complained how he almost gets run over by ebikes every day

Which is to say, he’s never been harmed by an ebike in his life. Notice how his anecdote perfectly mirrors stories from pedestrians about the number of times they’ve “almost been hit by cyclists” while meanwhile they’ve literally never been hit by a bike and are much more likely to get hit by a car. No perspective. No self-crit.

1. It’s a car grid world of 6-lane surface roads with high speed limits.
2. It’s where people on the east coast go to retire (Elderly drivers).

And Daytona Beach in particular is a NASCAR speedway town.

In the free stuff box?

Haha I don’t know enough about Parisian culture to be comfortable taking such potshots!

My account of 12 years with a nearly pristine history got permabanned presumably after the mods of /r/portland made false reports about me to the admins because my advocacy for the homeless wasn’t what they wanted their controlled discourse to look like. They harassed me across other subreddits before doing so, too. I’m pretty sure one of the mods was an admin or knew admins because at one point in modmail they let slip an implication that they had access to Reddit’s browser fingerprinting. I was the main moderator of a somewhat popular NYC-based subreddit (I’d moved across the country), that sub was suddenly lawless after I poof disappeared and I have no way of explaining to the sub members what happened. Reddit is just a cesspool at this point.

Come meet the most vindictive, aggravated, compulsively argumentative people you’ve ever met. On Reddit!

You’re right, it is indeed a legal speed limit and not a physical throttle requirement, thanks for getting me to actually scrutinize it. However I still strongly disagree that this is not an attack on micromobility: A 15 MPH cap is simply not safe for NYC streets where traditional cyclists, cars, trucks, busses, etc are all traveling > 20 MPH. This bill is designed to score quick points for Adams with reactionary New Yorkers who only encounter ebikes when they’re zooming down the sidewalk at the start or end of their trips. It will be selectively enforced, just like the existing ban on riding on the sidewalk is. A far better solution would be to just actually enforce the existing ban on sidewalk riding, and not selectively.

Conservative leaders in NYC and NYPD pull shit like this all the time: Selectively / rarely enforce a sensible law -> Dum-dum voters think no such law exists because they continue to see violations -> Propose new law to “fix” the issue -> Easy votes from dum-dums -> Selectively / rarely enforce the new law -> Wash rinse repeat. Everyone loses.

It makes me livid that professional journalists still refer to preventable motor violence as “accidents”. The most charitable way to describe what happened here is a crash. The most accurate way to describe what happened here is institutionally or personally negligent manslaughter. In the year 2025 there is nothing accidental about the way that road and highway departments all over the world continue to uphold viscerally deadly environments as the normative streetscape.

It is the latter, a limit on bike power.

Right. They should just enforce it.

I’m gonna sound like an AI when I talk to people in Chinese because Duolingo.

Right, I think most of these delivery ebikes are throttle-operated. And they’re trying to get to their destinations quickly, because a lot of people tip their delivery guys based on expediency. I wish we had curb-separated cyclepaths like in the Netherlands because it would make this debate so much more straightforward and speed-capping would be a simple yes, but in NYC delivery cyclists are usually rolling down 3-4 lane wide avenues among cars going 25-35 MPH (~40-55 km/h). Like almost all other bike problems, the issue is actually the cars.

I’m a former moderator of /r/nycbike on reddit and I can attest, a lot of cyclists hate ebikers because instead of seeing an ally against car culture they just see one more “other” with whom they have to compete for limited bike infrastructure space, who they feel goes too fast in those spaces, and they think isn’t enforced against enough. I hate to say it but just like most groups of people, a lot of cyclists aren’t able to step back and appreciate a shared struggle. They don’t realize that they’re doing the exact same thing to ebikers that car drivers do to them. They don’t realize that the limited space they’re fighting over is an arbitrary restriction. They don’t realize how legislating against ebikes is just a wedge, the tip of which is destined to cut them too once driven too far. So while I’m sure a lot of the detractors in this thread are legitimate car brains, I wouldn’t be surprised if just as many if not more of them are subscriber cyclists who maybe need a reality check.

Oh I dunno. But yes I imagine they’re decently customizable since they’re so simple. If a mechanic wanted to limit the throttle at the hardware level they probably could.

I dont think I follow. What’s your point?

As in like, “Damn, infinitesunrise got hands…”? :P

I don’t think most delivery guy ebikes have an app… They’re a battery-powered motor with a throttle, that’s about it. There are low-cost mechanics who specifically service the delivery guys, a lot of the motorized parts are custom rebuilds by those dudes.

The people who ride this bikes are usually immigrant delivery guys who have little to no cash and not many alternatives.

I lived and worked there for 15+ years, was a daily cyclist (Non-motorized). eBikers do ride onto the sidewalk at the very start or end of their trips. But they’re already not allowed to do that - NYC has long had a blanket ban on riding any vehicle on sidewalks. The city should consider actually enforcing their existing rules before making new (IMO very stupid) ones. This is just reactionary pandering.

NYC actually reduced local road speeds to 25MPH city-wide like 10 years or so back under Bill de Blasio. It was an uphill fight with state government since the state is who gets to set those speeds unless the locality puts speed signs on every street where there’s an exception, and even NYC didn’t have the money (Or space) to put a speed sign on literally every block in the city. So after decades of 30+ being the norm the city was able to negotiate the state down to 25. 20 would have been better but the state wouldn’t have let it happen and that’s also the pace where New York drivers lose their patience and just start habituating to breaking the rule all the time.

Yeah but blinking bike lights are also illegal to sell in Germany because you realized that drunk drivers target fixate on them and you apparently found that ban to be a better solution than aggressively cracking down on drunks. So I don’t give much credence to the rational integrity of German vehicular law. I go faster than 16 MPH literally every time I get on my bike. A regular non-motorized bike, powered only by me.