Let me rephrase: Australians concerned about children on vehicles that can go 25mph with no requirement for a license or training.
The issue is more that they sell 500-1000W ebikes that are not specced for road usage, only for riding on private ground - and then hand them to teenagers. As so often, the parents are the issue, not the teens. As so often, everyone will pay the price for it through stricter regulation.
A dude got up to 90mph on a bike just off his own steam before
I remember all the adverts when I was a kid telling me that if I got hit by a car at 30mph there was a 90% chance I’d live (this was the happy path of the advert). This is also cars ostensibly driven by licensed people.
E-bikes with a 25mph limiter are not a risk if we allow cars in the same space as pedestrians
Yeah sure, but we’re not going to create laws just for Lance fucking Armstrong.
The article doesn’t mention any “miles per hour”. Do people in Australia use mph?
In December, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, announced a plan to halve ebikes’ power – and therefore reduce their top speeds – to 250 watts…
No. It’s kph. Ebikes are restricted to 25 kph.
These are not ebikes.
They are 1000w twist throttle bikes they buy on eBay and AliExpress.
You can go 25mph and faster on a bicycle no problem, I reject the argument that e-bikes (not e-moto) are a significant danger. That’s mostly cabrain propaganda that people who chose to stop thinking accept.
25 kph, not mph. Which isn’t very fast.
25kph is the legal speed limit for ebikes. It does not magically prevent them from going faster.
and it’s not hard to get up to 40kph just using your legs and a hill without a motor. we’ve got a great hill that’s steep enough to get up to 50kph, but i’m not quite brave enough for that.
No doubt, but that’s not what is happening. Kids are doing 40 on the flat on their “ebike” and they don’t look or indicate and they can’t do 40km/h uphill so they slow down a lot unexpectedly.
There needs to be some kind of training and regulation.
“Get off your phones and meet people your age in real life!” “Wait not like that!”
Feels like kids can’t win these days.
It’s definitely on purpose
You let them leave the house and meet up with friends, next thing you know they are riding around on bikes! Where will it end?
Just gotta keep making the world as hostile as possible to teenagers.
Because the school to prison pipeline can only do so much
As an Australian the problem is largely what you imagine.
An unregulated industry brought in bikes that were closer to motorbikes than pushbikes and parents didnt do their due diligence on it. The same industry also brought in a huge amount of bikes that were perfectly sane when stock but were literally childs play to turn into something closer to a motorbike. Now the vast majority of kids went out and did kid shit and they were slightly annoying, a not insignificant number of them got hurt, but there was no real outcry.
The govt as governments are want to do reacted way too fucking slowly in putting sane limitations on what could and couldnt be sold and hold manufacturers and importers accountable. In their defence partly because 90% of them are coming out of china and the govt arent idiots in that they know how easy it would be for an importer to find a new frontman and the Chinese manufacturer to rebrand and force them to play whackamole and partly because they are very popular among adults and people who arent riding them like dickheads AND they didnt want to look anti-green by discouraging people to find car alternatives.
But Here come the fuckwits like takeovers are to “legitimate” street racing on quiet backroads, kids started doing wheelies through shopping centers while filming it for the gram, deciding it would be funny to absolutely destroy the grass and surfacing on local sporting fields and swerving in and out of traffic in 80 zones.
Its not that the cops dont care, the cops know what the reality is that if they start trying to catch them, the kids will run and eventually someones “good boy who never hurt anyone and loved to laugh” is going “to be chased to his death over a modified E-bike and the police are the reason for his death” regardless of what prompted them to chase him in the first place.
All in all its a 3 layer shit sandwich.
Same thing here in the Netherlands: cheap, poorly made Chinese fatbikes that were incredibly easy to unlock flooded the market. The result: teens are riding around at 40kph and stunting on a bike that has no brakes. Because those wear down rapidly if you overclock the motor, and nobody does maintenance on those shitty bikes.
