WA state recently passed a law about e-bikes/e-motorcycles to deal with the issue of younger teens on these kinda moped-style e-bikes going very fast around town (and often riding quite recklessly).
The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders.
Meanwhile, everyone knows that these giant trucks and SUVs are killing people, but we do basically nothing. Even on the off chance that we passed a law about them, existing vehicles would certainly be grandfathered in, we would never outright ban current vehicles/motorists. If we banned existing SUVs and trucks, millions of people would be screaming bloody murder about their right to drive pedestrian-killing cars.
The law doesn't ban them. It classifies fast e-bikes as motorcycles (which require registration, insurance, and a motorcycle endorsement).[1] This seems reasonable to me. The previous laws for e-bikes were based on outdated assumptions about battery & motor technology.
I do think it would make more sense to simplify (and future-proof) the law to just say, "If it can go >30mph on level ground and has a motor, it's a motorcycle." But similar to code, it's easier to add legislation than it is to modify existing rules.
You know you can go buy a 45’ motorhome that weighs multiples of the heaviest SUV, and drive it home on a standard driver’s license? Last time I renewed my WA license, it was online and the eye test for my retirement-aged eyes consisted of a checkbox that asks, “your eyes aren’t shit, are they?”
I’m not arguing, but more pointing out that what you want will never happen.
Yeah, my dad has one. It's terrifying. Even for him. These are commercial vehicles with a residential façade, but they are not maintained like commercial vehicles. If they weren't such a money hole I imagine they'd get popular to a point where they'd be restricted. As of now, they're not enough of a problem across a wide enough geographic for people to notice.
omfg I would love that. Like literally force manufacturers to put air brakes on anything above a certain weight limit and demand additional certification to operate one. Full Disclosure: I own four vehicles that would trigger this requirement, each for different reasons, and would be whistling and smirking in the DMV line to take the commercial test.
A commercial driver has a physical every year, severe restrictions on how they can drive, hours behind wheel, etc. But if you have 2 cataract surguries, oncoming dementia, and a body full of arthritis that can barely move, you can drive a 50' Class A Motorhome to your winter home in the South.
Sounds utterly ridiculous I agree but there's something to be said for 60+ years of muscle memory, otherwise olds rocketing motorhomes off of cliffs or augering into the side of the local walmart would feature more prominently in the local news. Quit picking on paw paw and keep the fight where it belongs: suburbanite pavement princesses must die.
There are also countries that reduce the time a license is valid starting at a certain age and that require a medical test for renewal at all ages. IIRC Spain does that.
To do that you have to first recognize that current city designs are 100% for car manufacturers, not people. To take away the olds licenses is to restrict them in their homes, like people under already are. It's freedom they're after.
Change the culture around freedom of movement, and I guarantee the olds will give up their keys before they're even old.
You are looking at it the wrong way. Driving something so large that it would require a commercial license to transport your family around is ridiculous
They don't require commercial licenses though, because they're not large enough to and don't serve a commercial purpose when transporting families / their things. Plenty of families have the need for third-row seating and the ability to haul things around.
Toyota Camry curb weight is ~3300 pounds. The minivan based on the Camry is the Sienna, curb weight ~4600 lbs. Lincoln Navigator curb weight ~5600 lbs. If the difference between the first two is marginal (~30%), the difference between the second two is less (~20%).
By comparison, actual CDL-requiring commercial trucks weigh up to 80,000 pounds.
Now look at the front end of a toyota sienna vs a lincoln navigator. One slopes down so that you might actually see what is in front of you and allows for pedestrians to impact and roll up and off. The other is effectively a brick notorious for making it difficult to see obstructions in front of you as well as creating an impact that would sooner see the pedestrian explode into a bloody mess over just rolling up and off.
Which has nothing to do with the weight of the vehicle. The Audi SQ8 E-Tron has a sloped hood and weighs more than the Navigator. There are vehicles with a square grille that weigh less than the Sienna.
Time for all of the crossover drivers to admit that they are also part of the problem. They aren't safe just because they are somewhat better than some jacked up bro truck.
The real issue is that the hood on the Sienna is basically the same height as the one on most crossovers, because that's the nature of a vehicle with tall roof (necessary for cargo capacity). The hood/windshield has to ascend quickly to reach that height unless you want the hood to be longer, but a longer hood would negatively impact the ability of the driver to see children directly in front of the vehicle.
A lot of this is also dictated by the safety requirements for vehicle collisions, because a vehicle where the front of the hood is lower than the bumper on the other vehicle (which could be a pickup truck) causes the hood to act as a ramp instead of a crumple zone, and then the occupants get hit in the head by a truck.
That's not the issue. The issue is how tall these grills are and to a lesser extent curb weight. You don't need either to have third row seating or the ability to haul things.
I'd go a step further and say the high hoods reduce utility by making the vehicles harder to work on. I'm 6' and needed a step-stool to change the battery on my uncle's Silverado. The truck manufacturers leave that inconvenient detail out of their macho ads on TV.
I remember when changing spark plugs meant flipping down the front-plate bumper step, taking one step to hop up on the fender, and putting your legs inside of the engine bay while you wrench.
There were adequate engineering solutions for towing even as far back as 2008. The high-hood trend on US passenger trucks is unique to US market vehicles and is factually cosmetic.
Not only do they not need to, they need to actively stop doing that. These are the folks who light brakes & tires on fire, which then spreads to the mountains. There are dozens of spot, brush, and outright wildfires every year from these people.
Not if you need to tow a trailer / camper. Maybe there's a reason different kinds of vehicles exist? To fulfill different requirements of their drivers?
But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too.
Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is.
I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.
I think you're romanticizing that era a bit. The most commonly sold CUV's today are smaller length and width wise then station wagons or sedans way back when. The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day and it's as long as a crew cab F150. The land yachts easily match the footprint of the super cab F150 with shorter beds today, they just seem smaller because they're lower.
The article says height of the hood and massive A pillars. People like big and boxy.
Increased hood height kills people and creates an absurdly large blind area. Massive pillars add roll safety but create horrible blind spots in left hand turns.
As elsewhere in the thread, I drive a V60, and r/sportwagons host regular threads bemoaning the lack of good wagon options stateside. With the death of the focus and golf wagons, it's basically just luxury cars left, and not everyone wants to have a Mercedes, BMW, or Audi as their canoe trip vehicle, much less a freaking Porsche Panamera Turismo.
And nevermind that often these cars come with other compromises that signal they aren't really intended for "utility" use, for example the Taycan can't fit a regular tow receiver so forget about using a bike carrier with it other than the overpriced two-bike one that is available from the manufacturer.
> The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day [...]
Are you sure about that? In North America, other than the Crown Vic in its heyday, Ford also had the Escort, the Festiva, the Tempo and the Taurus for sedans, all of which were smaller than the Crown Vic, which was the largest car they sold.
As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. The Crown Vic and it's Panther platform siblings were the basis for taxis and police cars across the US and Canada for a long time, and they could be had second hand for for a few months pay cheque back in the day.
> As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers.
Per wiki, Crown Vic sales peaked at 114k in 1999. In the same year, the Taurus sold 368k and the Escort sold 260k. (The Tempo was discontinued by then, but was typically moving 200k+ per year.)
Hmm, curious, I remember seeing way more Crown Vics and other Panther platform vehicles from the 90's onward then Tauruses, even into the late 2000's. Wonder if it was just a regional thing where I lived...
Maybe you just knew more cops? At one time that often seemed to be the way to spot an off duty cop was a civilian dressed Crown Vic that probably parked at home next to the work provided Crown Vic. Though I also knew someone that bought used cars solely from cop auctions partly because they weirdly liked the "harshly restored to civilian use after several years of work abuse" aesthetic about a former cop Crown Vic and also supposedly because they were incredibly cheap at auction if you didn't mind being a lifetime mechanic because those cars were in awful shape coming out of the auction.
In terms of platform variants the Taurus outsold the Crown Vic by a fair amount. The latter was certainly hugely popular as fleet vehicles, but the Taurus was Ford's best selling sedan for quite a while. The Taurus was never rated for anything more than fairly light-duty towing (<= 1500lbs).
More to the point - at least for automatic transmission variants in the early 90s - even the base F150 could certainly out-tow Crown Vics of the time, unless the latter had a tow package, which would push the rating up to 5000 lbs (..same as the lower end F150). Later on the delta was a lot greater (in the truck's favor) as the tow packages for the cars were phased out.
Nowadays the minimum ratings of F150s (even with shorter beds) is 5000lbs, or more. The smaller CUV/SUV platforms are usually rated ~1500lbs *max*, with some of the larger truck-based models obviously running in the same range as the trucks.
TL;DR - Even back in the day the "typical" sedan was still only rated for towing small loads, unless specially ordered with towing packages. Now..all that said, the frequency with which typical F150 owners ever actually tow anything is a whole other question.
It always amazes me when I see USians banging on about needing a 7.5 tonne truck to pull a tiny little camping trailer that you'd stick on the back of a Ford Focus anywhere in Europe.
Yes but Americans commonly tow massive fifth wheels at over 120 kph (regardless of tire rating and including up and down steep grades, transmission and brakes be damned) because why wouldn't you, and the sum total of the training they receive for operating such rigs in this manner is a rubber stamp at the DMV.
Some of the "fifth wheel" setups they have in the US are terrifying too.
Over here a "fifth wheel" coupling is a massive horseshoe-shaped plate that sits on the back of an artic tractor and is rated for some unholy loading and drawbar pull.
