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Comment by paiute | Hacker News Reader

only because we have brain dead laws on e bikes. why not 24.5 mph? I see actual electric motorcycles on our bike paths all the time, I have never seen them cause a real problem. People on normal bikes cause all the problems because they have so much invested in their current speed.

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Because kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, and 25mph is 56% more energy which is a huge problem in a collision with a pedestrian or a crash.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-explain...

It's also a big issue with response time and with the rate pedestrians expect bicycles to be travelling. You shouldn't bike on the sidewalk because no one is looking for vehicles going more than a few miles per hour (walking). You shouldn't bike more than 15mph on trails/lanes shared with pedestrians for similar reasons. 20mph is a tolerable compromise, 25mph is flat out dangerous.

This matches my experience on shared pedestrian / bicycles low density roads in countryside. 30 km/h (a little less than 20 mph) is the limit between okish and dangerous. Actually pedestrians start to worry a little before that speed but of course half of them don't see the bicycle approaching. The cyclist see them a long time before overtaking and assesses whether they are safe to pass or require a slow down.

This is a good example of how we get bad laws... Should overweight cyclists be forced to have a lower speed? I can still get my ebike to 25 mph down hill, I would never dream of passing a pedestrian at that speed. I picked 24.5 for a reason and not 25 BTW.

tbh I wouldn't mind the peed limit being higher but introduce some sort of driving lic and exam for it with periodic re-testing. Also re-testing should be mandatory for car drivers too. Both theory, practical, reflex testing.

I ride a bicycle, bike and drive a car and the ammount of crazies on all sides leaves me speachless sometimes. I see cyclist cutting off cars and shooting into a roundabout just because cars will avoid them. I actually had a crash becasue of a retard like this and I chased him until I caught him. Took him to court and won.

On the other side of the coin - I see cars taking turns without checking their mirrors, overtaking while in a queue without making sure no cyclists are passing by. Smashed a bike to bits because of 1 twat. His insurance paid for the bike and treatment.

P.S. I'm not a perfect driver but people these days lack consideration and defensive driving(even the notion of it is foreign now)

I don't understand what you're asking for. There are already electric motorcycles which don't have artificial speed limiters. Those require a motorcycle license and can be driven on any road.

They also generally have 7 times the vattey capacity and at least 15 times the power output. The speed limiter is not the main difference.

I don't think this is a fair take. People on normal bikes do cause problems because of the reason you listed but it's surely not ALL of the problems.

So true. Normal bikers break the rules of the road by far the most in my experience because god forbid they have to stop and start again.

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