road bikes. Class 2s generally look like mopeds, but if it has a throttle it’s limited to 20mph.
Now ban high-speed vehicles from cities. Anything that can go over the speed limit.
Only cars with speed limiters can enter the city.
Another change SB 471 seeks to make is an addition to ORS 814.430 (“Improper use of lanes”) that would give a Class 3 e-bike rider the legal right to use a bicycle lane or bicycle path, “only when the bicycle is powered exclusively by human power.”
What!? You can’t use a bike in a bike lane when you use pedal assist?
I live downtown in a major city where there is a lot of these ebikes and haven’t found them much of a nuisance as a driver. More than anything those things need a mandatory helmets attached to each of the units. When you are going 10-15-20 mph on uneven streets and around corners you’re literally risking your life. I’ve seen some gnarly accidents.
Hard to get a helmet that fits everyone, and keeping it sanitary would be pretty tough even if you could.
True and valid points, I’m not going to pretend I have the perfect answer. I’m no expert BUT there is definitely a safety problem. It’s wonderful that these are cheap and easy to pick up, but that ease of access has reckless people hurting themselves.
One place I saw just gives you a helmet when you initially sign up, but I’m sure a huge number of their customers do not carry it with them all the time.
It’s already the case in France and makes sense to me. In my bike lane, everybody rides at 20 to 27 km/h, there isn’t huge disparity of speed. It makes the bike lane safer IMO.
Sidewalks are made for pedestrians, there isn’t much to argue there.
From sidewalks, sure. I try not to ride on the sidewalk, and if I must, will dismount and walk past pedestrians; the sidewalk is for walking. It’s in the name. I would agree with a law saying no motorized vehicles on sidewalks except for wheelchairs.
Bike lanes? What’s bike lanes, hobbits? There are not any of those on my way to work. But if there were, I think ebikes should use them.
I can get to just over 30mph on my allegedly locked to 28mph bike if I turn it to maximum assist and pedal like the devil is chasing me, and prefer the road at that speed, and only use that speed on the road. I wouldn’t ever go fast on a sidewalk because that is insanely dangerous.
With E-bikes it’s not just the “unnaturally” fast speed but also weight and that’s doubly important for powered cargo bikes.
Speed limits don’t really make sense here though. What determines the amount of damage inflicted in a collision or how easy it is to avoid a collision by breaking is kinetic energy; that’s what needs to be limited.
I’d just base this around what a “normal” human on a “normal” bicycle can do on flat ground with reasonable human power alone: e.g. 70kg human on a 10kg bicycle doing 25km/h. That’s
80 kilogram × (25 kilometre / hour)² = 3858.02 Jof kinetic energy.Now we can assume e.g. a 20kg e-bike and calculate backwards:
sqrt(3858.02 joule / (70 kilogram + 20 kilogram)) = 23.5702 km/h
Or with a 50kg cargo e-bike:sqrt(3858.02 joule / (70 kilogram + 50 kilogram)) = 20.4124 km/h.Ideally cargo bikes would also factor measured load into them. If you carried an additional 50kg, it should only power up to 17.1498 km/h for instance.
What conditions would be “safe” under “normal” circumstances and how heavy you assume people to be are debatable and dependent on where you are (welcome to NA, +10kg avg. weight) but the mechanism should be the same.
We need to define some limit of kinetic energy that is reasonably safe for pedestrian and bicycle collisions and in line with what typical human on an unpowered bicycle would net you. Powered bicycles (or any other powered vehicle for that matter) then need to enforce that limit by way of cutting off power once the maximum kinetic energy is reached.Speed’s contribution to kinetic energy is exponential, whereas mass is just a direct multiplicative component.
So speed is absolutely the largest contributing factor.
Your equation actually highlights a good point where that speed should be kept.
While velocity is certainly the larger contributor, it’s not like mass is insignificant either. Especially for the cargo bike case where even unloaded the mass difference requires a ~5km/h change in velocity for equal kinetic energy.
When you get to very high absolute velocities, mass becomes less and less significant but we’re very much at the low end here in that regard.
