Micah Toll, writing at Electrek:
Florida is the latest US state to wade into the increasingly crowded waters of e-bike regulation, with lawmakers advancing a bill that would impose a situational 10 mph (16 km/h) speed limit for e-bikes on shared-use paths. It’s a move that fits squarely into a broader national trend, as states and cities across the country reconsider how electric bikes fit into public spaces that were never designed with fast, motor-assisted travel in mind.
I commute by bike and train from Belmont (in the Bay Area) to San Francisco about weekly. After the holidays and a lot of travel in January disrupted that schedule, last week was the first time in a while that I've made the trip.
I'm riding a Brompton G-Line, but not the e-bike version I wrote about earlier, so I move only as fast as my own legs will propel me. My route in the city largely comprises good bike lanes, sometimes protected lanes and with their own traffic lights, which is about as good a situation as you can hope for in a major US city. However, the bike lanes are crowded with all manner of vehicles, from human-powered bikes like mine to e-bikes and electric scooters. (The electric scooters—the ones that look like a big skateboard with a handlebar on the front—are frequently among the fastest things in the bike lane, some capable of doing 20-25 MPH very quickly.) There are occasionally way more exotic things like the Honda Motocompacto and the odd food delivery robot. I've also seen full-on gas-powered motor scooters illegally using the bike lanes.
While I'm not advocating for a 10 MPH limit like the article reports are coming in several states, I do understand where the pressure is coming from: the speed and skill disparity (none of these vehicles, save the gas-powered scooter that legally is a motorcycle requires a test or license of any kind to pilot) does make for some nervous moments. While I haven't been involved in an accident myself, nor have I even seen many, I did witness one person on a very fast scooter eat it when a car suddenly swerved into the bike lane (the scooter rider seemed fine after collecting himself).
The laws are coming for "e-bikes", but it's not vanilla e-bikes that are even the thing that strike me as the most dangerous: it's the e-motos (very fast electric dirt bikes) and e-scooters that have really made me take notice. And there are so many form factors that regulating what can use the bike lanes is going to be difficult.
Why another US state is preparing a 10 mph e-bike speed limit [Update]
Florida is the latest US state to wade into the increasingly crowded waters of e-bike regulation, with lawmakers advancing a...