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There's a whole class of electric vehicles being held back by regulation. We can slap electro motors on wheels and bicycles are not the only vehicles you can build with that tech. Many EU countries are e.g. banning throttles on eBikes, but why are we forcing all those delivery drivers to pedal the whole day? Just give them a gas throttle. For many eBikes uses it really doesn't make sense to include the whole bicycle complexity of gears, chains, shifting and so on. Just give them a motor and a throttle.
Killing the eBike with additional rules, insurance, mandatory inspections and so on would be absolutely idiotic and a good business model for insurances, car companies and so on, so I'm really afraid that this could happen
We actually need to end the "gig worker" business model where they're racing around all day and reckless driving translates to more money.
The same way that limiting the work hours of truck drivers protects them and others. Without these restrictions, companies would simply demand even longer hours for less money.
Do you know that there is a reason for the regulations on light motorcycles, mopeds, mofas, Vespas, scooters and however you name them? It's the number of fatal traffic accidents. And yes, there are probably over two dozens of these motorized vehicle classes which originally started with the idea of an "bicycle with a bit of motor" such as mopeds and mofas.
We want to reduce traffic and oil consumption and can't figure why people buy larger vehicles in North America?
Yeah, the issue isn't the light motorcycles/mopeds/etc....
So dude is right, a whole class of vehicle is being being held back by regulation, and the premise/reason is ridiculous for a society that would like to see less cars on the road.
I love that viewpoint of American tech bros that "regulation baaad!". Are you aware that the living standard in the EU is in many measures much better than in the US? To start with, everyone has health insurance here while US has some Third-World reality...
Bud, the point isn't simply removing cars, it's about having something better, which includes safer.
If your motor-vehicle endangers people, such as by vroooooming in a bike line where people are pedaling at average speeds, you're the threat, you're the car.
A thing which has a motor and where the human delivers less than 30% of the power at max speed is a light motorcycle. The reason for that is with more power you need a heavier battery and a much heavier frame with better brakes. You need a solid helmet which again makes it impractical to pedal at power because it becomes hot. At 40 km/h, it becomes to chill in the winter and at 45 km/h or so, you really need protective clothing because otherwise in a fall, the asfalt will strip your skin off. At that point it is very clearly becoming a motorcycle. You have lost thr technical sweet spot of a bicycle at that point. There have been many attempts to blur that line (guess what the name "Mofa" comes from or "Moped" or why these things have pedals which nobody uses).
And we have motor-powered bikes since a long time - over 75 years -, and regulations have evolved out of need. Traditinally, the motor was a combustion engine - but that's the only difference and it is totally irrelevant for traffic safety.
That's not totally correct. Here in Germany we have so called "Mofas" which translates to "motorized bicycle". Those are different from eBikes and heavily regulated. There are age limits, drivers licence, insurance requirements, regulations where you are allowed to drive and so on. And yes, they are also restricted to 25km/h. Why are there this heavy regulations which are not in place for our pedelecs? The reason is plain racism in combination with "old people hate young people". Those Mofas were popular with young migrant workers back in the 50s and 60s. And therefore they were regulated as fuck. You will see stuff like this with modern eScooters where the whole class will be restricted because they are popular with younger people.
What I wanted to say was exactly this: There is a rule in place that basically created artificial differences between the same thing. A 25km/h vehicle with a motor and pedals is heavily restricted, another one is totally free. Which makes no sense.
I don't believe that. I was going to secondary school in Germany in the late seventies / early eighties and they were very popular with white middle class teenagers and apprentices younger than 18 years old. And they were regulated because of tons of serious accidents. Migrant workers would not earn very well and they would use a bike. Young students or workers would much more likely light motorcycles - in the seventies, the motorcycle industry worked very hard to both make them more affordable, and to work around regulations for motor bikes which had much higher safety requirements.
In addition, in 1965 mofas where exempted from requiring a drivers licence. Before, as of 1960, a mofa was considedered a moped and did require a proper class 5 (today: class AM) drivers license.
I really can't see this in the traffic accident statistics. Yes, there are a lot of motorcycle accidents, but if you look deeper into them, those are in most cases "real" motorcycles and not those slower variants. And if you take a look at those eScooters, most accidents here are people driving those rental scooters while drunk. That's a problem, but that's also a problem you won't solve by regulating the dude going to the train station in the morning.