Over there it looks very much like a standard 50mm towball welded to the end of a metre or so of scaff tube sticking up from the floor of a pickup.
I used to do auto electrics for a guy who imported American cars to the UK and I was always amazed at just how janky the towing setups often were. It's no wonder people think they need a huge heavy truck when the towball is just bolted to thin sheet metal.
See I don't mind "not level" so much, for myself. If I'm towing a trailer and it's not level it's because it's probably for a small car so it's probably in the sub-500kg range and its axles are lower than my towball even with the air suspension down as low as it will go.
The weight balance can be all to hell, it won't matter - it's not going to be long enough or heavy enough to push a two tonne Range Rover around.
Anything that's an appreciable fraction of my wheelbase between the hitch and axle, and over a tonne? Yeah I'll take a little care over getting that set up.
I tow 3500kg on a braked twin-axle trailer fairly often. You'd notice it was there, especially braking for a junction at the bottom of a hill, but with the weight a little forward and maybe 50-70kg on the hitch the major sign that anything is there is the trailer light telltale blinking when you indicate ;-)
LOL. Americans have lost the plot. They've used SpaceX to leave reality.
The typical Dutch trailer is pulled by stuff like Volvo S60 and smaller, and it weighs around 3000lbs in freedumb units. They generally migrate about 1000km - 1500km to the South of France and then back North to the Netherlands.
You should leave the continent and gain some context. Every summer the whole of Europe is full of campers towed by humble family sedans and wagons. Not just cheesy tent pop-ups, full-on campers with a family's worth of bikes hanging off the back. But the ads on TV said you'd be a lesser man without a truck, so I guess we can't blame you.
But that does get to the point. Maybe differentkinds of vehicles need different kinds of qualification testing. Would you trust your 16yo that just passed their driver's test in a sedan to tow a boat through town with an F250?
Fun fact - in most states a 12 or 13 year old can operate many tens of thousands of pounds of agricultural equipment “incidentally over a highway” or similar - which can be multiple miles between farm plots.
Same's true in the UK, but honestly they're some of the best drivers out there 'cause they've been hustling in farm equipment since they were tall enough to reach the pedals. I've seen farmers get picked up from my old local by their kids in a tractor before when they were too drunk to drive home.
You're going to have a hard time hiding the entire SUV and Light Duty truck market behind an airstream, especially considering neither have transmissions capable of hauling one. Statistically almost nobody tows anything. Of those that do the vast majority tow stuff that comfortably falls within the pulling capacity of a Subaru Outback (or a VW Golf hatchback if you're really feeling rude). Nobody's trying to take anyone's dually away, just reign in the excesses of the auto industry that were mainstreamed by a combination of emissions laws carveouts and aggressive marketing. Hell if this went through we all might start seeing approximately affordable vehicles on the market again and I feel like that would be a welcome change.
Oh don't I know it. I'm currently in the midst of a full blown temper tantrum over the Toyota Hilux being unavailable on the US market. I need an actual real truck for actual real truck shit and there's literally nothing on the market that's serviceable.
Yeah and that's the other horn of the dilemma facing would-be truck owners right now. If I don't want to take on a 2nd mortgage payment for a vehicle that can only barely perform the tasks required of it (and that poorly) my other option is to adopt all of the maintenance overhead and attendant reliability nightmares and problems with the parts aftermarket usually reserved for classic car projects. It's to the point now that if Edison Motors ever really gets their shit together I'm probably going to just break down and hybrid-swap a 70's era F150 and call it good but in the mean time I still need a work vehicle.
I drove an ‘86 Alfa Romeo from 1995-2008 and 111k miles that I put on it. It broke down exactly once and that was a Bosch distributor that broke internally.
I wouldn’t think twice about driving a reasonably maintained 25-30 year old Toyota if that was the vehicle that best fit your use case.
I think once cars got to closed-loop EFI and electronic ignition (mid-80s), they got way more reliable and low maintenance.
Then they can get a license for that class of vehicle and add "towing up to NNNN lbs" option.. Anything over 500 or 1000 lbs towed, for example, IMHO, should require a license.
Obviously not for a hitch-based bicycle carrier - I think most people can manage to use those reasonably safely.
For the downvoters I lost a whole-ass F150 AND THE UTILITY TRAILER IT WAS TOWING behind the goddamn A-pillar on my wife's Sorento. This kind of shit wasn't possible in any of her prior station wagons or in any of the vans I've ever driven. Y'all need to quit playing.
Sure, until you need to tow a trailer weighing more than about 1500 lbs or drive on a dirt road where the minivan bottoms out. You might not need those capabilities but a lot of families do that stuff every week.
You can drive those off-road away from where people live, or you can get properly trained and insured for driving such a dangerous vehicle where people outside vehicles will be present.
They aren't hard to drive on the freeway. They are hard to drive without running over people in neighborhoods. The leading cause of death in children 0-14 is automobiles. https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/media-resources
Almost every driver is, as you say, "properly insured"
It is easy enough to avoid kids that death is is rare, and the insurance cost is quite low - even with astronomical insurance payouts for accidental child death.
> astronomical insurance payouts for accidental child death.
There's no such thing. Standard automobile insurance policies cap injury liability in the low 5 figures. If you cause an accident and someone is seriously injured, there's a good chance you'll be personally liable for the majority of damages. Ditto property--you total someone's $100,000 Mercedes and you're likely going to be paying money out-of-pocket.
If you have any significant assets it's worthwhile to buy an umbrella policy.
Mandated minimum insurance limits are often that low, but it’s quite common to get six-figure property damage liability coverage and mid-six-figure overall liability coverage. (And umbrella policies above that, but someone who needs less than half-million in coverage can readily get that on an ordinary auto policy.)
The parent comment seemed to insinuate that if the risk of injury from taller front-ends was substantially greater, it would be noticeably apparent in insurance premiums. But because of policy limits, that's not necessarily the case, and becomes less likely to be the case as the cost of medical care and damages awards stemming from pertinent types of collisions grow, to the extent they grow faster than typical policy limits.
Yes, cancer should be number one. Automobiles should be number 8 or lower, both because we can so something about it and because it's unnecessary. Cancer is a product of living and we're already devoting many resources to it.
My parents raised my brother and I in the back of a 92 Oldsmobile Cutlass. You don't need a vehicle where the hood is 48" off the ground to be comfortable.
You could buy a minivan. The Toyota Sienna has more room for people and when you fold the seats down it has similar payload capacity to most of the trucks I’ve seen.
the way I see US infrastructure, I feel like they (like most of the world) will never be able to claw their way back out of car dependence.
Even the Dutch had to fight tooth and nail for it. I've lived in Germany for a while and there are cities here where even I would be snubbing taking kids to school with a bakfiets, because the biking infra is not good enough, or in other words the mingling I'd have to do with other traffic would be too out of my comfort zone.
Urban planning should prioritize walking and biking very first, and cars and other utilitarian-but-dangerous/harmful transport methods should be integrated in a way that's not engulfing the more human-scale side of things. But I think the costs (both monetary and in terms of "cognitive shift") are so high that I don't think I'll see this change in my lifetime. And that's before accounting for the power of corporate interest
It is amazing how resistant people are to having their children walk to school in my neighbourhood.
They will complain endlessly about having nowhere to park, traffic, and dangerous driving but would never consider having their child walk. It is too dangerous.
You're free to go buy a minivan, or if you're in the quiverfull movement with 12 kids you're gonna have to buy a 15 passenger church van and take a test in this new ideal world.
I spent significant time recently in both a new F150 and a Toyota Sienna, and it isn't even close in the comfort between them. F150 wins by a mile by the sheer amount of space you have in that thing for both passengers and cargo. Not to mention the ability to tow.
> F150 wins by a mile by the sheer amount of space you have in that thing for both passengers
How much leg room does the third row have in that F150? I don't think the seats for the sixth and seventh passengers are quite comfortable.
How are the footrests on the second row? Are those Captains chairs on the second row or a rigid bench with no reclining at all? When you talk about how comfortable it is, are you saying that as all the passengers (all 6-7) or just you as the driver?
Are you comfortable letting a three year old operate the doors without damaging other cars around them and climb in and out of that F-150 on their own? My young kids manage the sliding doors just fine, their ability to largely do it on their own and the ease of access of the sliding door makes it a lot more comfortable getting them in and out. In fact, I can open the doors safely before they even reach the car. That's pretty dang comfortable.
> Not to mention the ability to tow.
The thing everyone imagines they'll do all the time but in practice practically never do.
Is this a serious question? A lot of people tow stuff all the time for work, home improvement, or recreation. Not everyone is a city dweller living in a small apartment whose only options to spend their free time is picking which restaurant to eat dinner at.
People in Europe tow stuff with 120 HP sedans or combis all the time. Driving a vehicle that you can't park, that's unsafe for pedestrians and burns 50% more every day just so you can tow something marginally easier on these 2 occassions a year when you need to tow something larger than a 500kg trailer makes 0 sense.
Same idea as American trucks, more cargo space, higher usable load, can be loaded from all sides, completely flat bed, no wheel cutouts, fits 6 people inside, burns less fuel. All because there's no ridiculously huge hood, wheels and engine.
Let's be honest here. American pickup trucks are not about the usability, they are about ego.
Yeah. All those accountants and software developers and doctors and insurance salespeople and marketing people and what not gotta tow for work all the time.
Very few jobs require people to tow with their personal daily driver all the time.
