Electric bikes
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@pmf 147684 wrote:
Excuse me if this has already been debated to death — I’m new here.
I’ve been commuting from Vienna to DC for over 20 years. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of electric bikes on the trail. Is this legal? Seems like they qualify as a motorized vehicle to me. Over the years I’ve seen one or two a week, but lately, they’re everywhere. The big problem I have are the people riding these things — they’re lousy bike riders — and they’re able to go 20+ mph on these bikes. It’s a safety hazard. Kind of like giving a 16 year old kid a race car. There are times when I yell at them “Get a real bike”. This seems to strike a cord in some of them — so I must not be the only cyclist who does this. One guy slowed down and told me that he was trying to get in shape to ride to work. He was at least 10 years younger and 20 lbs lighter than I am. I asked him how buying a motorized bike is going to accomplish that. He told me to F-off and buzzed away. I was at Spokes recently and there was a guy with an electric bike. I asked him how he liked it. He said it is just great. I can get to work from Vienna to DC in 45 minutes (takes me an hour) and I “get my exercise”. I damn near asked him if he had a motorized elliptical machine at home to use when it snows. Or maybe watching golf on TV would suffice. I asked a guy in DC while waiting at a light about the range he gets. He said 25 miles, but since his commute was 12 miles each way, he charges it at the office in the daytime just to make sure it’s fully charged for the ride home. “You really don’t want to have to pedal this thing”
If it keeps going at the pace it’s been going, half the bikes on the path are going to be electric bikes in the next 5-10 years. How can people be so lazy?
I own one. I bought it three years ago because I wanted to commute via bicycle (thus saving an hour of commuting time per day) BUT did not have access to a shower at work, which made using my road bike untenable. Your “all e-bikers are lazy” is lazy logic on your part.
As has been discussed multiple times on this topic (and by Drewdane on this thread), your beef should be with the type of behavior you see on the roads and paths, not what people are riding. I’ve seen way more bad behavior from pathletes than I have from e-bikers on the trails. In fact, while riding my e-bike I found myself being more cautious and willing to slow to ensure my passes were safe since I wasn’t concerned about conserving momentum. But that’s just my personal experience. In fact, the only annoying e-biker I’ve seen recently on the custis is the guy who uses a Specialized Turbo AND logs his strava rides as a regular bike rides (instead of using the handily available e-bike category). But he calls all of his passes and I haven’t seen him do anything to endanger other trail users.
E-bikes are here to stay. And they can be your friends and fellow advocates for better cycling facilities and safety improvements. So please don’t yell at them just because they’re going slightly faster than you…
And by the way, I recently moved offices and now have readily available shower access, so the e-bike has largely been shelved (I’m offering it for sale on the classifieds thread
). My average commuting time is not too much different and I will often ride faster in certain stretches than I could on the e-bike, since it’s much easier to cruise at 20+ on the hybrid bike than the e-bike.
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