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 The previous laws for e-bikes were based on outdated assumptions about battery & motor technology.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
1. https://apps.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=6110&Year=202... text: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Se...