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.
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.