It is very clear from statistics of traffic accidents between cars and pedestrians that risk of lethal injuries rises sharply with speed, even at speeds of 30 km/h. It does not make a difference whether a car crashes with 30 km\h into you, or you crash with 30 km/h into a car.
It is also very clear that riding light motorcycles is far more risky than riding a bike.
Actually it does make a difference, as cynetic energy is proportionnal to mass, so 30kmh car is much more dangerous than a 30kmh bike. Though it does not invalidate your point
No, that's not the case. What's relevant, especially with a difference of mass so large, is the relative speed of the two objects, which is 30 km/h.
@Alerian@sh.itjust.works
Suppose the impact coefficient k is similar, it does make a difference whether a bike crashes into a standing car (case 1) or a car crashes into a standing biker (case 2).
collapsed inline media
The thing is: You are using velocities v1, v2 which are relative to Earth. But none of the two vehicles collide with Earth - they collide with each other, thus the thing that matters is their relative speed, thus the difference of their velocities relative to Earth.
(That's also why the speed at which both Earth, the car, and the motorized bike move around the sun does not matter - relative speed is all what matters).
The other thing is that a human colliding with an object of several tons weight with a speed of, say, 36 km/h is not "elastic". 36 km/h is 10 meter per second, which is equal to about one second of free fall (accelerating with a= 9.81 meter per square second to the ground), which is equivalent to a fall height of h = a/2 * s ^2 or 5 meters.
Somebody falling from 5 meters hight on hard concrete ground will not bounce up but will likely have some broken bones, or a broken skull. What happens is that all parts of thier body is decelerated to a speed of zero within a distance of one or two centimeters, which involves massive forces that easily break bones.
And a speed of 14 m/s, or 54 km/h corresponds to a fall of ten meters depth - almost certainly lethal if hitting a two-ton concrete block.
The formula includes the relative speed (v_2 - v_1) of both bodies. Derivation, see Wikipedia or a book on engineering mechanics.
case 1, k=0. Fortunately, a car is not solid rock. I don't know about a typical of k for collissions of humans with a car, but if you say it's 0, that's actually good for the biker, as the forces then acting on their tissues is smaller than if that would not the case.
So concluding. If the collision of the biker and the car is completely inelastic, it doesn't matter if the biker crashes into a resting car or the car crashes into a standing biker. The only thing that matters is the relative velocity of the two objects.
Sorry I don't have much time today to get into it. Seems to me you can't solve for case 2 here since in this case m2 and m1 are switched. But it does not matter, I am not trying to solve for speed before and after.
The force of the impact does not depend on the mass, I agree, but the energy to dissipate (in the cyclist body) is much higher. I'm just saying that inertia plays a role as it contribute to the energy necessary to stop either vehicule. I am happy to be proven wrong, I just don't think this is the right equation to do so.
No, for both cases, body "1" is the biker and body "2" is the car.
This is just for the sake if simplicity. The force does in general depend on both masses, not just the mass of the car. Yet, the biker has only ~ 5 - 10 % of the mass of the car and thus, their mass can be neglected and the simplfied solution (m_1 / m_2 -> 0) doesn't include masses anymore
Exactly. This part is included in the coefficient k. Yet, for the simplified solution, the biker doesn't stop the car in any form.
Suppose a completely plastic impact, k=0: The biker would be stopped to zero velocity in case 1, and in case 2 they would be accelerated to the velocity of the car. Here the magnitude of the force/acceleration doesn't depend on whether the bike did move or the car did move.
For the elastic case, k=1, car and bike are treated as billard balls: For case 1, the biker moves with the same velocity as before, but in opposite direction. For the other case, the biker would move in opposite direction, but with the double velocity as in case 1. Thus, here, the force causing the acceleration must also be twice.
So as long as the impact is not purely plastic, it does matter whether the biker hits the car (case 1) or the car hits the biker (case 2).
Fine by me, just say them to obtain a driver's license and insurance for a scooter, since basicaly it is what they would drive. Or drop the need of the license for the scooters and light bike.
The point is that a ebike with a throttles is basically a scooter (or bike) and then it is a different things, with differnt rules.
But is there really a fundamental difference? If I build a throttle on my bicycle, it still has the same breaks, the same lights, the same driver, the same max speed. The only difference is that I do not have to pedal, everything else is exactly the same. There are countries where it is totally legal to do this and others where you get quite harsh fines. There is no reason for it to be a different thing.
