> The law needs to catch up. There are clearly good reasons for people to want extremely powerful e-bikes and they should be allowed to.
I'm not so sure about that.
I don't want a 6000kw Sur Ron riding in the bike lane with me. The whole point of the bike lane was to make a safe space for riding a bicycle. I want the bike lanes to be safe enough for children to ride their bikes in, and having something that powerful in it is not conducive to that goal. They are by and large too fast and too unlike a bicycle for bike lanes. Having things that powerful there is going to dissuade a lot of potential (non electric) cyclists. My girlfriend already gets too freaked out by how fast some of the legal e-bikes in the bike lane go.
Certainly they shouldn't be on the sidewalk. But what does that leave? Just the road. If that's the case they probably need to just adhere to whatever standards the state has for scooters or mopeds. Which probably means some kind of license, maybe registration, and possibly insurance.
But that type of e-bike manufacturer doesn't want to make a light electric scooter that's road legal, they want to make a thing that skirts regulations by being "for off road use only".
And the buyers by and large don't want to deal with license and registration, and certainly not insurance.
Just because people are doing an illegal thing a lot doesn't mean that the law needs to find a way to make it legal.
I think what they mean is these e-bikes pushing 60mph should be legal but reclassified as something closer to a motorcycle. The problem with keeping them illegal is people tend to treat them like bikes when they should be on the road.
This is already handled in the licensing in the UK and Europe it’s an A1 motorcycle license if it’s below 11kW, A2 up to 35kW, and everything over is the full-fat A license.
The law either needs to make it legal or properly be applied to everyone. The worst situation is when an unenforceable law which does not have the teeth for a situation is on the books - it's the same as it being unregulated, but now the government can fine you whenever it wants.