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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> (10-30 MPH, faster than walking, not quite car speed), battery-powered, lightweight transit devices.

That's car speed. It isn't highway speed, but when an ebike passes me at the dog beach doing 25mph I'm tempted to put a stick through the front spokes. In a car, 30mph in a school zone would get you a massive ticket ($$$+). Any vehicle capable of such things should be limited to the roads, plated and licensed like every other electric motorcycle. (Don't bother with the helmets. Darwin can work that one out.)

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> I'm tempted to put a stick through the front spokes

You're tempted to risk killing someone because they're doing something dangerous? I'm not sure that's a reasonable response.

Ask me that after I help take a dog to the dog hospital. Plenty of dogs, and people, are hit by ebikes. They are particular dangers at parks because, unlike pushbikes, ebikes are nearly silent.

Plenty of people get bitten by dogs, does it mean I have to attack every dog owner?

Has the particular cyclist you’re thinking of assaulting committed such a misdeed?

>> unlike pushbikes, ebikes are nearly silent.

So an ebike is typically a regular bike PLUS an electric motor. Not sure how that can be quieter than just the regular bike. You can definitely hear whirl of the electric motor as well.

>> Plenty of dogs, and people, are hit by ebikes

Last year only 9 of the total reported bicycle-pedestrian acidents in NYC were with e-bikes.

An e-bike is just a bike from a traffic rule perspective. It is a bit noisier than a regular bike, goes about the same speed (in fact, the motor cuts out at about 15 mph). Its main advantages are that it helps with acceleration and with headwind/hills, but once you're at 15 mph you're on your own.

If you have a situation where dogs regularly interfere with bicycles and the other way around then I suspect that the problem is more with the dog owners (you?) than with the cyclists. I've been a dog owner for many years and my dogs have never been in a situation where cyclists would endanger it, though, I have to admit, one of my hounds once did endanger a cyclist by giving chase (pink spandex, not 100% the dogs fault, but then again they supposedly don't see color). I consider that wholly my fault, the dog pulled the leash right out of my hand and then refused to stop giving chase and that should have never happened.

It all sounds to me like you need something to be worked up about and you've decided that e-bikes are a menace to dogs when in fact the spaces where dogs are allowed to run free are not typically exclusive to dogs but are also shared by dogs with foot and cycle traffic. The responsibility for keeping the dogs and the other traffic safe lies squarely with the owner of the dog. A well mannered dog will stay with its owner and will not interfere with others on foot, bike or otherwise.

Finally, dogs are a much bigger danger to other pedestrians, and children in particular than your typical e-bike will ever be to a dog.

The motor cuts out at 15 mph in the EU, in the US the standard ebike limit is 20 mph, and many ebikes go yet faster than that.

> In a car, 30mph in a school zone would get you a massive ticket

Bikes can stop faster, maneuver easier, and cause significantly less damage than a car when striking something. You rarely ever hear of bikes seriously harming pedestrians for a reason (but of course yes it does happen on occasion).

I'm not supporting dangerously biking through a school zone but this is a silly comparison to make, of course the fines would be lower for a bike.

Bikes don’t stop faster than cars. Plenty of cars approach 1G of deceleration. At .3Gs I’m going over the handlebars of a bike.

Furthermore, in NYC, half of serious pedestrian injuries are caused by bikes, meaning a cyclist is about 200 times more likely to seriously injure a pedestrian than a driver.

I am all for bikes, but let’s not be delusional about the safety issues or basic physics of how poorly they brake.

If you're going over the handlebars of a bike at .3Gs, I think you might be using your bike incorrectly. I'm personally limited as far as braking mainly by my tires slipping or, on downhills, by stoppies. All of which happen at much more than 1G.

Motorcycles can also generally brake at 1G, again limited by the presence of an ABS system, so it's not a physics question, it's that either you have bad brakes or you do not know how to brake on a bike. Even only using the rear wheel should allow you significantly more than .3G

I did some measuring and thinking when I returned my bike to the bike room. I looked up some stuff, and .5g is where one typically goes over the handlebars. .3g is typical stopping speed for an average rider. Elite riders can achieve .7g by moving their butt way behind and below the seat. The front tire friction limit is around .8g with good dry conditions. My bike is way too small and I have the seat post about 1cm into the tube, and I’m also a bit top heavy. The wiki page on bike physics says rear wheel only braking gets about .25g.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynam...

