The kids around my way are hitting buisness entrance burms like motocross jumps , it's pretty crazy . I doubt they are E- bikes but more of what you mentioned emoto or something.

Just a matter of time before there is some "news worthy" incident because of these entitled jack ass'.

Right, but you're talking past their point. You both have good points but yours does not faithfully address theirs.

You sure are playing fast and loose with the term "motor vehicle" if you are including e-assist bicycles in that statement.

I agree with the spirit of your post. Entirely.

Yes, enforcement is certainly an issue.

However, here in Ontario any moped that has pedals is an e-bike, legally speaking. I’ve seen one with the most limp-twisted effort to qualify as a bike and be therefore street legal. But it still has all the qualities that cause me concern.

What we need is better classifications. A small standing e-scooter that can’t break 15kph shouldn’t be treated the same as a moped with pedals that can get 60kph.

I think those are all good points except the last one. You do not want cops running down kids on bikes on a hunch that they or their bike aren't compliant with something that can't be accurately assessed from a distance. Good transportation requires a combination of education, infrastructure, and enforcement. In the case of kids using electric motorcycles I think a lot of the first thing with a healthy helping of the second thing are where the focus should be. Teach kids responsible use in school, maybe lower the learner permit age for electric motorcycles use, and get better facilities for non-motorized vehicles so kids don't require a motor or engine to safely travel longer distances.

The unfortunate reality is that there is no world where towns and cities are going to spend money enforcing bike laws with dedicated law enforcement. They are just going to ban or heavily regulate ebikes, and this was the incredibly obvious outcome once the fat bike motorcycles became the dominant form factor.

Because the weight and speed are so comparable...?

No. I don’t think so.

You can get fucked up walking. You can get fucked up standing still. You can get fucked up while asleep in your bed.

The difference is the risk of getting fucked up, being fucked up by someone else and the amount of fucking up a given tier of activity presents.

Yes. Including passing a hard civics test, no retries. And keep them off the fucking sidewalks.

And they people they harm in the process?

Some can be pretty powerful. Not sure what you could get stealthily though. Backpack with the battery pack and run a cable down your leg to the motor?

Now I wonder how much thrust efficiency you get from a high powered electric turbine fan...

Don't be silly. We'll engineer en expensive solution to hide it all in the downtube.

UK requires bikes to be pedal assist anyway, pedal at 1w and the motor does the effort. Yes I am training for the tour de France sprints, that is why I am going so fast.

An average ebike only weighs ~25 lbs more than an average bike. That's basically difference between an average woman and a man or within a standard deviation of the average man's body weight. Should we only be requiring licenses for fat people?

Just set the max speed on the ebike to a safe limit and call it a day. Your speed matters way more than the bike weight anyway (KE=0.5*mv^2^)

It takes practice and skill to get a standard bicycle going that fast

It does not. As someone who does regularly do that on rides, I can vet that any able bodied kid can get a road bicycle to hit 40 on a long downhill, first try. The real difference is that they do not go seeking that experience, usually they're just trying to get somewhere they need to be.

Personally I'm good with "If it has a throttle-driven motor, it's a motor vehicle" and just doing motor vehicle licenses as we always have. Maybe just lower the permit age if teens need access to motor vehicles, or ask ourselves why we built a society where teens need access to motor vehicles.

Which is somewhat funny to me, because I break 40 on a downhill with normal effort on my regular, motorless, leg-powered bicycle that was built in the 90s. I do understand there is some difference there in that I have to work for it and remain focused to stay at speed, I'm not just twisting a throttle and getting distracted. But in terms of defining vehicle classes through legalese it does seem like the wrong sort of taxonomy to me, sometimes feels like we're either legislating ourselves into a corner or aiming to solve the wrong problem.

I'm a municipal worker and we just had a huge meeting about this. It's a tough nut to Crack, because enforcement of the existing laws are almost impossible, and we're trying to find a solution.

The issue police are having with ebike violations is probable cause. Police can't and shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily stop someone.

Depending on the classification of ebike (which can't be established visually) there's different rules on whether it has age requirements, whether it's allowed to be used with a throttle instead of pedals, and what the max assisted speed is. They also can't visually verify the bike is under 750 watts or what age the rider is.

And even if they're going over 28mph (max assisted speed on any ebike), that doesn't necessarily mean it's not an ebike. Maybe they're going that fast because they pedaled really hard unassisted or just got off a steep hill.

We have hundreds of kids of all ages in our community essentially riding electric motorcycles all over town and a lot of them are getting hurt, and unless the police see them running a stop sign, they can't do shit. And even then they have a policy not to because chasing a teenager in a bike with a police car isn't going to be safer than ignoring it.

Right now, we're trying to convince the school district (school districts are entirely separate governmetal bodies from cities in our state) to require registration for ebikes kept at the school so they can inspect those bikes to at least verify they're legal and age-check the kids on the class 3 bikes.

In Oklahoma no such law exist.