In my state the bike industry and bike federation see more dollars to their organizations with a larger population of users, even if it is a safety problem, so it will probably be only a matter of time before some pedestrians are killed in my area. So far many of the e-bikers are following the city ordinances and staying on roads - or not using the motors when on bike paths. Some of the e-bikers that are illegally using the trail systems in my community are riding them as if they were in a motorcycle race. Sometimes they ride the ones that have to be pedaled to energize the motor, sometimes not.
A lot of the e-bikes out there have had custom chips installed to override some of the speed limiters etc. Two months ago I was touring on PEI, I was going down a bike trail (their Confederation trail system is very nice and well maintained). It was raining and windy, so there was a lot of the wind noise in the trees, lots of rain noise on my helmet cover, and of course the tire rolling over gravel noise from my bike. So with the background noise I did not hear the e-bike approach behind me that was going at least 40 mph as it passed me on the trail, I was probably doing about 12 mph at the time. Scared the crap out of me as it suddenly was only inches to my side and flew by as fast as the cars and trucks on the highways that I was trying to avoid by using the bike trail to ride from Charlottetown to the Confederation Bridge that day. I took the photo below on that trail that day.
