The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition weighed in with a pointed response, arguing that the state should be making it easier, not harder, to own and use e-bikes. Their senior organizer echoed the sentiment shared by many riders: the real confusion and danger comes from people not being able to tell the difference between a legal e-bike and an electric moped, not from the bikes themselves.
Brett Thurber, co-owner of a San Francisco e-bike shop, raised a practical industry concern about AB 1557. Restricting California’s speed limits below what manufacturers currently build for the U.S. market could push companies to skip California customers entirely, shrinking the supply available to local shops and consumers.
I’m 9 miles from work. My goal is to have an easy ride were I show up without sweating. I put assist on medium and keep the ride easy. Using the throttle to break inertia at every stop is absolutely a part of that, as is being able to go at a fast enough pace were I’m not peddling for the better part of an hour. We are not Europe, we are far more spread out in the usa. The consequence of regulation will be people like me returning to a far more dangerous form of transportation. To me that’s not progress: trying to lessen danger by increasing danger astronomically.
Outside of Surrons and other e-dirtbikes, the hysteria over ebikes is mostly car propaganda. Do anything to paint all forms of alternative transportation as dangerous, and get people back into cars (the most dangerous of all). As long as cars are the most viable form of transportation, any additional regulation on class I, II, or III ebikes will only result in decreased usage, and increased driving (which is far far more dangerous). Furthermore, you are also glossing over the fact that people already own these ebikes, and replacing them is not cheap. To me this is not seeing the forrest for the trees.
In an ideal world were we had sensible zoning and transportation infrastructure I might agree with you. But in the sad reality we have, regulations on basic ebikes will make things far far worse.
People on pedelecs typically do not break a sweat, unless they are exceeding the assisted speed, since so little effort is needed to be put in, in order to get 250w of help.
Breaking inertia on a pedelec, despite them not having a throttle, is very easy, since the 250w of assistance. Also, wouldn’t you be closer to half an hour than an hour if you’re frequently riding at 20 mph?
I thought this kind of thing was only repeated by anti-transit/anti-cycling infrastructure people, but here we are. I’m not sure what makes you think a 9 mile commute would be an impossibility in Europe - that’s the distance I used to commute back where I lived before, and I live in Europe.
If you’re insisting that you’re going to switch to a car if you can’t have a throttle on your ebike, that’s your decision to make.
Not just a throttle but at least 20 mph allowable. Realistically the more time it takes out of my day the less likely I am to do it. I used myself as an illustration, the point wasn’t about me, its to point out that regulations that cause people to walk away from biking make us all less safe. Your supporting regulation on ideological grounds while ignoring the likelihood of negative real world outcomes. If your goal is to make society safer, this accomplishes the opposite.