Nah, miss me with the IlLeGaL E-MoToS bullshit. First of all, less teens driving is a good thing and trucks an SUVs are killing thousands of people every month without any significant regulation
If they were licensed, stayed off the bike and ped paths, and didn’t get ridden almost invariably by careless assholes, sure. But that’s not the case, and they’re giving legitimate cyclists a bad name.
Why should I be forced to give up taking my kids to school on a cargo e-bike just because some fuckwad wants to ride a motorcycle at 50 mph on the damn sidewalk?!
The difference is that you can put a hardware limiter on it to make it compliant with E-bike regs, which are laughable because if a person on a 10 speed can do 35 in traffic or bike lanes no one complains, but add a battery and if it does 21 everybody screams “Moped! Motorbike!”.
I saw a Long John Cargo Bike Driver get tackled off his bike from behind by enforcement in a video. He went to dispute the ticket and the fine he had to pay to get his bike back and the enforcement officers said that they took him off of his “Chopper Style E-Moto” because it was too powerful, and he and a technician then testified it is a cargo bike and it limits its ground speed but it is more powerful because it can carry a months worth of groceries and pull a trailer to haul more groceries and still go at a ground speed of 22 before it limits the rider, and the bike isn’t chopped it is designed to carry cargo. Turns out he was jumped because of the size of his battery pack.
The court ruled that he could get everything but the money he paid to get his bike back. Got to love Ontario Enforcement.
Fucking big tech is helping to destroy legitimate e-bikes by flooding the market with this illegal trash.
Currently, there is a Facebook Marketplace listing for the same bike as Nacato’s, for $200. The city official acknowledged that resale platforms like Facebook Marketplace are harder to rein in. But it’s not impossible.
“If you’re able to cut off the source, if you can successfully get these products off the street or are doing more to regulate then you are going to see less of them sold on places like Facebook. That’s going to take a while though,” said Lohr. “In the meantime Facebook should be doing as much as they can to regulate what is being sold on their marketplaces.”
It’s real simple: NYC should force all ISPs in the city to stop resolving facebook.com until it complies. That’ll get some fucking attention to the problem right quick!
👏👏👏
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Forgive me for not really giving a fuck about emotos. This is always an unpopular opinion, but I fail to be moved by the panic surrounding them every time they come up in discussion, and there are already laws in place to address the scofflaw behavior people claim they encourage. They’re better than cars and the cars are still around. I’m going to stay focused on the cars.
The main problem is that a lot of people who do give a fuck about them are ignorant of the difference between them and e-bikes and so e-bikes are in danger of getting banned in a lot of places, too.
Absolutely; everyone I know who is anti-e-bike, cites these things!
As long as it’s about differentiating the two for people, and supporting infrastructure and licensure (If relevant) for both, then I’m all for it. Carving out a supportive role for them. Too often I see otherwise transit-friendly people who’s experiences with emotos san infrastructure and legal framework mirrors the revulsion expressed by people toward lawless cyclists back when bicycles didn’t have infrastructure or legal recognition on the road.
If you act like a carbrain, you are a carbrain, even if you’re not in a 4 wheeled motorized vehicle.
NYC is so damn flat, tho.
Are you saying that these e-motos aren’t necessary in NYC? What does the elevation change have to do with these illegal devices that are giving legitimate e-bikes a bad name?
Just sort of asking who the hell needs an e-bike on flats.
Elderly, maybe kids, and out of shape people would all probably prefer an E-bike even on flat ground.
This isn’t a real problem. Boomer ass merikkka and its f4000 baby crusher grocery getter empty beds like Haliburton humpity dumpity tonka toy can’t work on it chat gipity spyware throw away pickup trucks and breeder SUVs are the problem. This is just anti chynah nonsense. I love CHINA deal with it boomers. I could be in a sea of you over socialised conformist dildos and I would still tell you to fuck off and that you are 100% wrong. Guided like a horse you are. Mandani is a fucking mayor big whoop… he already sniffin the ass of power and ready to piviot. The DSA is nothing but stank arse wankers.
It’s a problem far outside of the US, because carbrains are using these e-motos to ban actual e-bikes everywhere. Not just NYC, California has a similar tech backed lobby that is trying to outlaw E-bikes, as does London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Singapore. Also a fair number of the illegal e-motos are manufactured in the US, UK, EU and SK, so China or any other country doesn’t come into this argument.
The fact that people are conflating two different products worldwide because of big business interests is a problem.
We totally differentiate between what we call “fat bikes” and normal e-bikes here in the Netherlands.
That is not to say the people who usually ride fat bikes are not a problem that needs to be addressed. And some cities are trying to address this (and bans have been proposed but remain utterly unworkable).
But the solution is enforcing the existing law on bikes/e-bikes, not banning anything.
Those are called fatbikes, no?
No. Fatbikes can be legitimate e-bikes, if they comply with the classification rules (e.g. maximum assisted speed of 20 mph for Class 1 or 2). Being a fatbike just means it has really wide tires; they aren’t necessarily even electric at all.
These things NYC is trying to stop are not bicycles at all, fat or otherwise. They are unlicensed motorcycles, sometimes with vestigial useless pedals for the sole purpose of tricking people into thinking they’re something they’re not.
Fatbike:
The shit we’re talking about here:
That’s a sports/off-road motorcycle…
Which is what the pictured vehicle either is or is designed to look like.
The shit I don’t agree with that NYC is doing is eliminating Class 3 e-bikes. Cutting off pedal assist at 25mph vs. 28mph is such a negligible 3mph difference. This criminalizes a huge amount of bikes that are perfectly legal in the rest of the United States. E-motos like the Surron were already illegal, unregistered motorcycles before Class 3 arbitrarily got axed in NYC.
That negligible difference is actually a fairly large one once the physics of inertia and impacts gets into play. The energy, and therefore the damage, is exponential based on velocity. That ≈6.6km/hr difference increases damage by a lot more than you may suspect, and pedestrians don’t generally wear helmets and pads to protect themselves from impacts.
That’s a fair point. But I’d assume most of downtown New York City has of speed limit of 25mph anyway. So Class 3 riders shouldn’t be going above that, regardless of what their bike is capable of. Whether you drive a Lamborghini or Toyota, you’re still obligated to follow the same laws (horrible analogy, I know).
It’s geometric, not exponential. Going from 25 to 28 freedom units is factor 1.12 and v² increases by factor 1.2544 or 25%.
But at 60mph if you crashed into a wall you’d vaporize instantly. Because exponential.
No exponential. Geometric. Squared. Energy is E=mv². At a speed of 60 freedom units you’re going factor 2.4 times faster than at 20. The energy will be factor 5.76 times higher. Or 476% more if you like.
The word exponential has a specific meaning. It doesn’t just mean really big.
So vapor. Yeah my first post was supposed to be sarcastic by the way.
If I’m not mistaken, class 3 also has a throttle vs just pedal assist. I think the throttle is great personally. Sometimes it’s hard to get started to cross an intersection or something, and the throttle is a huge help. Feels like this kinda kills some stuff for old + disabled.
Class 2 has a throttle. Class 3 can have a throttle, but it has to cut off at 20 mph (same speed as class 2) and use pedal-assist only from there to 28 mph.
Huh. That would be called a dirtbike where I’m from (the “e-moto”).