I measured my mountain bike, and the seat is 41” high, and 35” behind the front contact patch. This is terrible for braking, though not entirely out of line with some of the fancy road bikes in the bike room. I should probably get a different bike, as I am quite sure I go over the handle bars at about .3g rather than the more normal .5g.

At any rate, I am not sure how one learns limit braking on a bike. Modern cars the computer does it for you if you just stomp the pedal and some cars even do it preemptively with collision avoidance.

One learns to avoid locking up the brakes by feel and experience. ABS is not necessary, though it is more reliable. For an extreme example, Formula 1 drivers or MotoGP drivers do not use ABS, and yet are able to brake at the very edge of possibility.

Indeed, it is actually possible to brake ever so slightly more efficiently without ABS than with ABS using very slight wheel slip, and smoother braking allows for weight pre-loading going into a turn.

https://www.nathanarose.com/blog/2017/10/4/braking-capabilit...

According to this study, braking using both wheels on modern motorcycles (And, by extension, modern bicycles as both have in the past decade standardized braking systems that operate at the limit of grip) achieved .75G +- .15G. This is without ABS, and the limit using perfect braking at higher speeds yielded deceleration rates greater than 1G.

If the average, skilled rider is able to achieve .7G on modern bikes, this is not at all worse than cars where the average driver is assumed to brake at .4G. According to https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/vehicle_stopping_distance_and_ti... , a moderately skilled driver is assumed to be able to brake at about .5-.6G. This compares favorably.

As for braking technique, it is about extracting as much braking force as possible from the rear tire, then attempting to lower one's center of gravity by leaning down and backwards. An absolutely crucial difference is that in a car, braking is very detrimental to turning, causing over-steer. This is not so on a bicycle or motorcycle, which contributes furthermore to safety, as most accidents are avoided via steering, then steering and braking, and then only braking.

According to this, braking forces of up to 0.83G are possible on a normal bicycle, without suspension nor special positioning: http://www.industrializedcyclist.com/braking-pitchover.pdf

Apply both brakes. When the rear wheel starts to skid, you are near the limit of your braking ability with the front brake.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html#frontuse

It's really quite simple. And you learn it with cursory research about braking on bicycles. Really this ought to be taught in schools.

>> Furthermore, in NYC, half of serious pedestrian injuries are caused by bike

I would be interested to see that citation.

I would also note that very very few people have ever been killed by a bicycle, which cannot be said for cars.

8 over the past 15 years, vs 2300 killed by cars: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestria...

The BYC DOT publishes stats every year that refute this completely. About 30x as many pedesttrians are hurt by cars vs bicycles, and 100x as many killed. You would expect that same ratio to stand up to whatever the GP means by "serious injuries"

>> in NYC, half of serious pedestrian injuries are caused by bikes, meaning a cyclist is about 200 times more likely to seriously injure a pedestrian than a driver.

This absolutely false, but nice try.

2017 city wide stats:

Bicycles: 315 accidents involving pedestrians with 1 fatality. Motor Vehicles: 10,561 and 106 pedestrian fatalities. Not to mention 4,397 bicycle injuries and 24 fatalities.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-data...

Not OC, It would be great if you could normalize the data for number of cars/bikes and for Km/miles done (I do not see this data in your link). Because I am wondering if maybe there are fewer bikes then cars so the numbers comparison will be unfair.

I am not against bikes, cities need better infrastructures, I only needed to drive once on a busy city and I said that I never do it again.

On the other hand, car infrastructure tends to be better separated from people walking compared to bike infrastructure.

A longer distance car drive may happen on a highway fully separated from pedestrians, while cyclists are almost always on bike lanes right next to sidewalks or trails/paths basically shared with pedestrians.

