[alecst]

Yea I partly agree I guess. I am a cyclist in NYC and there are definitely "e-bikes" that present more like motorcycles and people drive them over the Queensboro Bridge bike path which is like 3 feet wide. It's crazy. I'm surprised I don't see more streaks of blood on the concrete there to be honest.

So I would like to see better e-bike laws that make it illegal to have a machine that's too heavy and/or fast, and to issue court summonses to people operating those machines in bike lanes. That seems fair. It's a clear hazard, it's a selfish use of resources, and if everyone did it they'd just close the bike path altogether because it'd become unusable.

Having said that, that's not what the city is doing. They're fixated on cyclists running red lights and stop signs, not distinguishing between different kinds of bikes. Bikes, and e-bikes, are safer than cars for everyone around them. We want to encourage people to bike more and drive less because they're so much safer. (Remember a bike isn't like a car -- if a cyclist hits a pedestrian, they're gonna get hurt too!) For this reason, many states allow bikes to treat red lights as stop signs and stop signs as yield signs. So NYC's sudden shift in policy, to me, feels backwards.

It sucks because if safety was really the major concern the mayor could have just built more and safer bike lines -- which was what he promised to do, made a plan to do, and then just didn't.

[john-h-k]

> They're fixated on cyclists running red lights and stop signs, not distinguishing between different kinds of bikes

Absolutely agree this is silly and cities should be encouraging cycling.

> We want to encourage people to bike less and drive more

assuming you meant to flip this?

An e-bike that can even do 20mph comfortably is much closer to a moped than a bicycle, partly due to weight, and partly due to "ease of speed". Obviously a person can easily cycle 20mph, but it just isn't the kind of thing you do on in a crowded area. Very different when it is just a throttle. So grouping them in with bikes, rather than mopeds or similar, is just extremely silly

[conor-]

> An e-bike that can even do 20mph comfortably is much closer to a moped than a bicycle

There are pedal assist ebikes hitting the market that are nearly indistinguishable from a road bicycle and weigh as much as a kitted out steel touring bike (i.e. ~35-40 lbs) and can comfortably do 20 mph.[0] I don't really think that's treading any sort of line of being close to a moped.

Also there are absolutely people riding analog bikes capable of having an average cadence of 15-20 mph who ride with reckless abandon on crowded mixed-used paths in cities - so maybe you don't do that, but there's a pretty large subset of cyclists who are doing that because biking is more of a sport activity than strictly pragmatic form of transportation. Bad bike path etiquette extends beyond ebikes

[0] ride1up is one brand making such bikes

[AdamN]

Getting a pedelec bike to 20mph takes real effort unless cheats are involved - it's not really a moped. However there needs to be some honest classification that's global to handle the new spectrum from traditional bike to full on motorcycle and everything in between.

[close04]

Depending on the country the motor cutoff is 32km/h, which means that speed is more accessible to your average rider than on a classic bike. And the elephant in the room is how compliant many e-bikes really are. Some even advertised how easy it is to remove (raise?) the limit.

Where I live I find cyclists to be the most reckless participants in traffic, way more than drivers and pedestrians. Cyclists never have to take even the most basic course even just in school to learn legislation or general rules. They always act like they own the road whether on the sidewalk among pedestrians, or on the street among cars. E-bikes just made this worse because everyone can cycle above their natural capabilities now.

But it's also clear that the "blast radius" of a cyclist is usually very limited compared to the damage a car can cause even with banal actions like opening a door at the wrong time. So I understand why their behavior is tolerated compared to when drivers to the same.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Also, reckless behaviour is self-limiting to some degree with bike-shaped transport (and scooters) as crashing tends to hurt a lot, whereas car drivers don't have as much skin in the game.

[SauciestGNU]

I don't completely disagree, but as a regular cyclist with maybe only slightly above average fitness, I can drop the hammer at an intersection and be at 22mph in 10 or 15 seconds. I also own an ebike with a throttle and it's not substantially faster off the line than my muscle, it's just easier to sustain high speeds.

[ryandrake]

> Absolutely agree this is silly and cities should be encouraging cycling.

They should be encouraging cycling, but not by making red lights a free-for-all.

I once lived on the corner of a pretty busy cycling street by the beach in Florida, with a stoplight in the intersection outside my window. We had these gigantic "trains" of cyclists regularly just blowing straight through red lights, because there typically wasn't a lot of traffic coming from the cross street. I remember one occasion where a car was entering the intersection from the cross street (car had the green light, major street had the red), and a huge train of about 20 bicycles at full speed ran the red light and slammed into the side of the car with a loud "thump thump thump thump thump thump..." Total wreckage. Busted bicycles all over the street after they fucked up, and the cyclists had the nerve to be irate. If I hadn't run out and started recording, the car driver probably would have been assaulted by these raging hotheads.

These guys need to obey traffic laws, too.

[bb88]

Idaho has the "potato" laws for bikes, and they typically work out pretty well. The laws were made with the observation that cars kill more cyclists than cyclists kill cars. So allowing bikes more freedom in the street is typically better for bike safety.

[pandaman]

I don't see how cold this make sense. Pedestrians kill even fewer cars, should they be safer with even fewer restrictions? Perhaps let them walk on highways if more freedom means more safety?

[const_cast]

If you design your streets for pedestrian safety that means pedestrians will be more safe. The reason we have so many pedestrian limitations is because we design streets for cars first, and put everything else to the side, making those everything else incredibly endangered.

More curves, lower limits, more stops. Cities that implement more bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly design are safer for everyone, cars included.

