Eh, it depends if you see pedal assistance being the defining difference between a bike and a motorbike.
From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
As a kid my first response to pretty much anything with a dial was to turn it up all the way and see what happened. That's a behavior I saw quite a bit during the brief plague of VC-funded scooters: novices at 100% motor output rocketing down sidewalks, etc. That's much less likely to happen it they have to pedal hard to get the top speed.
Do you actually ride bikes on roads? This is there because if you're going slow on an actual road you're more likely to get killed because of a car hitting you.
I'm honestly exhausted at this FUD when it's actively fucking with my life as a bike rider on a main road. Even Netherlands allows fully motorized vehicles that are small on their bike paths.
Stop thinking of this as a "free pass" and more of "what's actually the safest for bikers and pedestrians.
In most other places that don't have dedicated bike lanes drive on the side of the road, same places scooters normally drive.
Anyone who's comparing ebike speeds to rider speeds: most people new to riding bikes cannot sustain riding at 30kph (18.5mph) for probably more than 5 minutes, less if there's any gradual elevation. As such, bikes are "safe" because there's an inherent speed limiter. You pedal really fast, go fast, then you get tired and chill out.
By having a throttle-only mode, the rider never tires and will just want to go fast all. the. time.
> Stop thinking of this as a "free pass" and more of "what's actually the safest for bikers and pedestrians.
What's safest for bikers and pedestrians on multi-use paths (MUP) would be if ebikes actually followed the Class 1 rules and were limited to 32kph/20mph on these paths. (imo, 20mph is already pretty darn fast.) If folks want to go faster, then do it on the street. If you want to rip the throttle wide open, don't do it where a child is learning how to ride their bike or where people are just enjoying a leisurely stroll.
Agreed, but this is also leading to problems: people on racing bikes, especially in groups that occupy the whole width of the bike path.
In general the problem is much simpler: people should treat the roads like a commons and adapt to the slowest present user. That's the safest way, and if that means you'll be a little later at your destination then maybe you should have left a little earlier. And on a racing bike you are no better than any other cyclist, ditto for e-bikes and s-pedelecs. It's a shared resource and a bit of common sense and respect for each other goes a long way.
Oh gosh, I wish this was the case, but the past two years of anti-masking / anti-vaccinations have clearly illustrated that there is no common good in Modern America.
Is this really true? When I was in France using the Uber bikes to get around I could get up to top speed using almost no effort on the pedals and never found myself getting tired. They really require almost no effort to get up to top speed.
Maybe it sounds like the solution is that a throttle should only take you up to a lower speed though if this is the problem? Like pushing a button can take you to 15 but waggling your feet can take you to 25?
To clarify, my original post was about non-electric bicycles, but my experience with pedal-assist ebikes [Jump (RIP) and Citibike/Baywheels] was that they were noticeably heavy and after a few blocks of pedaling really hard, I'd tire out and slow down. Perhaps you're gifted with a very high vo2max?
What both riders and pedestrians need is better car free infrastructure so we can stop it with the biking means going fast business. An ebike capped at something like the top speed of a human is a very different beast than a normal bike even if their top speeds are the same because the ebike is much more likely to actually be at those speeds at any point in time.
Or perhaps momentum, which is far higher in motorised vehicles.
Note: I commuted by electric bicycle before I switched to working remote, and I have to say that riding a vehicle that tops out at ~30mph when you're slamming the throttle _and_ pedaling as hard as you can on a road with cars and trucks going 45mph (or faster) is a harrowing experience. The few miles where I rode on bicycle paths, though, I capped my speed at 15-20mph (around what a decent cyclist would do) and slowed to 5-10mph when I was approaching foot traffic or other cyclists - and nobody ever batted an eye (except a few people who wanted to know where they could get one, heh).