Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
A fair number of the e-bike owners I have chatted with are women. Older women. Even if their bikes could go 30mph their owners would never take them up to those speeds.
Glad that's true where you are, but irrelevant to a thread that started specifically with an observation about New York City. It's anything but true here. In NYC pedal assist bikes
are legal, and are not what the opposition is to - rather that's to the illegal electric motorcycles, and misguided attempts to normalize them as "bikes" rather than get the manufacturers to turn them into legitimate roadworthy light motorcycles.
Delivery riders on e-bikes are not dangerous because their bikes have motors! Amazon delivery vans are taking out way more pedestrians (and cyclists) and causing destruction to public and private property than all the e-bike delivery riders in NYC combined!
They'd be fine if they were similarly in the traffic lanes and obeying the stop lights to the same degree as other motor vehicles. Electric motorcycles make tons of sense.
But they reason they are a problem is that they're operating in places unsuited to their speeds - narrow cycle lanes with poor sight lines at intersections.
And places they shouldn't be at all, like sidewalks.
And it's not a behavioral issue alone - the reason delivery folks won't use the legal pedal assist bikes is that they're too slow - they are trying to accomplish a motor vehicle mission while abusing areas reserved for human speeds to bypass traffic.
That just intimidates the rest of society -
especially those little old ladies you imagine to be the ebike market.
The basic reality is that urban density does not accommodate rapid movement - the places you might be able to safely go fast have to be shared with others who want to use them as well, and have to have traffic control devices. Meanwhile the places it's tempting to think offer a way around that aren't designed in a way that's safe for more than moderate pedal cycling speeds.