Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> The fact that you have to put human effort into accelerating in a pedal assist e-bike absolutely curbs your behaviour, reduces your average speed, and makes you much less reckless.

We have a 40 mile bike trail near me, on which I would frequently bike or walk with my kids and wife. Before e-bikes, 100% of the "closes calls" and rude/reckless behavior experienced on this bike trail were from "road/racing bike" operators, clad in full spandex and very upset that I'm "in their way" and slowing them down from their ideal speed of 15-25+ MPH

Since the proliferation of e-bikes I've yet to have a single negative encounter with an e-bike operator, and continue to have potentially dangerous situations with high speed road/race bikers.

I chatted with one of these road bikers yesterday and he confessed he "hated" e-bikes because of their speed and reckless operators. I told him my experience and he was genuinely surprised, like he had never even considered it.

It's the people, not the bikes.

> It's the people, not the bikes.

1000%. In over 5000 miles of riding e-bikes to work daily in SF, the ONLY times I've been accosted was from the full spandex "road/racing bike" groups.

I've never seen a popular MUP (without delineated lanes for modes) in the US that is anything more than a compromise between each of the modes. I live along a fantastic, popular MUP that turns into an on-street protected bike lane. During evening commute hours the on-street protected bike lane becomes filled with dog walkers and joggers who don't want to use the sidewalk. The US culturally treats public spaces too poorly to be respectful on an MUP; we need to offer more safe space to alternate transportation modes on streets instead of dedicating all that space for cars.

What is a MUP? Not familiar at all with that acronym, believe others might have the same issue as me.

I'd guess multi-use path?

^ Yup multi-use path

multi-use path, full of walkers, runners, and cyclists. Contrast to "bike path", where the expectation is that it is used by human-powered, wheeled vehicles moving at 10-20mph...and not used by dog walkers.

I’m staying in a French seaside town at the moment, where a new MUP has been installed from sea front back through the town within the last year. It’s fucking crazy dangerous. I’ve had to yank my 6yo out of the way of some asshole riders a couple of times this week. It’s taken the place of the footpath that was here before…

I’m all in favour of new cycling infrastructure, but I reckon we need to go full Netherlands and put it on both sides of the road and have directional lanes, leaving the footpaths intact.

Guess it's not just an American thing then. I agree, we need more space devoted to separating out modes. Group them by speeds. "Pedestrian" paths would be 0-6 mph, "biking" paths from 10-20 mph, and high speed vehicles 20+ mph. A beginner cyclist just learning can go on the pedestrian path, an electric moped user that wants to go fast can go in the high speed vehicle lane.

It's always the people. They suck.

I have a road bike and an e-bike (though I don't go "full spandex"). On the road bike, I both go faster on level ground and it's more of a pain to slow down, so I often will time passing more closely.

That being said, the most reckless riders I see are invariably teenagers on e-bikes (often illegally modified to go over 20MPH). Teenagers being reckless is nothing new I suppose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com