Car infrastructure in most places probably has had 1000x as much money pumped into it as bike infrastructure. If bikes had even 10% of that, you could have luxury, hyper-safe bike paths anywhere and everywhere.

I know, if the numbers look bad for bikes in cities with bad infrastructures and better in cities with good infrastructures after normalization then you can show that investment prevents deaths. Sometimes pedestrians are at fault too so everyone would be safer if bikes can be separated from pedestrians and if data confirms this force a speed limit for bikes on certain sections.

Unfortunately, I see this reaction all the time. The problem is bikes can do this, not just e-bikes, but the perception is that it's only e+bikes, which is why I fear they'll be legislated out of existence.

Hopefully they will be nerfed and not banned -- there is an effort to get ahead of things with reasonable legislation: https://www.bosch-ebike.com/us/everything-about-the-ebike/st...

Not all bikes / riders. Many cyclists have trouble with more than 10 - 12 MPH over an extended time period. I know that when I was a decade younger, and working out for 2 years cycling for 30 - 50 miles per day, a 15 mile ride into work (on a mountain bike) took a good chunk over an hour. I could average 15, but I'd be sweating heavily when I got to work.

So the argument is that it isn't bad when a small percentage of cyclists hit 25 - 30 mph, but when all of them are able to that is where the issue is.

My personal feeling, however, is that especially the models that are pedal assist (where you put some effort into it, and it multiples your effort) is a good way to get otherwise low-fitness people to bike ride more. The more cyclists, the more push for bicycle friendly infrastructure. And people still get exercise on them, more so than in a car.

But regardless of powered vs unpowered, anyone that rides a bicycle fast by pedestrians and dogs is doing it wrong. On an ebike, it should be no effort to slow down to 5 - 8 mph, then speed back up after passing someone.

> pedal assist

I can’t wait for pedal assist ebikes to become more affordable. It opens up biking as an option for a lot more journeys, not just for lower-fitness people, but in regions where it’s hilly.

For where I live in Los Angeles, the places I bike to are a couple of miles away (or close enough that walking makes more sense), but uphill all the way. Having pedal assist would mean that I don’t arrive sweaty with tired legs. I don’t need to go 25mph, just 10mph with less effort.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are different types of pedal assist. There is cadence sensing, where the assist is based on how fast you are peddling. If the assist level for a given cadence is low enough, you still have to put in some effort to maintain speed. If it is higher, then you put in no effort (except freewheeling) to maintain speed.

Second type is torque sensing. This is quite a bit more expensive (an additional couple hundred, plus higher installation skills if you are converting yourself).

Another note is that most assists don't sense hills, so you will have to manually adjust the assist level when going up hill. So at that point, using a throttle-only setup, with a throttle lock (hold throttle in a position for 2 seconds and it keeps it at that setting) works really well. In that case it gives you the sensation of having a good wind at your back helping you out.

The primary cost can be the battery -- anywhere from 200 to 1000, depending on capacity and quality. Second is the motor, 200 - 500. Some come with kits that give you simple throttle control, or you may want to add an advanced ebike computer kit (like I mentioned in the previous comment).

All told, I'm about 1200 in my ebike, plus the bike itself.

They exist. Pedal-assisted = moped. There are electric mopeds.

I agree with you, other than the murder part.

Electric bikes allow people who don’t have fast riding skills to ride faster than they can control, which makes them a danger to other users of the footpath.

All motorized vehicles allow people who don't have fast riding skills to go faster than they can control.

E-bike users usually have a better handle on the control part than the users of other motorized vehicles, if not they won't make it past the first turn. Besides that, all e-bikes sold legally have a motor that progressively down-tunes as it approaches it's legal limit speed (usually at or near 15 mph / 24 km/h). That's easily achievable on a regular bike so people can't ride faster than they could normally. They can however do so for longer and it takes them less effort to start up or go against the wind or up a hill.

> All motorized vehicles allow people who don't have fast riding skills to go faster than they can control.

Yes, but all other motorized vehicles need a licensed operator and to be driven on a road, which I think should be the case for e bikes as well

> That's easily achievable on a regular bike

That really depends on your definition of a regular bike.