> Not everyone is a city dweller
And yet a ton of these city dwellers do drive around in these giant lifted trucks.
It's also incredible to me you can't actually imagine any hobbies that don't require driving a giant pickup truck around. It's just so overly ingrained into your identity. As if it requires a giant pickup truck to go fishing or go to a sports field or go camping or whatever.
Plenty of minivans also have tall hoods. I assume by combi you're talking about a station wagon, and in that case you're trading cargo capacity and the ability to tow boats / trailers / campers / etc... Ego has nothing to do with it - utility does. You can fit more people and things in a larger vehicle, this isn't rocket science.
I don't think the cargo capacity argument really holds water. I drive a Volvo V60 wagon which has trunk space of 23.2 cubic feet. When it was in the shop, I had a loaner XC60, and I could noticeably feel that the trunk space was about the same, despite the vehicle sitting considerably taller.
Sure enough, the XC60 crossover has a trunk space of 22.4 cubic feet.
It's the same trunk, just higher off the ground, which to me makes it less useful to me: more lifting to get stuff in, harder to rummage through items (eg camping pantry), much more difficult to access my roof box.
"E-bike" is pedal assist only/mostly with max speed of 30kph/20mph (only while pedalling) and throttle cuts out at low speeds (7kph: basically just there to get some inertial); treated as just another bicycle (perhaps limit age to ≥14 yo). Everything else is an "e-moto" with the same rules as mopeds and motorcycles.
Of course enforcement is key: importing, selling, on the road.
Also worth noting that in some places in the EU a automobile Category B also gives you Category AM allowances:
> In some countries, holders of a B driver licence are also entitled (sometimes with special conditions) to ride motorcycles <= 125 cubic centimetres (7.6 cu in) and power <= 11 kilowatts (15 hp) and ratio power/weight <= 0.1 kilowatts per kilogram (0.061 hp/lb)
> "E-bike" is pedal assist only/mostly with max speed of 30kph/20mph (only while pedalling) and throttle cuts out at low speeds (7kph: basically just there to get some inertial); treated as just another bicycle (perhaps limit age to ≥14 yo). Everything else is an "e-moto" with the same rules as mopeds and motorcycles.
I'm going to respond to this pragmatically.
Realistically, the current Class 1/2/3 system more or less works.
Class 1 is pedal only, max 20MPH (but lots of bikes are sold as class 1 with lower limits, I think the one I got for my chosen sister is 10, maybe 15 tops.).
Class 2 is Pedal+Throttle, max 20MPH. Again, sometimes the manufacturers will have a lower cap (Wife's e-bike has a throttle cap between 12-15.)
But 7KPH is too little, at least for the US if you want to get more than low rate adoption of E-bikes as a mode of transportation [0]. At bare minimum you need something where the person can maintain balance and it's faster than a brisk walk.
Class 3 is, well I thought it was Pedal-only 28MPH but I think there's some conflicting data and hand-waving. i.e. some claim that Class 3 is 'throttle up to 20MPH, pedal assist up to 28MPH' but last I was aware a Class 3 shouldn't have a throttle.
But again, the confounding factor [0] means that some compromises may have to be made.
The worst part about all of this, is everything was more or less OK, until these e-motos and overpowered e-bikes went on the market, and parents bought them for kids without any thought of risk/etc or even paying attention to the 'offroad use only' disclaimers. I also put it that way because (sadly) if it was just adults getting splattered it would probably just get treated like any other motorcycle/cycling accident as far as actual action.
[0] - As a confounding factor, I'll give the example that in my state, an electric scooter qualifies as an 'electric skateboard' and thus so long as it has a throttle cap of under 25MPH, sure, go nuts unless there's a restriction via muni (e.x. some munis may ban use on roads with a speed limit over X mph) or DOT (e.x. public highway restrictions.)
The 7kph is a throttle-based boost for pedal-assist to help you get going: think of something like a Urban Arrow where overcoming the stopped inertia may be difficult for a petite person:
Once you're moving it's not hard, and the 'regular' pedal assist keeps you moving, but starting from zero is a challenge. That 7kph limit would be sufficient to start, after which the throttle (boost) gets deactivated and you're using the 'traditional' pedal assist that is 30kph/20mph max.
.... I get what you're saying but I'm saying you need a better minimum for when people are tired [0]
I.e. "I have a mild disability and it would be nice to at least be able to limp home while just having to worry about balance and steering".
Personally? I don't need it, I can pedal fast or pedal long...
But I know people that have achieved much better mobility thanks to the ability to be able to travel a bit easier in my part of the states.
But restating, I'm talking about the bigger picture for adoption. Instead of forcing the pedaling, just wait for people to use it to enhance mobility and when someone inevitably forgets to check the charge level and start putting in some effort they realize... "Hey, that wasn't so bad".
When we think about alternative transportation in the US, we have to remember the starting point:
You are asking these people to give up air conditioning. You can't force them to make actual physical effort right away, they are worried that will make them get even more uncomfortable.
In the states, 10-15MPH throttle limited ebikes/tries/quads[1] would help a lot of people so long as the thing can stop reasonably well around here.
Heck, I'd wager, if someone could come up with a cheap-enough 'e-trike-ish' semi-suitable for grocery getting[2] in the more urban side of american suburbia, they could make a decent amount of sales quick enough given the current concerns around gas prices versus the oversized guzzlers so many people drive 1-2 miles to a grocery store and back with, and the traffic reduction that would result.
But it would Have to have that E-throttle at a decent speed option for the consumers that would make a difference from an environment/traffic standpoint to even dip their toes into.
I want to be clear; I've done proper to heavy commutes on everything between Chicago Schwinns and Tandems, sometimes carrying 30-50$ of 2007 era USD between rack bag and handlebars for grocery trips... I don't need to be won over.
I'm talking about winning over a critical mass. I'm talking about enough people adopting non-car transport that I can feel safe in my suburban shithole[3].
[0] - Again, at least personally, It is impossible for me to keep balanced on any bike I've owned under 5-6MPH... I do have inner ear balance issues however.
[1] - I dream of something along the lines of a Sun Recumbent side-by-side, mid-rear bumper seat with canopy and all... Maybe a little more upright-ish...
[2] - At minimum needs some sort of cooler mount, they can use ice packs etc. If tech gets cheaper you could say 'The delta-V of having a powered cooler is fine because it means we have more weight to balance and make fast stops safer'.
[3] - I am currently trapped between one of the most historically accident prone and one of the most historically deadly accident intersections in the state... Part of the whole 'had to unlock 28MPh assist' thing....
Most of the AM allowance is grandfathered in if you had an A or B license, some still combine them though. For some countries (like mine), while AM has those maxima, but the only vehicles allowed in the AM category are low power mopeds (sub 45kph). So it's arranged via vehicle allowance, not drivers license requirements. Any ebike with a throttle would fall under that category.
There is what some people say is a gray zone (I don't actually think it's that gray) where a device is too fast or powerful to be a legal e-bike, but also doesn't meet the requirements to be a road legal motorcycle. Will Progressive give me motorcycle insurance on my DIY e-bike without a VIN? Will the DVM register it? I don't think so. In most states there is no path to legality, at least as far as operating the thing on public streets goes.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem that needs solved. I'm fine telling the person that bought a Sur-Ron, "too bad, off road only".
> I don't think so. In most states there is no path to legality, at least as far as operating the thing on public streets goes.
Not true. It's common to convert dirt bikes into street legal vehicles with conversion kits that add the required pieces. Depending on the state, that means turn signals, a mirror, headlight, and tail light.
I think it's completely reasonable if we tell people that their Sur-Ron is for private property use only until they add the same equipment we require every other street legal vehicle to have. I also think it's reasonable if we tell them their electric motorcycle doesn't belong on the bike path.
>I think it's completely reasonable if we tell people that their Sur-Ron is for private property use
If only that were actually the law. My roads are 100% private with absolutely zero tax payer funding yet the dumbass registration laws and requirement to display a plate even apply on my private road (only exempt if the owner white-lists traffic, which cannot be done under my easement rules which at best would only might allow me to black-list abusers). In fact pretty much all the roads in my town are completely privately funded and privately owned yet you still need registration/plate along with the legal mumbo jumbo to obtain it.
Pretty soon you realize the laws have nothing to do with the fiction of the laws being there to protect the public roads or public land or taxpayer funding or some such, it's a sham pretense that falls apart upon inspection of how they work.
>If only that were actually the law. My roads are 100% private with absolutely zero tax payer funding yet the dumbass registration laws and requirement to display a plate even apply on my private road (only exempt if the owner white-lists traffic, which cannot be done under my easement rules which at best would only might allow me to black-list abusers). In fact pretty much all the roads in my town are completely privately funded and privately owned yet you still need registration/plate along with the legal mumbo jumbo to obtain it.
It sounds like your roads are accessible by the public though, which means unregulated public traffic, which means all of the tools necessary to ensure a basic level of safety and accountability need to be followed. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, does it not to you?
Like, you still have to follow building codes, pay property taxes, and not murder people on your private property and that doesn't seem outrageous.
>My county doesn't believe in all that dumb bullshit that the "public" has the right to decide about victimless regulatory crimes on your own property and if we could overturn the registration law we would, unfortunately the law is a state law that was made mostly by city slickers in the major cities in my state who have no clue places like our rural private road systems exist.
I see. I assume then that you do not expect the fire department to show up and put out a blaze on your property then? Or you do still want that, but are confused about why we have codes?
