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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2024

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  • That’s why I think alternative infrastructure should be made for these electric vehicles, which aren’t cars but also not ebikes.

    I really don’t think that’s feasible, though. Most cities genuinely struggle with trying to make space just for bicycle lanes, there’s no way most of them can fit another lane for yet another class of vehicles. Taking away all regular car lanes might do it, but I don’t think that’s remotely realistic :D

    30km/h isn’t bad, if you’re using this on low speed roads (for example, 40 km/h roads).

    That was my assumption from the start (30 km/h roads are fairly common here), but it’s still pretty bad IMO. These scooters being fully enclosed pretty much means that the driver will take the full force of an accident very often, compared to bicycle accidents where they often spend some of the accident force by flying around (which is still survivable at 30 km/h), and usually won’t go nearly as fast. Nevermind cars, the driver could easily die by driving into a pole, wall or parking car at full speed. Though I suppose most of the issue is that I assume that the driver is elderly and thus slow to react and with bad traffic awareness, these people shouldn’t be going 25 km/h on an e-bike, either.


  • top speed of 20-30 km/hr

    Yeah, that’s definitely not something that should be sharing space with pedestrians. Where I live, the maximum speed that’s allowed without a driver’s licence is 15 km/h, and it’s legal to drive the classic mobility scooters anywhere - sidewalk, road, bicycle lane are all fine. Most of them seem to have a maximum speed of 6 km/h (you don’t even need insurance for them at that speed).

    Trouble with these enclosed models is that it doesn’t seem like it’s actually safe for them to drive on a road (or at 30 km/h, imagine colliding with a lantern pole at that speed …), so the only place that might be alright for them is the bicycle lane. But even on a bicycle lane, I question the ability and willingness of their drivers to drive safely enough at 30 km/h to not endanger the people they’re sharing the lane with. E-bikes are already an issue at a maximum of 25 km/h (especially when their drivers are elderly), this adds potentially another 5 km/h and a mostly false sense of security on top.