The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition weighed in with a pointed response, arguing that the state should be making it easier, not harder, to own and use e-bikes. Their senior organizer echoed the sentiment shared by many riders: the real confusion and danger comes from people not being able to tell the difference between a legal e-bike and an electric moped, not from the bikes themselves.
Brett Thurber, co-owner of a San Francisco e-bike shop, raised a practical industry concern about AB 1557. Restricting California’s speed limits below what manufacturers currently build for the U.S. market could push companies to skip California customers entirely, shrinking the supply available to local shops and consumers.
Faster than allowed is equal to modified, whether it never contained the limiter or it was retrofitted doesn’t matter so much. Both of it happens and removing limiters is big business for shady bike fixers atm. I never said it was 1 friend who helps six guys. The only e-bike you can legally buy is one that doesn’t go over 25 kph and doesn’t have a throttle. Except for a speedpedelec that goes much faster legally but requires a special helmet and a license plate like scooters / mopeds.
Who removed the limiter matters to me, you can think differently, but I’m not budging on this. Your link does claim that it is big business, but admits there are no figures for how many bikes are modified with these kits. Because no one is giving any numbers, I’m the one saying it could be 1 friend installing kits and removing limiters from 6 people in the whole Netherlands.
All I want is the numbers, because until then “people just pay a guy who knows a guy to remove the limiter” just rubs me the wrong way if it might as well be “companies illegally sell limitless bikes anyway”.
You may call it “not budging” I call it being obtuse. I’ve been going around looking for awebsites and articles and gave you a lot of links to start your own search from.
If you don’t want to believe something that’s fine but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true.
People know they are buying something illegal when they do. It is all over the news. And a lot of people get aftermarket kits or find a TikTok video to shut off the limiter themselves.
Yes Chinese companies are willingly selling illegal bikes, but also yes people en masse are buying them or getting the limiter removed, fully knowing that it is illegal.
How about you find me some numbers about how many people are fooled by companies into buying an illegal bike when they wanted so very badly to buy a legal one.
Oh, but I did find a (German) source for my question right now: “According to estimates by police and experts, five to ten percent of e-bikes in Germany are tuned.”
I am cautious of trusting a police union on this without any source, but it is at least something.
So now you can specify: “Less than 10% of e-bike riders remove or know a guy to remove the limiter”, since of course this was an estimate on tuning in general.
This doesn’t show anything. You show estimates, I showed facts based on data.
Maybe you should apply your own standards to whatever source you find and talk to me after vetting it. I can’t believe you have the audacity come up with an estimate after all you’ve put me through.
But your facts based on data were for other questions, questions I didn’t ask, you do realise that? If I had asked how many fatbikes were illegally fast, you’d have nailed it, but it didn’t answer anything on if they were tuned or not.
I know it is only an estimate, but why are you being so hostile about that? I had a specific question, you found some sources that showed related facts, but nothing on your original claim. I appreciate that effort. I now find a rough estimate, do you have a reason to doubt it? Why?
I believe at this point, you are just being angry at me for the sake of it. Take a breather, I assure you everything I wrote was genuine, I am just particular about this 1 question. If you don’t see the point, that’s fine.
I am not entirely satisfied with an estimate either, but it is something to go off.
You do realize that “a guy who knows a a guy” is a general statement about getting something shady done, right?
Not that it’s a guy. You could have just as easily asked me to prove it is a guy who does these things and not a girl.
I’m being “hostile” because you’ve complained about much harder facts than this nonsense you’ve come up with here. It’s called “reaping what you sow”.
I’m also very annoyed at your sealioning, which is annoying behaviour that almost everyone online hates. So no, I do not need to take a breather, you need to stop this behaviour.
I’ve shown you plenty of evidence to at least make the claim highly probable. You’re just being obtuse and obnoxious and while I’ve done my best to inform you, you have the audacity to stop at an estimate. If you don’t understand how that is annoying then maybe there is no way to explain anything to you.
But you never showed anything that said it is true, you are the one believing without checking for the facts. I am the one saying: I don’t know if people actually go out of their way to tune their e-bikes. If you are sick of searching for sources, all you need to say is “I don’t know, I just feel like a lot of people get their limiter removed, I don’t have any sources on that.”
You cannot ask me to prove a negative, everyone knows that.
In the context of mandating a limiter being built in by law, it is important to distinguish between people who get the limiter removed, and people who buy bikes which never had a limiter, because group 1 spends effort or money to make their bike illegal, and the group 2 doesn’t spend to make their bike legal.
I agree, in the context of “people drive illegally fast”, this does not matter.
I did in fact. Many times. You just kept sealioning about it, which gets annoying fast.
The fact that you can’t prove a negative is also absolute and utter nonsense. A simple study design would be to ask people when they get the fine whether they knew about it or not. And you will get a lot of liars, so it would be heavily biased, but it might show that they didn’t know.
Null hypotheses also get proven all the time.
So please, at least try to put as much effort into it as I did. You owe me as much.