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.
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.