New Jersey has just taken one of the most aggressive – and controversial – steps yet in regulating electric bikes,…
Italy here. I LOVE bikes, I do part of my commute by bike (the rest by train) and I wish my city made even harder for cars to drive in the city in favour of bikes.
With that said, we need a law like this here because e-bikes are a new kind of hell for everyone:
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Most of them are easily modifiable so they reach up to 50km/h without having to pedal. Making them electric motor-scooters.
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Because of this, they are basically a free for all: no need to respect traffic laws, red lights… fuck, they even pass pedestrians in the sidewalk at speeds that are superior to the speed limit of the street for car
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Also because of this, you better pray to not get involved in an accident with one. If you are on foot and get hit by one, they will simply run and let you in the ground. And if you are in a car… well, tough luck because you’ll have to pay for your own repair even if they caused them.
And most of these assholes work for delivery companies like deliveroo, just eat and similars.
So yeah, since we can’t have nice things, give me a law and fuck all these assholes dearly.
I haven’t seen any complaints about this law in regards to these fast bikes you’re describing. The problem with this law is that it also applies to everything below, regardless of top speed.
An electric bike with no throttle control that only provides power under 20kmh and when the rider is actively pedalling would still required to have licensing and insurance. That’s the trouble with this type of blanketed solution to the problem.
Legally, e-bikes here can’t go over 25km/h. And in any shop you try to buy one, this is the norm. However, to put a throttle on them is so easy that you rarely see an e-bike with someone pedaling.
Is it unfair for those who follow the law? Probably? But when I think as a citizen, not just as a biker, in my country, e-bikes are a problem to my safety even as pedestrian.
I suppose there is something to be said for simple modifications, though bikes are relatively simple overall. I’m hesitant against making them difficult to work on as I wouldn’t want to see a future when you must visit a repair shop to change a tire or something like that.
I had a read of the article you linked in another comment claiming ‘80% of e-bikes are illegal’. After a touch of searching around, I saw some numbers showing roughly a quarter million e-bikes have been sold annually in Italy over the last few years. Over the two days of that operation, the sample size was only 71 e-bikes. That’s not particularly representative - though it does make a flashy headline.
Something I keep in mind when I encounter aggressive drivers on the road is that they are one of a thousand other cars I’ve driven by that day. Negative experiences tend to be more noticeable than the nominal sort. Besides that, it occurs to me if the authorities in Milan believed this to be as widespread as it may seem to the average pedestrian, they would do this regularly as it seems it would bring in €200,000 a day.
For what it’s worth, I do like that they immediately confiscated those e-bikes. Between that and the €7,000 fine, sounds a good penalty to keep people from doing it again.
Out of curiosity: have you ever been to Italy and see how people drive here? That number of 80% of ebikes being illegal might make a flashy number for you. But I live here and that number not only seems correct, it actually looks on the lower end.
I probably see at least 20 different delivery guys each day. If I see one that’s pedaling, that’s maybe… once a week? That if I’m lucky. They are largely ignored because, as the rest of the traffic related stuff, authorities do shit about it.
Sure, they take a day and stop a hundred bikes and most of them are illegal and they call it a day. And with that, they think they solved the problem, but the fact is there is a huge number of those that are illegal. Although it doesn’t surprise me at all, this country is shit when it comes to enforcing traffic laws in general.
I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting for any meaningful time unfortunately, however e-bikes aren’t an Italy specific problem. If anything, the situation by your description is a failure of lawmakers to create classifications for this new technology as it was emerging, and that is an issue every government around the globe experiences. Technology always outpaces rule of law.
I don’t doubt that there are a lot of these modified e-bikes racing around, but claiming nearly all of anything is operating out of the norm strikes me as quite off centre. Even sitting at a cafe or a park bench and using tally counters to track obvious e-bikes compared to non obvious e-bikes would reveal a ratio more closely resembling sales volumes of bikes vs e-bikes than what that operation in Milan put on display.
Regardless, we’re sort of straying from the point here. The law as implemented in New Jersey is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We shouldn’t be making rules about the fastest moving e-bikes and applying them to every subcategory. As the law stands, some overzealous officer could interpret this Ducati to be subject to licensing and insurance requirements.
The law mentioned in the article isn’t doing what you are describing:
effectively lumps everything with a motor and two wheels into a single category, scrapping the widely accepted three-class system for regulating street-legal electric bicycles. That means pedal-assist e-bikes, throttle bikes, and high-powered e-moto-style machines are now treated the same under state law.
Most people support classifying electric motorcycles and gas-powered motorcycles the same, while keeping pedal assist in a category with regular pedal bicycles. But that’s not what this law is doing.
I know. And I still want it. Why? Because if people here don’t give a fuck about safety (neither theirs nor that of others), then at least we should force them to have the bare minimum to be accountable.
Would it be better if they did it in a different way? Probably, but I know this country, and I know people don’t give a fuck about other when they drive any vehicle, so yeah, give me this, make them pay an insurance and get a license. And fuck them all, because we can’t have good things here.
Almost like they’re cycles. Cycles with motors. Could call them “motorcycles” for short. And treat them as such.
(Agreeing with you in case it isn’t obvious with my sassy tone).
This is like banning knife because of some knife attack.
It’s more like starting to ask people to have some rules after 80% of the e-bikes checked in a police checkpoint were illegally modified
The rule is already there, you’re now supporting and asking for a blanket law, it’s exactly like asking them to ban knife because of knife attack or robbery.
Rule are useless if there’s no enforcement, and i bet that 80% is the result of no enforcement, so nothing shocking.
It’s really nothing like that.
It is like that.
@AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor @_haha_oh_wow_ …you might already have one. I’m in the UK. We match the EU in that E-bike pedal assist is limited to 15.5mph/25kph. Here, anything higher speed than that or that doesn’t need pedalling is legally a moped or motorbike (depending on power) and has to follow those laws - helmet, licence, tax, number plate, on-road only. I assume Italy does something similar?
Yes, but in practice, even if the bike is sold while being legally compliant, the modifications are far to easy to make so anyone can do them.
Sure, if they catch one, there’s a huge fine, but there are so many that’s impossible to catch them all.
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I like Seth from Berm Peak take on this and the whole issue, people like Micah “Faster E-bike are safer” Toll are basically asking for this sort of sweeping law to happen, because people just can’t self-regulate.
Good. I’m tired of the armies of 12 year old kids with absolutely no awareness or caution whatsoever on bikes that can easily go 30+mph.
While I agree with your example, this law also applies to an 82 year old on a step thru that has a power limit of 15mph.
It’s a bit of a misguided approach, seemingly signed into law by a Governor on his last day in office.
Walking home from shop the other day.
Dumb kid zooms past us on the grass from behind because the footpath is rather narrow. No lights, dressed all dark (it was evening and dark already).
Couple more idiot children zoom past on the road, blowing past a car stopped at a stop sign, almost hit pedestrian crossing the road at a crosswalk. Again all dark clothing, no lights. They’re a disaster waiting to happen, but at this point…fuck em