>Peacefully riding your unregistered dirt-bike down my private road is compared to a victim-involved crime, how?
As an example of being bound to the law despite being on private property. How about we change it to securities fraud, is that better?
>I can play the safety fuck-fuck game too. The best thing for my safety is that a glorified tax collector who "fears for his life" with a badge and a gun can't stomp his boot on my neighbor cuz he doesn't display the King's numbers on his overpowered illegal e-bike which is far safer for everyone around me than a registered mega-RV where they can't see shit around them.
I don't know what you're talking about but it's not the conversation we were having.
>In summary, absolutely not. It is not at all consistent with what the "public" is claiming what these laws are for. The public voters are told the laws are going in to protect their publicly owned roads and tax maintained systems. The democratic assent here is a fraud -- they've been baited and switched under the auspices of making laws for publicly owned roads but the politicians took advantage of the fact the urban public had no idea it applied to our road system and those of us who did know aren't a large enough voter pool to stop it when a naive majority is weaponized by politicians in bad faith.
I don't understand your worldview. Are you saying there should be no registration and traffic safety laws at all?
>And this gets us back to the fact, that you, lobf, are part of this bait and switch. You didn't have dick to say when Aurornis was advocating they be relegated to private roads. But as soon as I pointed out the law, then suddenly, the goal posts shifted again, and even being on private property isn't good enough. It was never about putting with unregistered vehicles to private property, was it lobf?
Dude, all due respect but you seem unhinged here. Take a breather, this is wildly, needlessly aggressive.
People who say this is a "gray zone" are practicing motivated reasoning. It is not gray, they are just illegal. There doesn't have to be a "path to legality" for illegal motorcycles. The only "path" necessary is the one straight to jail for the guy who imports these from China and sells them to the public.
Which is too bad... They are great practical and reliable vehicles. You can't even ride them off-road either (CA), since the majority of _accessible_ off-road trails require a highway-legal vehicle, or are otherwise limited to hiking and biking.
So, the only real alternative is a dual sport, which is louder, heavier, faster, and has more emissions. The latest (only?) loophole is to find a plated, clapped out Honda or Yamaha dirt bike and do an electric conversion.
True, it's not exactly the same situation, but it does ban them for the riders (the teens) who were previously on them.
You could make it more analogous by saying that we could enforce stricter regulations on big SUVs and trucks in terms of, say, driver licensing, and you'd still have a huge outcry if we tried that.
It blew my mind the first time I rented a 35' long 26,000 GVWR diesel truck and drove it right onto the interstate. What you can accomplish on a simple US driving license is something special you can't get almost anywhere else in the world unless you count places where bribes work.
Canada beats the euro average at 4.7 but similarly allows regular Joe’s to drive a moving truck and trailer a car behind it with a general license.
+ Canada’s rates are better on a per km basis (even beating the Dutch).
Annual/biannual safety inspections are only required in 3 of 10 provinces and those 3 are on the smaller side (PEI, NS and NB).
Motor vehicle infraction enforcement is… an afterthought for Canadian police (they don’t think/care that their salary/town depends on it). But admittedly, even lighter than I’ve experienced in Europe.
It’s gotta be some other factor behind excess US road fatalities.
I think the majority of Canada's GWVR limits can be a factor; i.e. outside of Ontario it's less than half what the US limit is for a standard license.
I think also the lower number of lanes on routes like the 401 help, usually[0].
Even though it's been a while, every drive in Canada just felt more leisurely. Speed limits in general are lower, there's more stop signs where they should be.
[0] - Except when a whiskey truck tips over and it's now a 2 hour delay to the next exit...
American drivers are also entitled assholes (I say as an American driver). How DARE you tell me I can't do what I want, when I want, or change my behavior in the slightest to benefit my society/local community?
It gets complicated depending on the highway, at least around me.
Heck even some of the non highway roads.
Cause I'm in MI, where we have Michigan lefts, and somewhere between surges of out-of-state transplants and COVID everyone has lost the plot on...
But overall around here, we have lots of 3/4 lane highways.
From left to right on a 4 lane...
Left lane is prettymuch always fastest traffic, with a occasional trucker stupidity around failing to not use the leftmost lane unless part of the actual route.
Next lane on a 4 lane is more faster traffic, possibly more trucker stupidity because typically they are supposed to be in the right two lanes unless there is a split incoming where they have to go left.
Next lane on a 4 lane is all of the wimpy trucks and the freight drivers following state law (i.e. we often have a higher speed limit for 'not-truck' than 'truck')
Last lane, is entering/exiting traffic; may go faster than prior lane at times but is more likely to have slowdowns from people who had at least a quarter mile to see what traffic was and attempt to match speed...
On a 3 lane, it's similar, except trucks in general will stay in the middle or right, but usually the middle.
---
Where it gets ugly though, is that my state is Michigan, so we have 'Michigan Lefts'.
i.e. on many roads, to do a left turn you take an intentional turn-around through a median, then take a right back at the intersection.
This normally works but sometimes it means for such roads that the left lane is not in fact the fastest lane overall.
Yes! The migrants fleeing to the US with nothing but the shirt on their back and tens of thousands of dollars in their pocket so they can buy an F350 Superduty and run over kids with it.
They're not buying the commercial tractor-trailers they're just operating them with CDLs California issued to them without even having enough basic English knowledge to read road signs, with predictable results.
Of course this is partially a problem of the government creating the problem of disqualifying Californians who could perform the job. Like 40% of California smokes weed but recreational use disqualifies you from a DOT physical for interstate CDL driving eligibility, and probably medical too though for not much longer since it's now schedule III and the DOT just hasn't caught up with the rescheduling yet.
An investigation by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found significant failures by California, Washington, and New Mexico to properly place drivers out-of-service for ELP violations. In addition to the data, California Highway Patrol has also publicly stated it has no intention of following this important federal regulation.
California – California has failed to adopt and enforce compatible ELP laws and regulations. From June 25, 2025 through August 21, 2025, of the roughly 34,000 inspections resulting in at least one reported violation, only one inspection involved an ELP violation resulting in a driver being placed out of service. Notably, at least 23 drivers with documented ELP out-of-service violations in other states were later inspected in California – yet the state failed to honor those violations or enforce ELP, allowing unqualified drivers to continue operating on our roads.
Those sorts of codes do exist already. The problem is that bike manufacturers will put on a "go fast" switch with a "Don't flip this or you'll be breaking the law" note in the manual.
Of course, a lot of people flip that switch because 20mph can feel pretty slow.
The Dutch seem to just do the sensible thing and have mobile e-bike dynos. If they suspect the bike is not properly regulated, they'll test it and keep it if it fails.
Id we wanted to do sth similar for SUVs and Trucks it would be a special driving licence required, with additional requirements and more expansive insurance.
Counterpoint: why am I able to buy a Ram 2500 and drive it without a CDL? I rented one recently to help a friend move some furniture and it's an unbelievably big vehicle.
The example of the standard you suggest could equally apply to large motor vehicles: you need special training above and beyond the status quo for vehicles that meet a certain standard. To your own point, motor vehicle laws were largely written based on outdated assumptions about the size of trucks and SUVs.
Arguably you shouldn't be able to, at least without being qualified to drive it. Just because it's legal doesn't mean someone made the active choice for it to be legal.
Back in the 20th century, before electric bikes, when I was but a wee lad the neighborhood Karens screeched until the local PD dropped one of those mobile "your speed is" trailers onto my street for about a month.
It turns out 12yo me could go 29mph on a mountain bike.
30 is too low IMO. Make it 35 or something. 25 is a joke.
I like going fast as much as the next guy, but lets be real, the safety profile of someone pedaling 30 mph is not the same as someone pressing a button to go 30 mph.
When you're pedaling at 30 mph, you're much more likely to be engaged, paying attention, and under ideal conditions. Folks who cruise at 30 at the press of a button, tend to actually do so consistently. Anyone who rides on a bike path anywhere today can obviously observe the differences in behavior.
I picked 30mph because that's the current threshold for what is considered a motorcycle in the state of Washington. Until recently, e-bikes were exempt from this because the old law was made back when e-bikes were rare and couldn't go much faster than regular bicycles.
I've gone >50mph on a bicycle, 40mph on level ground. Yes it's possible, but it requires significant effort and you can't accelerate as quickly as an e-bike. That's why I said, "and has a motor". Heck, a fast runner can endanger people on the sidewalk. When I'm running, I often slow down in crowded areas so that if someone does randomly veer into my path, I'll have time to avoid them.
If lots of people (who I assume are very fit) were riding bicycles dangerously, maybe the legislature would make some laws about that. But until it becomes a problem, there's really no need.
The current threshold is dumb. The whole premise is dumb. Ebikes don't need legislating beyond enforcing existing laws about cycling on sidewalks and the like.
>I've gone >50mph on a bicycle, 40mph on level ground. Yes it's possible, but it requires significant effort and you can't accelerate as quickly as an e-bike.
It's also pretty clear that the geometry of the vehicle was not really optimized for such speeds. I don't think anyone going 30+ (commuting, the spandex crowd who rides for fun is a different story) thinks it's ok to be doing that around pedestrians or anything else sketchy. Most of the problems seem to simply be correlation to accessibility of speed to problem demographics, teenagers and the like. You'll have that problem regardless of form factor. 70yr ago the boomers were drunk crashing muscle cars because those were accessible.