I would point out that an ebike with a throttle are more like this one (sorry, only find in Italian) than a normal bicycle from a road code point of view.
Is this what we call "Mofa" in Germany? What are the rules for it?
The same used for a scooter since it was a scooter. But it is no longer produced :-(
As this one is capable of reaching 45 km/h it's a "Moped", not a "Mofa".
The problem is infrastructure.
We have pavement for trucks/cars at >30km/h... We have pavement for pedestrians <5km/h
What we lack is the dedicated pavement for the stuff in between.
Regulating these light-motorized devices to be banned on the other two has been the real issue of acceptance and adoption of the tech.
Then they could simply buy a small bike, with all the attached rules, like driver's license and so on.
The point is that a ebike and a bike are two separated things that follow different rules.
Rules are imposed as consequences.
Yeah, but those consequences are a direct result of poor infrastructure to facilitate the technology. Not the technology itself.
The consequences are more about these light motorized vehicles interacting with either cars/trucks meant to go faster and be larger, or interacting with pedestrians or non-motorized devices.
If they had their own dedicated pavement like the other two, most(not all) of those 'consequences' disappear.
The problem is that a licence is expensive as fuck here in Germany. If I wanted to upgrade my drivers licence to those 125 motorcycles, that will be around 800β¬. A full motorcycle licence is several thousands of Euros. There are also age limits in place. So a young person can just hop on a bicycle with a motor for free or "simply buy a small bike" with costs of several thousands of Euros. It would make sense if we bring the cost of thoses licences down.
Yeah and that is exactly what I wanted to say: Why is a motor assisted thing that can go 25km/h a different thing from a motor assisted thing that can go 25km/h? I'm not talking about full motorcycles, but to give you an exemple: I own an eBike. There is a throttle available that would let me cruise at up to 25km/h without pedaling. That is totally illegal to install here, because that would make it a legally totally different thing and that would e.g. also prevent me from using my current brakes or to install the current tires. Which makes no sense - the risks are the same, brakes and tires are of course normal bicycling components which are totally fine to use at 25km/h, but the regulation is crap.
The scooter license is included with the car's license, and scooters can go up to 45 kph. An e-bike with a throttle could be classified as a scooter (or even a Mofa, which is essentially what it is anyway).
Damn, and I was thinking that in Italy licences are expensive...
The problem is that this way you would have a young person on what is basically a bike but without even the smallest knowlegde of how to behave on a public road.
Probably they follow different rules to be approved to be on the street.
This way you basically made out a scooter out of your bike, that is what the regulation probably want to avoid.
And that is exactly the point: The regulation doesn't make any sense. It is the same vehicle. Me pedalling doesn't bring any safety improvement. It's not suddenly a scooter, it's the same vehicle.
There are a lot of countries where throttles on eBikes are legal and they do not have much problems either. So yeah, there might be a big legal difference, but that is totally arbitrary and we could do better.
Not according to the road code, evidentely
Yeah and I'm criticizing the road code.
It does, as stopping your bike from 25 km/h will occur more often if no pedaling is required and thus, the brakes (or the rim) may overheat. Many pedelecs ("E-Bikes") do still have rim brakes or their disc brakes have smaller dimensions than required for proper e-bike with throttle.
Not really - I'm going 25km/h if I'm pedaling and I would go 25km/h with a throttle. And bike manufacturers fitting underpowered brakes on eBikes is an issue for another regulation?
And how many time you reach 25 km/h while pedaling and how many time you reach 25 km/h with a throttle ?
If they become a danger to the others then yes.
Have you ever ridden an eBike? It's totally easy to reach 25km/h by pedalling. It's also possible to reach that speed (and to go over that) on a normal bicycle without a motor
Yes.
I didn't ask if it is possible but how many times you reach that speed while pedaling versus how many time you reach it using the throttle.
I reach it every time. You do not need much pedal assist to reach the max. And if I'm on my road bike without a motor, I'm even faster. And I communte by bicycle and can tell you: 25km/h is the default speed for eBikes
Yes, exactly this is what makes e-bikes so unpredictable in traffic. While a normal biker is unlikely to bing 350 W onto the street every time they start, it's a piece of cake with an e-bike. Additionally, as e-bikes legally count as regular bikes, they are subject to the same slack safety standards and e-bike manufacturers regularly have been criticised e.g. by Stiftung Warentest for failing components.