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by Kadin 3666 days ago
> He has street bikes that will go up to 40 mph.

In my state that's a motorcycle, and illegal to ride on the street without a license plate and insurance. It'll be the same way most everywhere soon, I expect.

3 comments

Probably true where I live, too -- but first a cop would have to (a) care, then (b) notice, then (c) actually catch him in the act of exceeding the speed limit ...
Federally in Canada, the upper limit seems to be 500W and 32km/h in Canada.
If only it was enforced. These electric scooters are really dangerous on the rather narrow and already congested bike lanes in montreal.

Note that I used the term electric scooters. I have nothing against regular bicycles with electric assist. That is, a vehicle with a reasonable weight (40-50 lb) allowing people to got at reasonable bicycle speeds (20 km/h is the max on most city bikepaths here) without exerting themselves. But people doing 30 km/h on a busy narrow bikepath on a 200lb vehicle is just unreasonable.

If the bike infrastructure made sense for these vehicles, it'd be another story. But at the moement and for the foreseeable future, the infrastructure is barely adequate for regular bicycles. The roads would be a way better alternative. I'm all for seeing more cars replaced by electric scooters in urban cores. Of course, winter is a big problem in montreal.

In the UK the limit is 250W / 15mph which seems reasonable to me.