Huge pushback in Ventura, California against e-bikes (prompting an editorial from the local police chief)
@ai6yr The moment that cinched it for me was when my light turned green, and I saw a kid making an illegal cross of the road in front of me (left to right) with a too powerful e-bike. I waited obviously.
He was in a hurry to get across before the cars and so he actually fishtailed back and forth almost coming off the thing. Legs akimbo.
At that point you think "these guys are going to kill themselves."
@ai6yr I honestly don’t understand why e-bikes aren’t treated as motorcycles - or why any parent would buy one for their kid.
@larand The kids around here most certainly tend to drive them like motorcycles. I understand where they can be useful, but there's rampant abuse...
@ai6yr Not that irresponsible e-bike use isn't a problem, but how often are chiefs of police writing op-eds about the far more numerous and deadly abuse of cars/trucks?
Every single day I see huge vehicles with no licenses displayed, illegally dark tint, actual spikes on their hubcaps things hung from the rear view blocking their vision...and they usually have the racist "thin blue line" flags/stickers on them so I guess cops think that's A-OK illegal danger.
@ai6yr
This sounds like the rhetoric from the 1980s that they used to ban regular bikes (which also cited the "e-bike menace" and their inability to tell them apart) from all but the roadways. Also, if you are using a kid on a bike getting hit by a car to ban bikes, maybe you should do something about the cars instead.
@ai6yr Here we are just today. This truck is a business' truck. Not their only truck, either.
No license. Clear desire to evade responsibility for whatever they and their drivers do. Never seen a cop write an op-ed about it.
In fact, when I've written traffic enforcement here about various corporate scofflawry, they always make excuses about why it's ok (despite the law saying otherwise). #CorporateCrimes
@ai6yr It's way too common here to see cars that don't bother having license plates at all, never mind all the ones with expired paper plates, expired tags, illegal use of out-of-state plates, and plates covered up with dark tinted covers that ought to be illegal to even purchase.
Again, I never see cops complaining about it or cracking down on it.
Bikes, though? Always blamed for being "dangerous".