In brief, UK reporting on “ebike” collisions and battery fires confuses lawful, UK/EU-compliant electric bicycles with illegal, unregistered, uninsured electric motorcycles. As a result, public perception is deeply skewed compared to the actual risks posed by bona-fide electric bicycles.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in California, but there is drafted legislation to mandate accurate advertising of “e-motos” versus ebikes, with fines accruing to vendors that fail to correctly represent what they’re selling.
IMO, it’s hard for me to blame consumers whom, given high gasoline/petrol prices, need some form of transportation that gets them where they need to go and minimizes external harms (eg automobile risk of injury). Evan correctly identifies vendors and importers that flout the law and push the legal risk into riders. At the same time, e-motos are legit for off-road use and here in California, they’re great fun in that regard. At bottom, fair advertising isn’t controversial; it’s no different than wanting to know the ingredients in food products.
On a separate note, Evan also flagged a case of police misidentification and confiscation of a lawful e-bike. Which I find particularly surprising, given that UK police tend to be more uniformly instructed than their American counterparts. No doubt that Californian police have also confused ebikes with electric motorcycles on occasion, but the result in the UK seems is to go immediately to confiscation and destruction without any meaningful system of review. Which seems problematic, at best
It is trivial to hack them to 40 mph.
But this is the danger of relative speed differences. 28 mph into a pedestrian could kill them.
Honestly, on my regular analog bike, I rarely get above 15mph. 10-12mph is normal cruising speed. And hitting low to mid 20s on a downhill quickly starts to feel very dangerously fast.
28mph is already a very generous speed limit, and IMO it should honestly be lower than that. (Outside of certain specialty applications, perhaps.)
For reference: 10mph=16km/h, 15mph=24km/h, 20mph=32km/h, 28mph=45km/h
Over here 28mph is literally the speed limit for mopeds, it’s frankly an insane speed to reach on anything with pedals and you should never be going that fast without at least some heavy clothing and a proper helmet that protects the side of the head and ideally has a visor.
I think something like 30-35km/h would be a sensible speed limit for american-style e-bikes, provided that goes along with a legal requirement to wear a helmet on such vehicles. It’s fast enough that you can avoid riling up car drivers (and you can get places quickly) but slow enough that you’d hopefully avoid any debilitating injuries (provided you’re wearing a helmet). I would however want them banned from many smaller bike paths, treating them as pseudo-mopeds.
And frankly 25km/h is slightly questionable as a speed limit for normal e-bikes, just nudging it down to 23km/h makes a big difference in how safe and comfortable it feels both for the rider and for those around them. I wouldn’t be upset if they were limited to 20km/h, provided there’s also the faster pseudo-moped class to serve as a complement.
It’s very hard for most people to sustain 28mph on a bicycle.
I think this is one solution that should have a widespread consensus which is to mandate manufacturers make them harder to de-limit and hold them accountable if they fail to do so.