>If lots of people (who I assume are very fit) were riding bicycles dangerously, maybe the legislature would make some laws about that. But until it becomes a problem, there's really no need.
Depends wholly on other unrelated demographic factors IMO. What can these people do for the government vs what problems do you cause it is the primary driver of whether you get stomped or pandered to.
You do realize e-bikes only go 25 km/h? You're confusing them with speed pedelecs. Those go around 50 km/h, although that's still a far cry from scooter speeds, let alone motorbikes.
In some European countries, yes, but other countries like the US have different laws. The UK doesn't have a classification for a speed pedelec, just the 25kph class.
What defines an "e-bike" varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It also changes when talking in a colloquial context.
There are electric riding devices that are bicycle-shaped that go up to 45 mph (72 km/h) that are being sold as "e-bikes".
It's why it's hard to talk about e-bikes and regulation surrounding them because you can say "e-bike" and people think you're talking about entirely different things.
For example, in Oregon, for something to be an e-bike, it must be only pedal-assist and only up to 250 watts, which really will only take you to about 15-20 mph. If it has a throttle button so it doesn't require pedaling, then it's classified as an e-motorcycle, regardless of power rating, and so is licensed and registered like a motorcycle.
But enforcement is weak, and parents often don't know, so they'll buy their kids what is legally an e-motorcycle and they'll rip through neighborhoods at 45 mph, not even aware that their kids even riding one at all is illegal.
Where I live (western EU) it's simple. If the speed is limited to 25 km/h it's an e-bike. Above it's a speed pedelec and requires registration plate + insurance.
Just to be clear - it's not the speed that is limited, it's the assistance that is. You can still pedal above 25km/h on your ebike just fine and it's legal, but it has to stop giving you assistance above it(in contrast to say, mopeds, which have to be speed limited to 45kph).
Most US states allow 28 mph e-bikes. Some limit it to 20 mph. E-bike laws -- like all traffic laws in the US -- are set by the states. (as you may notice, even our cars do not have "united states" license plates)
The basic problem that causes laws like these to be passed is companies selling technically-legal "e-bikes" that are, in practice, electric mopeds you can remove the speed limiter and useless-but-technically-functional pedals from with fifteen minutes of work, converting them into illegal motorcycles.
I don't know the particulars, but if what's going on in WA is like what's going on in my California town, I don't think it's reasonable.
I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell.
Same thing happens on NextDoor, a few kids hanging out and joking around makes people think there's a gang problem, I've seen it happen in my own neighborhood and it's ridiculous.
It is true that violent death and maiming from SUVs and large trucks is a crisis, that society generally ignores. When I once called these hoods "gender affirming" a reply chastised me for being inflammatory and claiming that stating the plain obvious would get in the way of convincing others, but I think it's exactly the opposite: unless we start talking about the truth of these things nothing will happen.
My anecdote only but the contraptions being sold as “e-bikes” are actually motorcycles. Like all things a few bad apples ruin it for everyone but in what I have seen it’s more than just a few bad apples. From maintained mountain bike trails, to riding at speed on walking paths. They are far more than just some kids being kids. It is ultimately a lack of parenting these days but I don’t believe the new laws coming into place are out of line. A vehicle that can hit 30mph within a few seconds is a lot different than a kid peddling at 20mph sustained.
Your description is not accurate for my state, California, there are clear tiers of ebikes with regulations on when and where they can go, with very clear explanation at purchase, and no weird marketing like you're talking about. I've tried to go buy them, I have experienced the lectures!
Perhaps we can let the few bad apples killing lots of people with their massive hood height lead to better regulation of such hood heights?
We have literal deaths on one hand, and on the other, fears that are already heavily covered by regulation. I don't know Washington, but the laws around the speed regulators, etc., for e-bikes are extensive. People still demand "laws" because they overreact and get fearful.
I just wish people would be more fearful of killing others with their cars. It's the biggest cause of death of children, yet there's no action. Yet here we are, discussing ebikes rather than the real causes of child deaths.
I'm in the SF Bay Area and see small kids pre-adolescent or barely adolescent riding e-bikes with insane acceleration and speeds. The kind of performance, that in my youth, would come from a 250cc four-cycle motorcycle or 125cc 2-cycle motocross bike. And they are riding with absolutely no sense of traffic rules nor that they themselves are part of the same traffic. It's a really bad combination.
It doesn't matter what tiers there are when parents are negligently providing their kids with these kinds of "toys". I don't know if they are totally ignorant and think "it's just a bicycle" or if they know exactly what it can do and just can't see that their kid isn't ready for the responsibility.
I'm as anti-car and pro-bike as they come. Cars and trucks are a much bigger danger than e-bikes...
But California's clear tiers of ebike regulations are meaningless without enforcement. Over the past half decade blue states have become unwilling to enforce almost any laws. when they do enforce the laws it is sporadically. This matters for ebikes, it matters more for cars. Running a stop sign is absolutely not enforced any more.
> Your description is not accurate for my state, California, there are clear tiers of ebikes with regulations on when and where they can go, with very clear explanation at purchase, and no weird marketing like you're talking about. I've tried to go buy them, I have experienced the lectures!
The people buying the hackable e-bikes aren't walking down to their neighborhood e-bike store and paying full retail.
It's an internet phenomenon. They're ordering them online. There are subreddits where you can go and figure out which ones to buy that can be easily hacked or modified.
There are companies addressing this demand by making bikes that are technically capped to a specific tier of performance when sold, but any kid with the internet can find the instructions to "unlock" it to remove all of the limits and use the full power of the bike, not have to pedal, and so on.
Here in San Francisco, there a huge number of "e-bikes" that are designed, built, and sold as de facto illegal motorcycles, with only the paper-thin wink-nudge of a speed limiter that can be easily removed by the user, sometimes with online listings literally advertising the top speed without the limiter up front.
The city's treatment of traffic danger is comically bad, but these "e-bikes" aren't kids gallivanting around, they are traffic danger - usually by way of gig workers without insurance ignoring all traffic laws because they're riding "e-bikes" (with the speed limiter pulled out).
I live in WA (south of seattle) and your description is accurate, there are kids riding around on sidewalks in the area around my house on electric motorcycles that are sold as e-bikes. While I don't personally love it, they kept their distance from my small kids so I figure "let kids be kids". The one instance that frustrated me was they also show up at local mountain bike and skate parks. There they ride up the down trails and destroy a lot of the trail edges, a couple of times I've asked folks to leave.
I was hopeful when I saw the new law that it'll be used as a tool to take action on actual problem usage without punishing those using them safely. Unfortunately I'm aware of the history of laws like this, so I'm worried it'll just be used against lower income / privilege folks. We'll see.
People freak out about non-car transportation in general. Someone on my Nextdoor has been freaking out over temporary bus lanes, because nobody takes the bus but it's going to cause horrible traffic. They posted about rush hour gridlock on that street the other day caused by this grave injustice. The bus lanes haven't been put in yet....
There's constant vitriol about bike lanes, as if it's some huge sacrifice for drivers. And of course heaven forbid you roll a stop sign on a bike. Never mind that drivers do this constantly and are a far greater threat.
A lot of people fear anything that's not what they're used to, and they'll come up with any reason they can find to justify that fear.
There's a few traffic circles / roundabouts near me now. I love them -- they are safer and greatly reduce traffic if I'm headed out that way. The number of people who blame them for serious accidents is nuts, even if the accident is several miles away from the circle.
It's legal in Oregon and Montana as long as you stay in the shoulder. You can walk there too. I can't remember the law in Washington.
In western states with a lot of rural places only serviced by interstate they sometimes never passed blanket prohibition against non-motorized traffic on the interstate property.
I'd bet I-5 in Seattle is bicycles prohibited, but there's no blanket prohibition of bicycles on freeways. Like you said, there's a lot of parts of Washington where the freeway is the only reasonable road, so you can't prohibit bicycles or pedestrians.
Bikes that have motors and don't fit the e-bike tiers are motorcycles ... and could potentially be legal to operate on a bicycle prohibited freeway, but they'd need to be registered and it looks like these don't have plates, and the operator would need a DOT motorcycle helmet which was not present, and I'd bet these are also missing out on the lights and stuff you need too.
You can bike at some places on I-90 in Washington state where better options aren't available. I don't think it applies to E-bikes though, or at least the ones that can go faster than 15 MPH.
You know, the law banning kids from driving vehicles that can go over a certain speed is also already on the books. The new law is just a clarification that no, you can't be an 11 year old going 40 MPH with an unlicensed E-bike.
The big problem is just Seattle being incredibly underpoliced and really no laws under homicide are really enforced or punished.
Ok, but riding an ebike on the interstate is already illegal. If the problem you're trying to solve is kids taking ebikes onto the interstate, then you don't need any new laws
There's kids who go around on ebikes in my neighborhood, and it's only a matter of time until one of them is hit. I don't mind kids on bikes, and encourage it. I do, however, encourage them to stop at stop signs and to actually look for traffic at intersections, and that's something that these kids are not doing.
To be fair, most cars go too fast in residential areas. I drive like a grandma in them and there's a good chance that someone is up my ass and annoyed that I'm not exceeding the speed limit.
There's a restaurant in a city near fairly near where I live where I often eat at the sidewalk city in the summer. And the (protected) bike lane is this somewhat horrifying combination of bikes, e-bikes, escooters and things like motorcyles together with pedestrians crossing. And, because many people are on bikes, a lot just blow through red lights at the nearby intersection because it's a bike lane.