[pandaman]

I am sorry, I don't see how is this explaining how running red lights and stop signs makes bicycles safer. Another example - trains don't take much damage from the cars yet cars suffer catastrophic damage from trains, should cars be allowed to run through train crossing gates for more safety? If we put everything other than cars to the side, it means trains too, right? So why cars have to stop at the crossing gates, should not it be safer to remove any gates and/or traffic signals from the railroad crossings?

[bb88]

A lot of things don't have to make sense for them to work. Idaho is solidly in the top half of states safest for bicycles. They are the 18th safest state for bicycles in the US.

[pandaman]

You brought up some logic behind this law, so I thought you actually have seen some sense in this. Now it appears to be just the "having such a law in a low population state does not push it to the bottom of the safety so this law is great" argument. One should be able to see the fallacy of such an argument without even looking up what are the safest states for cyclists on top of Idaho and what kind of laws they have wrt stop signs and red lights...

[bb88]

> Obviously a person can easily cycle 20mph, but it just isn't the kind of thing you do on in a crowded area.

I've seen many road bikes do exactly this on a crowded bike path of pedestrians, scooters, and e-bikes. I've also seen e-bikes wait patiently to pass and slow down when there's traffic. I think proclaiming that e-bike riders are worse than road bike riders is patently false.

So it's not really an "e-bike" problem. It's really a speed problem.

[alecst]

Yea I switched my words around, thanks.

[lxgr]

> it's a selfish use of resources

Probably worth noting at this point that the ultimate beneficiaries are people ordering food on various delivery services. In my experience, these overpowered bikes are almost exclusively used by delivery drivers.

I rarely order online (too much trash, too many hostile UX patterns of sneaking in fees disguised as "taxes" etc.), but when I do, I'd really prefer the delivery person would not risk their and others' lives running red lights all the way.

[john-h-k]

I wonder if Uber/Deliveroo/etc could implement a penalty for doing a delivery - when you are marked as an e-bike deliverer - "too fast". Obviously they have no incentive to do it, but it seems the easiest single action to slow them down

[disgruntledphd2]

It's worse than that. I'm pretty sure that a rider can't compete without engaging in these behaviors.

[lolinder]

> Bikes, and e-bikes, are safer than cars for everyone around them. We want to encourage people to bike more and drive less because they're so much safer.

All else being equal, yes. But NYC drivers are exceptionally skilled relative to the rest of the country. They're nuts in a lot of ways, but they're also far more respectful of pedestrians, far more aware of their surroundings, far more willing to drive slowly, and far more happy to stop for pedestrians even if they technically have the right of way.

NYC e-bike riders (especially the Citi bikes) are the opposite. They're far less likely to stop, far more likely to be going way faster than is safe, and far more likely to blow through stop signs entirely.

There's a well-documented phenomenon in safety that the "safer" choice in the abstract can actually end up being more dangerous because it feels safer, which leads to riskier behavior. I fear this is what is happening in NYC: incentivizing people to ride bikes doesn't get you 10x as many of the good, respectful, careful bikers you had 10 years ago. It gets you a whole bunch of reckless amateurs who buy the hype that bikes are safer and bike like maniacs. We may well find that that's worse for pedestrian safety than the well-known and well-regulated dangers of cars.

[alecst]

Look, in my neighborhood, in a single weekend, something like 5 people died due to car crashes. One of them was a kid who was killed by a driver who was texting. Some drivers were drinking. Last year, a driver drove into the lobby of a CityMD a few blocks from me and destroyed the entire corner of the building and possibly killed people, I don't know. Just yesterday a car was upside down in the middle of the road on Skillman Blvd.

Even having said that, I kind of agree that it's true that drivers in Manhattan tend to be pretty aware, considerate, and mindful compared to other cities, all the traffic lights notwithstanding. But they have to be -- even just a little bit of distraction and they will kill someone. I can't say the same for the Citi bikers as reckless as they may be. They're far more likely to hurt themselves than someone else, and I'd rather have the reckless amateurs be on bikes than driving cars.

[fallinghawks]

I've driven around Queens a little and bicyclists, even e-bikes, seem to be both rarer and more law abiding than the delivery people on scooters. I haven't driven much, but every close shave I've had there was with a scooter. They're lawless - they ride on sidewalks, go the wrong way on one-way streets, pass cars on the right, pass you then immediately grind to a halt because they need to make a left turn but apparently needed to get ahead of you first. It would be a relief to see them get some consequences and hopefully start to be safer.

[lnjoe]

> So I would like to see better e-bike laws that make it illegal to have a machine that's too heavy and/or fast

Fwiw, shouldn’t we consider the weight of the bike (e-bike or not e-bike) + the weight of the rider?

On my 75lb e-bike and weighing 160lb, am I more dangerous than a 220lb dude on a 15lb Schwinn?

Speed’s an issue also, but I’ve had my road bike up to 55 mph (downhill) and never exceed 24 mph on my e-bike.

So, I guess I’m saying to be equitable, set speed and combined weight limits on all things with 2 wheels.

[bryanlarsen]

> not distinguishing between different kinds of bikes.

The appropriate forums are filled with people outraged on the "ban on e-bikes" that NY State & City are leading the charge for. They were the first to ban non-UL certified bikes, and have proposed and/or enacted several other regulations against over-wattage bikes.

I'm not sure how effective the laws and enforcement are, but NYC is definitely doing more than nothing to get rid of the heaviest/fastest bikes.

[meagher]

Aside: Queensboro Bridge bike path is much wider now.

https://gothamist.com/news/new-queensboro-bridge-walkway-ope...

[illiac786]

> Bikes, and e-bikes, are safer than cars for everyone around them.

I would tend to agree but it needs qualifying. If e-bikes run reds but cars do not, then this might not be true anymore.