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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

E-bikes that go too fast are already an issue.

Friends wife went for a walk on a pedestrian path, onlookers saw her hit from behind by someone on an e-bike going very fast. She still doesn’t remember anything.

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I wish there was some sort of permitting required to use one of these things. I love the idea of people getting around quickly without needing a car, but I take serious issue with a large number of people I see on these things in the streets (and more annoyingly sidewalks) of Seattle that think they're a pedestrian that just happens to be going 20+ mph.

How much of this is the bicycle, and how much of this is that it enables less conscientious people to go more miles at otherwise normal cycling speeds? The e- part is limited to speeds most people can reach on a normal bicycle unless they modify it.

/r/IdiotsInCars is a monument to how ineffective permitting is for this purpose. The people rear-ending pedestrians on sidewalks at 20MPH might be the same people who never miss their off ramp.

> The e- part is limited to speeds that most people can reach on a normal bicycle.

Maybe.

There are regulations, but the wording is generally such that the bike cannot be sold with a speed capability greater than X. So the bikes ship from the factory with a firmware setting for the max speed of X. But as soon as people buy the bike they go into the bike settings (!) and change it to whatever higher speed that they want.

Whenever crashes happen these settings need to be examined and they need to be part of the liability determination.

Also, how much of this riding in pedestrian areas is because all resources and area has been assigned to cars? Instead of being angry at cyclists, I often wish more people saw that it shouldn't be a fight between "soft road users", but instead a fight against cars limiting where people can move themselves.

If someone runs over a pedestrian and they're in the hospital because they drove in a pedestrian path ... that's on them, not "it's me vs cars".

Problems you see in videos on the internet maybe prove that problems will still occur with permitting.

It doesn't show you if it would happen any less compared to no permitting.

Not that I care either way regarding permitting, but people being stupid is common, but we still do things to try to limit it.

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