The Japanese commuter bikes everyone rides to work or school might get up to 10km/h with some effort.

Giving someone who has only ever rode at about a pedestrian’s jogging or running pace a machine that can hit twice that is a recipe for injuries or death.

TL;DR: E bike riders should be licensed and not share footpaths with pedestrians

I'm wondering if a workable idea would be instead of having pedestrian paths and bike lanes and wondering where new kind of vehicles should go to have different tiers of lane with different speed and weight limits.

For exemple:

* < 10 km.h^-1 & < 15 kilograms vehicle for pedestrian paths (Which would for exemple allow small kids to ride there).

* < 25 km.h^-1 < 30 kilograms for the bike lane equivalent.

* > 25 km.h^1 or > 30 kilograms on the road.

E Bikes that require a license exist (Stromer, many others), those go > 25 Kph, which is a speed most fit cyclists can easily achieve. So if you want E Bikes to be licensed you should also require regular bikes to be licensed. Where I live that would cause a national revolt on the scale that no sane politician is going to go near it.

The difference is the vast majority of people riding push bikes here aren't "cyclists", they are schoolchildren, parents, and office workers, riding very slow bikes. That's why I think E Bikes should require licensing where regular bicycles don't.

Here everybody rides bikes, and E-bikes have - if that was still possible - driven adoption higher still. The number of people that cycle to and from work/school is very large, parents, office workers and children here cycle up to 30 km round trip daily to just get to where they're going. High school age kids from Monnickendam/Marken/Edam go to school in Amsterdam-Noord and quite a few of them make the trip by bike.

Requiring high school age kids to get a license for a bicycle would make absolutely no sense because there is nothing that such a license would give them that they didn't already have. Traffic lessons start pretty early at school here and by the time kids are 10-12 depending on how good they are at this they go to school on their bikes by themselves.

What really helps is that bike traffic here gets prioritized in many places over vehicles, that hitting a cyclist with a car is going to get you into a lot of trouble and that most vehicle drivers are also cyclists. Those things more than anything else helps to keep cyclists safe.

I guess urban Japan is just denser than The Netherlands. I would say most people don't ride more than 5km in one direction; any further and people will generally rent a spot at a train station closer to their destination and bike the last leg of their commute.

It makes sense that's why my opinion is that e Bikes are too fast to be used on footpaths and yours is different.

> What really helps is that bike traffic here gets prioritized in many places over vehicles, that hitting a cyclist with a car is going to get you into a lot of trouble and that most vehicle drivers are also cyclists. Those things more than anything else helps to keep cyclists safe.

This is exactly the same in Japan. A car hitting a bike is automatically judged to be at fault even if the bike was breaking traffic laws, so drivers are very cautious. In principal the same applies to cyclists vs pedestrians.

That of course, doesn't stop people from being terrible drivers or cyclists!

I don't think there should be a draconian licensing scheme, just the same rules that apply to the slowest grade of motorcycles (speed limit 30 km/h)

- Must pass a theory test. The moped test written test is quite easy but anyone who can pass it will know basic road rules and that pedestrians always have the right of way, and that if you hit someone you are in big, big trouble.

- age 16+

- must wear a helmet

My grandma used to have a motorized bicycle to help her get around, the difference with ebikes is that it had a LOT less torque, and that it made a sound so you could hear them coming up from behind you. E-bikes are a lot more zippy and quiet.

Even worse are the high powered e-bikes (rated for 50kph, helmet required), because their users ride them as if they're either a bike or a scooter depending on the situation, zipping between bike lanes and the road whenever. And they're silent.

https://www.sparta.nl/alles-over-sparta/geschiedenis/spartam...

Legally they are classed as scooter so I don't see why they shouldn't be driving them like scooters.

You won't see me near one, going fast on a racing bike is already dangerous enough, anything faster and I'll take four wheels over two any day.

Wow, what an asshole thing to say. A 'dog beach' isn't exclusive to dogs and you are still responsible for what your dog does. It's a beach where dogs are also allowed.

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