There's some of that, a lot of it though is e-dirtbikes that can pretty easily do 35+mph stock and 50+ with light modifications. A friend of mine has one and I've ridden it. It's a motorcycle with mountain bike brakes. I don't think they're bad vehicles, but I do think they should be treated as motorcycles as opposed to bicycles, and 13 year olds shouldn't be riding them on public roads.
> I don't know the particulars, but if what's going on in WA is like what's going on in my California town, I don't think it's reasonable
I was driving on a WA highway going ~47 mph (I made note of it for reasons soon to be clear!) when a group of 3 tweens on ebikes, none wearing helmets, passed me up in the bike lane going at least 10mph faster, and I watched them run through a red light up ahead. They got lucky.
I don't have a problem with kids being kids but this is over the top dangerous. To be clear, it's a few small groups of kids. There have been crashes, and they sent a Bellevue woman to the hospital in a hit and run, but as far as I know there's been no fatalities yet.
We don't need to drop the hammer on kids. We just need some common sense.
Previously, there had been a lot of complaints about intentional antisocial riding on pavements etc. Close passes as a form of harassment. If that's tolerated, it's a matter of time before someone gets hit.
As an extra punchline, while the injured woman was surrounded by police and medics, two other idiots on Voi rental bikes ran through the cordon and got arrested.
To be clear, the "e-bikes" in question aren't what you usually think of as e-bikes. Not only do they look different, they're faster and typically don't even require pedaling (and may not have pedals at all). Hence why I said they were kinda like mopeds.
> I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell.
I thought it was all fun at first, but they've since invaded the bike paths and parks near my house. It seems like more common they become, the more emboldened the riders are to drive 40mph down the bike path and weave around people.
It's so bad now that I have to be on high alert on the mixed-use path to grab my kids and pull them in when I hear the unmistakable sound of a Sur-Ron coming at us from behind at high speed. Usually a group of several kids.
They've also taken to riding through the parks and fields we go to, treating the little hills as jumps. The grass is getting destroyed. Parks have to put up temporary fences and gates to keep the electric motorcycles from destroying the fields.
It's not just kids, either. I've had several close calls this year while I'm riding my (pedal) bike and middle-aged people riding modified e-bikes (not pedaling, just zooming along at high speed) have zoomed around corners and almost hit me. They jump from the road to the sidewalk to the bike path as convenient and everyone else has to avoid them.
It's bad. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not a problem. I spend a lot of time outside with my kids and the problem is getting worse by the year.
I'm tempted to say nothing some baseball bats won't help. But the real problem is that you have bicycles increasingly morphing into things that look more like motorcycles and, if they can't be legally sold that way, someone will sell them or they can be modded.
Stepped out of a coffee shop, got text from wife, grabbed my phone and got missed by inches by a kid on a scooter easily doing 25mph on the sidewalk. The text possibly saved my ability to walk in future by having me to pause just for a moment.
I was 3-4 feet from a building corner when someone raced around it on a scooter. Amazing to me the complete lack of both self-preservation and respect for others.
On the other hand, kids have always been stupid. We've just given them new, more powerful ways to abuse that lack of awareness.
> We've just given them new, more powerful ways to abuse that lack of awareness.
Automobiles for 16-year olds have been around for a very long time.
Anyways, it's quintessentially American to be talking about oversized landship SUVs and trucks killing people, only to have someone derail it into kvetching about kids and bicycles.
The problem is with bicycles being relegated to either the sidewalk or the main road with cars. I'm really not a fan of how cities create bikelanes by putting a line through the sidewalk and then nobody respects it.
I see the appeal in trying to ride fast, but it gets kind of scary. When I rode a bike I went fast outside the city specifically to avoid pedestrians.
And the main road with cars wouldn't be an issue if people had a little common sense and respect. I was descending down a mountain road on my bicycle once, definitely speeding (enough so that I caught up to the traffic ahead of me -- really just trying to get off the mountain quickly though since I know people like the following exist), and some giant truck decided it was up to them to show me a lesson for riding in the road -- tailgated me the entire way down the bloody mountain, and there was no safe way for me to pull over (no shoulder, trees and steep drop), to speed up (I was already booking it, and there was a car in front of me anyway and no safe way to pass), or slow down (IME, slowing down when in a car sends people like that into a rage, so I wasn't comfortable bleeding off any speed with this guy a few feet behind me). If I had any equipment failures or had to slow down for any reason it would've been a nasty accident.
I had never heard of NextDoor until I read this post. UK based. I just spent 20 minutes reading Wikipedia and associated articles. They are really old too... Wow
Easy for you to say this if you're from Happysville, CA, USA, but if you're near Oakland or SF you know these kids DO form "gang"-like groups and block traffic, the bridge, swerve through traffic.
It's chill if the kids near you are respectful but the reason Gen Z as a whole ride these bikes is because they actively want to ride fast like motorcycles without license or registration.
>I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell.
It's kind of a hilarious yardstick for societal decline if you think about it.
70yr ago the boomers were drunk crashing sports cars so frequently that laws got passed.
Now late teenagers can barely afford an e-bike and mostly aren't causing problem, but laws still get passed, by the literal same cohort who were drunk crashing muscle cars back in the day.
In my area kids are doing street takeovers and assaulting people in cars and pedestrians. Laws have been passed to deal with it but there is very little on the enforcement side. Plus kids are riding around in effectively what are electric motorcycles that can hit highway speeds which would normally require licensing and registration like any other motor vehicle. Recently I know of a 15 year old who crashed on one of these bikes and died. Having said that, 15 year old me would have absolutely loved having one of these kick ass ebikes.
We also subsidize fossil fuels to some $900B/yr, not counting foreign wars for oil, climate damage, health impacts etc. Fuel should be MUCH more expensive, around $15/gal. If priced right, the market would weed out these giant vehicles for personal/entertainment use.
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/in-gasolinegate-the-true-...
I suspect the loudest voices would be from the automakers and dealerships, who make their biggest margin from SUVs and oversized trucks. They have powerful lobbyists and spend a lot on PR, so it often seems like their anti-transit, anti-pedestrian positions are more popular than they are.
I'd love to see a real grassroots effort to tax (toll?) based on GVWR or vehicle length. It would be met with tremendous opposition by special interests, but I could see it succeeding in the right environment. Maybe it could be framed as a rebate for small vehicles, rather than a tax on large ones.
When vehicles were starting to get noticeably bigger about 20 years ago, I asked some family members why they were buying vehicles they had to climb up into.
"On the highway, I'd rather kill someone than be killed in a wreck."
They would not recognize that while that might work for a while, it wasn't going to lead anywhere good for our society. A generation of people thinking like that has filled our roads with vehicles that protect their occupants while making it more dangerous for everyone else.
Yep. And the refrain is always about “dangerous” behavior by cyclists, despite the fact that deaths and injuries to others from those on bikes are essentially a rounding error. The vast majority of what danger there is is borne by the riders themselves and not by bystanders.
Meanwhile, nobody bats an eye over the fact that motor vehicles are a leading cause of death in this country and the brunt is often borne by others.
There are already mechanisms in place to hold SUV and Truck drivers accountable and track them down (via their license plate).
The problem with ebikes is any unlicensed driver can get one, and go 40mph on a sidewalk without any practical way to hold them accountable.
I live near one of the busiest biking + walking trails in the country, and the egregious disrespect and recklessness of ebike's and scooters is insane to me. Even on the parts of the trail that are split into two or three sections (walking, running, and biking sections) I see people going 20-30mph weaving in and out of walkers. What's crazy is it would be safer if they were operating gas motorcycles, because atleast you could hear them coming.
Those mechanisms don't work. Unless the driver was a hit and run or DUI, even fatal crashes almost never result in any charges if the driver claimed they "never saw them", especially so against pedestrians.
Large vehicles are killing people, even with sober drivers and nobody is being held responsible. This is well investigated at this point. Only recently are we finally getting some traction on the awareness front of how bad it is getting.
I'm definitely not arguing that SUVs and trucks are killing people, and as someone that drives a Ford F-150, I wouldn't mind having to be licensed for a commercial drivers license (although would like that to be based on skill, rather than charging more for that license).
I am constantly having to dodge these e-bikes in the streets, mostly driven by children/teenagers, who do not follow traffic laws (I'm in upstate NY). They don't even follow standard bicycle traffic laws. Driving in the city, I regularly have e-bikes coming at me against traffic in my lane. I would be absolutely devastated if I hit someone with my truck, and I honestly usually drive lower than the speed limit in these areas. It's even worse in the suburbs, because these people don't have the same survival instincts when riding these e-bikes as those in higher traffic areas. It's constantly on my mind that if I hit one of these children, not only will my conscious be filled with guilt, but I will probably be charged with manslaughter charges.
Upstate NY is starting to create laws and restrictions around e-bikes, but that is not stopping parents from being uninvolved. In the cities, there are rentable e-bikes being used everywhere, and it only requires the ability to pay to use it. I'm all for making transportation easier for those of lower income, or that prefer to use something that doesn't spew emissions like a gas-powered vehicle, but beyond being able to pay for the e-bike there is little being done to regulate or enforce how they are used.
People under 16 probably shouldn't be driving vehicles very fast period. That doesn't feel like a double standard since we've already banned them from driving cars.
A 15 year old on a bicycle can easily do 15mph, and even 20mph is easy enough if they are willing to pedal for it. The real problem is that something capable of doing 15mph+ shouldn't be on the sidewalk in the first place.
There are multiple things going on in these situations, and rarely is it just one thing a quick simple ban on ___ will actually fix
Not sure if this is regional or another sign that I'm old.
When I was in elementary school, we were already taught that we ride a bicycle in the street and follow traffic rules. That included things like traveling in the correct lane for the direction we are going and observing stop signs and traffic lights. Also, as we got older, using things like turn lanes just like a motorcycle should do.
We were also taught tp walk it on the sidewalk/crosswalks as a pedestrian when the conditions were too complex for us to safely ride with traffic.
Even ignoring the peril to actual pedestrians, I have seen so many near-accidents in more recent decades from people violating these rules. Riding on sidewalks and/or against traffic flow (wrong side of the road) so that they "come out of nowhere" into traffic, ignoring traffic control lights, etc. Adding the electric speed boosts has just made these reckless things wildly more dangerous.
> Meanwhile, everyone knows that these giant trucks and SUVs are killing people, but we do basically nothing.
Too much money is tied up to giant trucks and SUVs being the norm. These vehicles only came into widespread existence due to the infamous "SUV loophole" [1], accelerated by them being much more profitable for manufacturers as there was (and is) far less competition in the truck/SUV space from non-American manufacturers and, with that, less competitive pressure that tends to eat up margins.
As people are correctly pointing out, WA is reclassifying certain e-motos as motorcycles, which is to say they'll require a license and insurance to be used on public roads - two things that are already required for all SUVs and trucks on public roads.
Being local to WA and spending a lot of time on bikes, the easiest thing we could do to improve the situation would be for law enforcement to aggressively enforce existing distracted driving laws. The number of drivers with their face buried in a phone during any kind of slow traffic is terrifying if one looks around.
banning big SUVs & Trucks is insurmountable not impossible - since you're trying to have people/organizations act against their own interests.
it's one of those cases of stated preference vs observed preference:
for individuals big SUVs/Trucks feel good to drive, are fast enough & come with street cred. Notice I put the word "feel".
for cities/state governments - big SUVs/Trucks mean increased taxes since they consume more gas - thus increased revenues from gas taxes
for the automakers as the article stated - 90% of their profits come from big SUVs/Trucks that American automakers have stopped making sedans. Profits from big co's is a bragging point for the federal government too.
Now legislation would've to try for all those people to act against their own interests ? Unless some geopolitical event happens - that's unlikely.
I agree about large vehicles, but does an individual state even have the authority to ban a given kind of car from their roads? I suspect that is more under a federal authority than state-by-state.
Not ban but states can implement stricter licensing requirements for larger vehicles, and raise registration fees, gasoline taxes, and penalties for their misuse. See how Paris is handling SUV in the city center. It's very effective and other cities are likely to follow.
I would 100% be in favor of banning these oversized vehicles. European countries are doing the same precisely because these trucks and SUVs are ridiculously effective at mowing down pedestrians. They are a public health issue like cigarettes, drunk driving, and guns. And most of these large trucks on the road are driven by insecure suburban men who work office jobs and haul maybe a couch once a year. The US needs to have a reckoning on its deadly addiction to automobiles.
SUVs have the power of bigAuto behind them to ensure no "undue" legislation is made against them. There is no bigEbike, so legislation is free to be made so that those legislators can then pat themselves on their back and have action they can point to being pro-safety.
The new WA basically did nothing except re-state existing laws. Ebikes cannot be more powerful than 1 horsepower (750 watt) and cannot go faster than 20 mph on throttle or 28ph on throttle + pedal assist.
"Moped-style ebikes" like Surrons were already illegal on public roads.
The e-bikes aren't that annoying, it's the kids (and adults) riding all over the city on 4 wheelers and UTVs. The cops chase them around but it doesn't do much good.
> For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders.
This is not true. The law didn't ban anything. It just clarified what's classified as a bike with requirements like "must have pedals" and "you have to pedal it".
There wasn't a ban. Previously there was a gray area where people were taking full on e-motorcycles, which should have been on roads, and trying to ride them in spaces meant for pedal bicycles.
They weren't full on e-motorcycles, they don't meet the legal requirements for motorcycles. As one example among many, some jurisdictions require a motorcycle have turn signals.
So if they can't be operated as an e-bike and they can't be registered as an e-motorcycle, they've been banned.
No, they're not allowed on public roadways or bike/pedestrian paths. Which I think is fair and good, because they're not designed for either space.
There are a lot of different types of vehicles that aren't allowed on the roads of bike paths, but people still use them recreationally on private property. You can find retrofit kits to add the necessary mirrors and turn signals to many dirt bikes if you want to ride on the road.
If someone wants to ride on a bike path, they should have something that meets the definition of a bike. We've stretched the definition to include reasonable e-assist bikes, but we're not stretching it further to include everything with 2 wheels and a motor.
If someone wants to ride on the roads, they need turn signals and a mirror.
We don't have to allow everyone to ride everything on every public shared space.
I agree that some of the more egregious big motor e-bikes should be banned, but whenever you shift the requirements like this you're going to be taking away somebody's only means of getting to work. There are people out there driving big motor e-bikes because they can't afford a car. Or because they can't get a license.
> There are people out there driving big motor e-bikes because they can't afford a car.
Unfortunate for them, but we can't be shaping the laws for everyone around a couple people who already bought a big-motor e-bike to ride on the bike path.
I'm not really persuaded by this argument either, as they can sell their big-motor e-bike and buy a lesser model, or trade someone straight across.
> Or because they can't get a license.
This just raises more questions. If they can't get a license, they shouldn't be driving on the road. That limits them to bike paths, where they shouldn't be driving high powered vehicles anyway. Again, not really persuaded.
Meh, standard attempt at mollifying the biggest opponents by offering them exemptions and exceptions does not move me at all. Boring.
Lets make it better.
After all, after the nanny state representatives succeed with this, they will move onto some other cause to ban another thing they deem unnecessary and an affront to their sensibilities. They will not be content until everyone does exactly as they say ( but not do ). And that is fine for them. Where I stand, I will keep on trucking and my child, god willing, will own a veritable tank that will crush anti truck infidels under its mighty heels. The gods of molten metal have spoken. Your sacrifice is deemed acceptable -- bike enjoyer.
Trucks and guns have a free pass to cause thousands of deaths yearly. It's that simple. Anybody else doing anything that might be viewed by certain hand wringing hysterical persons as dangerous will be smothered in onerous regulation, despite statistics showing relative (or absolute) harmlessness, but trucks and guns will keep on killing.
Neither trucks nor guns cause a single death. The people using them may cause deaths.
It also should be pointed out that in many cases, both large vehicles and guns save lives.
There is absolutely no denying that larger vehicles are safer in an accident. Anything to the contrary that you have read is propaganda.
In the case of guns, defensive gun uses have actually stopped a tremendous number of crimes. Those statistics were altered by the FBI to make gun ownership less appealing. Note that many of those uses did not involve firing the firearm.
Please educate yourself before you spread more propaganda.
Trucks and guns pose outsized risks to bystanders, and if you don't agree with that, you are either being grossly disingenuous or you're just extremely stupid. In the case of trucks, you can literally just go read OP's article if you want to learn more about the risks they pose, but I suspect you have no interest in doing so.
However, to help you understand this complex issue more broadly (since you're already here), let me present an analogy. A framing saw is a dangerous tool. It has legitimate uses (e.g. cutting lumber) that may outweigh the risks of having it in your garage, but, critically, that ceases to be true if you don't make an effort to mitigate the risks. If your 5 year old kid gets into the garage and manages to cut his foot off with your framing saw because you left the door unlocked with the saw plugged in, you have fucked up bigtime. That's a risk you could have mitigated, and would have mitigated if you weren't a negligent fuckup, but you are, now your kid has a lifelong disability.
And in this situation, maybe you would say nuh uh, the saw didn't cause the injury, and I'd reply that if you want to frame it that way then no, the saw didn't cause the injury. You caused the injury by failing to recognize and effectively respond to the risk the saw presented.
Similarly, trucks and guns are tools. They obviously have certain legitimate applications whose utility outweighs the risks they pose to bystanders with appropriate mitigations in place. But if society makes no effort to mitigate even the basic obvious risks, innocent bystanders end up being needlessly harmed as a result, via the frivolity, negligence, and sometimes downright malice of others.
This is the situation with trucks and guns in America. We demonstrate no will or capacity to place reasonable restrictions on their availability to and usage by people who really have no legitimate need for them, nor the skill and temperament to use them safely, and as a result people are needlessly hurt and killed by them every day. Some people think this is fine, I guess, but I don't.
>Trucks and guns pose outsized risks to bystanders, and if you don't agree with that, you are either being grossly disingenuous or you're just extremely stupid. In the case of trucks, you can literally just go read OP's article if you want to learn more about the risks they pose, but I suspect you have no interest in doing so.
I did read the entire article. One point you may have missed is the same increase in frontal height happened in other countries, but didn’t result in the same increases in pedestrian fatalities. It’s likely that other factors are in play in the USA.
Various tools represent varying levels of risk to bystanders. Every auto or truck is a potentially lethal weapon.
Guns and large vehicles are similar in that both increase the safety of the owner. There’s no downside as long as the owner is responsible. One flaw in the NYT analysis was around the “A column” blind spot. No competent driver will look for pedestrians without moving his head enough to eliminate that blind spot.
There is no denying that large vehicles are safer for their occupants, the statistics are clear. Regardless of whether large trucks and SUVs are in play, the major offenders will remain…those being delivery trucks, busses, and semis.
On a final note, everyone in the USA has the legal right to own firearms for self defense, as it should be. Many in Europe are wishing for the same thing about now…
> I did read the entire article. One point you may have missed is the same increase in frontal height happened in other countries, but didn’t result in the same increases in pedestrian fatalities. It’s likely that other factors are in play in the USA.
I am not sure where you are getting this in the article, but yes, obviously other factors are in play. Transit engineering, driving culture, and other demographic factors affect the likelihood of a pedestrian collision happening in the first place, as well as vehicle design factors. But once the collision occurs, vehicle speed and vehicle design are the primary factors determining the outcome for the pedestrian. Competent regulators will attack the problem from all sides, and improving vehicle design standards (or at the very least not incentivizing larger vehicles) is low hanging fruit.
> Guns and large vehicles are similar in that both increase the safety of the owner. There’s no downside as long as the owner is responsible.
You could say this about literally anything. I would have no problem with personal nuclear weapons for self defense as long as the owner(s) were responsible.
In practice, we know that the owners of guns and large vehicles have (to a first approximation) the same capacity for irresponsibility as anyone else.
> One flaw in the NYT analysis was around the “A column” blind spot. No competent driver will look for pedestrians without moving his head enough to eliminate that blind spot.
Makes me think you've never tried to negotiate e.g. a busy unsignaled four way stop with protected cycle tracks on three of the four incoming roads, and no raised sidewalks, at night and/or in the rain.
When a driver's attention is split 5+ ways, there is only so much they can do. As above, intersection design takes a lot of the blame in these situations, but making blind spots smaller will always improve safety. As somebody who has been walking, riding, and driving in a mid sized American city for 20+ years, the most frequent type of near-death experience I've had has been crossing the street with the signal and almost getting hit by left-turning cars who didn't see me, in precisely the same kind of situation highlighted in the article.
> There is no denying that large vehicles are safer for their occupants, the statistics are clear.
Nobody is debating this, because it's totally irrelevant here except insofar as it's insane for us to encourage people to insulate themselves from the consequences of collisions while reciprocally increasing the risk for others involved.
I seriously don't understand the mindset that focuses on the safety of occupants of the largest vehicles involved in a collision, especially when the context is pedestrian safety. It's even more frustrating that our regulators seem to have adopted the same mindset.
edit: And the current mix of vehicles we have on the road distorts the safety statistics even more. Is it really surprising that when a Yukon XL collides with a Corolla, the people in the Yukon walk away while the Corolla's occupants get closed casket funerals? Since the protection larger vehicles afford their occupants is dependent on their size and weight, it's not independent of the outcomes for others involved in a collision.
I think there is a difference here. Signal qua signal isn't dangerous. Its purely what one does with it that might constitute a criminal act. In particular, using signal is unlikely to cause problems accidentally.
Driving a giant truck for no good reason entails a certain risk because of both the inevitability of human error (on the part of the driver but also others) and basic physics.
Furthermore, one might argue that the right to private communication is more important than the marginal improvement in life that you get from driving a big car for no particular reason.
Like consider a person who wants to drive a car filled with TNT. By its very nature this is a danger to others regardless of the intent of the driver or other drivers. Society might be argued to have an interest in regulating such behavior. I think there is a good case to be made that unnecessarily large vehicles differ in degree only from the TNT case, but differ categorically from using signal.
I'm not making the case that the differences justify banning big cars, but there are differences between the two situations.
Is that not a significant enough number in and of itself?! Like it even begs the question, how were they allowed to go onto the roads in the first place, when it's not even a hard to reach consequence.
200 out of 350M is a small number. There are plenty other things we could address that makes a bigger impact. The bigger factor is pedestrian alcohol consumption, but nobody wants to address that.
200 out of 350M is a small number. There are plenty other things we could address that makes a bigger impact. The bigger factor is pedestrian alcohol consumption, but nobody wants to address that.
> For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders.
From my perspective it's the other way around. Bikers don't pay taxes, don't follow traffic laws, they generally do whatever they want with total impunity while the law actively protects them. Meanwhile drivers pay taxes, get ticketed for violations and have to bend over backwards in order to avoid killing the bikers.
And I know plenty who don't own any actual vehicles, don't pay any taxes and yet they get to be a nuisance on the road with total impunity just because they are "smaller" than cars.
Pedestrian enough to use pedestrian crossings without even getting off the bike, weave through people on sidewalks and generally be immune to traffic laws, yet vehicular enough to use the road and slow everybody else down, but not enough to get taxed, require traffic law education, licenses. Everything about bikes is a contradiction.
Yeah, because it's an inherently unsafe vehicle which will drop you to the ground and cause major trauma at the slightest provocation. Just like motorcycles.
More money flows atop highway and road infrastructure than on biking, rail, and scooter infrastructure. By orders of magnitude.
Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways.
Biking infrastructure is actually deleterious as it doesn't serve the pregnant, elderly, sick, frail, doesn't work well for rain/snow/high heat/weather, doesn't transport high volumes of goods, etc. etc.
Lots of cities are tearing up road infra to cater to this, and in doing so, they're reducing the economic corridor capacity and throughput of roads. Roads are simply much more valuable and flexible for logistics, people, and business.
The value of roads is going to become even more apparent when we have widespread autonomous vehicles.
Bikes are popular for 20-40-something men, mostly yuppie, mostly upper middle class. But they're not doing the economic heavy lifting.
Biking is not meant to replace everything. More people biking means more room for people that cannot bike. Bike-heavy cities like Amsterdam show that most of your "facts" are incorrect (bikes can be used to transport goods, are usable when it rains, are used by a large part of the population). That's a trope common when bike displaces cars, but studies show the reverse (for example in Madrid: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02642...). Also, biking is good for health despite the risks (for example https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4521).
> Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways.
Ok, and what fraction of investment has it gotten?
We've underfunded rail/bike infrastructure for decades, of course money is going to flow on the cheapest route. Roads are cheap because we've subsidized the shit out of them.
Bikes are not going to deliver your packages and food and medical services. They're not going to
take you on vacation, haul your gear, or provide shelter.
There's a meme that bikes will solve everything and that cars suck, but it's dismissive of the orders of magnitude more value that road infra can and will always provide.
Bikes actually deliver a lot of packages and food in areas where car infrastructure hasn't made other forms of transportation practically impossible, and they do it much more cost-effectively.
On the medical front, that's quite a strawman. I doubt you'll find much of anyone opposed to using cars for medical and emergency services.
Counterpoint: there are four Blood Transfusion Service motorbikes parked outside the doctor's surgery across the road most days of the week, because cars are no good for delivering urgent and time-sensitive medical supplies.
Light ~110cc scooters in most of South East Asia are used for just that actually, and a lot of Western European cities have a rather large cargo e-bike push.
Reducing heavy road traffic also makes it easier for EMS to get around.
The bike meme is unrealistic, and you're dismissing all of my arguments.
You're ripping up infrastructure for yuppie pickleball.
How do you transmit tons of material on bikes? How do people move in the rain or when they're on their period? How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?
Every lane taken away is centuries of economic activity destroyed.
I think you’re suffering from a false dichotomy. The average car capacity is 1.1 people per car, and 90%+ of the time, a normal individual is not hauling more than a backpack.
Just imagine how much less traffic would be on the road if the people who could just biked. They get 1 protected lane (out of 6), and you get 50% less traffic? Hell yeah, that’s be awesome, right?
In terms of economics, consider how terrible car parking can be. A bike rack can park 20+ people in the space of 1 car parking spot (1-4 people). Do you really think a business would be better off with 1/10th the number of customers who can actually enter their building at once?
Bikes and rail should exist as options, not requirements. And when done well, like in Amsterdam, people will like using them. And driving will be even better, because of so much less traffic.
I mean Historically when I did that sort of thing I'd have a change of clothes if necessary, but otherwise I never really minded riding in the rain. Or light snow.
> or when they're on their period?
I'm sorry, what? (I actually do have anecdata based answers for this but I don't want to risk offending your sensibilities.)
> How do you transmit tons of material on bikes?
> How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?
Cool! There's more room on the road for that to happen.
But in general you're implying a dichotomy where none exists.
Wow there is so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to start.
Widespread car usage has caused an enormous amount of harm. It has destroyed American cities, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands more with sedentary lifestyle diseases, and burned a truly enormous amount of fossil fuels into CO2, and locked in the infrastructure to continue to do so for decades. It's an absolutely enormous tragedy.
Cars are also useful and have helped a lot of things, but they should not be the default choice of transportation.
I find the densest parts of Amsterdam much less of a "rathole" than parts of LA with similar densities.
The discussion isn't about public transit anyway, it's about bikes. Concern trolling (in a different comment) about the sick and disabled won't get you anywhere. The arithmetic just doesn't work out in your favor.
Also, yes, because the buses and trains in the US mostly suck. You ever been on a nice train?
Besides, no one's suggesting banning single family homes. Though I guess you probably don't like free markets for this sort of thing, want more of a command economy, to make sure nothing besides single family homes gets built, regardless of what the market wants?
The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders.
Meanwhile, everyone knows that these giant trucks and SUVs are killing people, but we do basically nothing. Even on the off chance that we passed a law about them, existing vehicles would certainly be grandfathered in, we would never outright ban current vehicles/motorists. If we banned existing SUVs and trucks, millions of people would be screaming bloody murder about their right to drive pedestrian-killing cars.