So now they’re trying to regulate it, much too late. When honestly, they should just ban the fucking things for anyone under 25 without a disability…
and parents didnt do their due diligence on it.
Pretty much sums up a lot.
Parents these days…In all seriousness its not exactly the most simple thing for a layman.
I speak petrolhead, so when you tell me something has a 2000W motor (Light bulbs and plug in heaters are measured in Watts. I honestly believe they do that on purpose to confuse the issue) I immediately do the conversion to 2kw, which is 2.6 hp on an e-bike that weighs 50kg. A 50cc Vespa makes 3.1hp and weighs 100kg. Now you throw a 50kg rider on there and you have a better power to weight ratio on the E-Bike, and shitloads more torque.
Nothing to do with social media, all to do with at what point and electric bicycle becomes an electric motorcycle and the lack of laws and regulations keeping up with it. It used to be easy if the thing was making a noise, due to petrol engine, it’s a motorbike. It’s happening in every country and it feels like Chinese manufacturers are making all the money whilst the rest of the world catches up.
I know of a guy who had his driver’s license permanently revoked because he racked up so many DUI’s. He lived in rural Indiana, and bought a moped because they didn’t require a license to drive. Obviously he did not stop driving drunk.
But also, the moped did in fact make noise.
Nah it’s about being mad at teenagers or just mad at not driving a car. The US under Biden passed ebike regulations that are already a lot more strict than just a limit where it becomes a motorcycle, but a bunch of (mostly Democrat) states are either banning all ebikes period or banning most of the federal regulation classes because if Gavin Newsom sees a black kid have fun he instantly becomes Ronald Reagan.
Just wait until all those teen grow up and figure out that old farts on social media are responsible.
Unfortunately the old farts on social media were once the teens being treated like criminals for existing. It’s a cycle. Yesterday’s rebels become tomorrow’s pearl clutchers.
Define old fart? To me a old fart is in their late 60 early 70’s. This is the boomers. They were the first true generation of plenty. They were promised a good life and they had one unless they were foolish with the opportunity. Let me assure you they have been against any ones freedom except their own from the start.
I know plenty of older Gen X who’ve turned into pearl clutching, curmudgeonly hypocrites and even a few younger folks who’ve developed early onset “get off my lawn” syndrome. While I’ll certainly grant that it seems to be far more common among older folks it’s a mindset we all can fall into if we’re not self aware enough.
Hell I know more than a few joyless Gen Z’s who already have fallen into the habit of being utterly scandalized whenever they see someone enjoying life a bit too much. Not all by a longshot yet, but a concerning amount for ones so young.
Well, as a Gen Xer, WHY THE FUCK ARE THOSE FUCKING KIDS ON MY FUCKING LAWN? THERE IS NO REASON FOR THEM TO BE ON MY LAWN! WHY WHY WHY!!!
Yeah, they can wipe thier own ass when they are in a care home!
Australia, a prison state created for inmates, and perpetuated as such by their descendants. As a foreigner looking in, I think that Aussies would be best served by ditching the colonial prison mindset. You and the kids are allowed to have fun, if you ignore the specter of the Crown that created your nation.
…TLDR;
I recently left an Aussie company whose shot caller was someone who was massively in favour of the social media ban and kept close tabs on her teenage kids’ phones. Ran the company like that, and it’s going under.
The article has nothing to do with social media, the only mention of it is how adults put a comment on FB about antisocial behaviour of ebike riders. And clearly the clip of ripping up a golf course is antisocial. So actually the issue is, like in the UK, illegal emotorbikes that people should be prosecuted for.
And clearly the clip of ripping up a golf course is antisocial.
Naw, ripping up a golf course is environmental activism, fuck golf courses.
I guess the question is, is ripping up a golf course more or less antisocial than having a golf course?
From the view point of the law it is.
Well, it’s a good thing laws are never wrong!
I agree with most of it.
If kids are acting out, it’s because they’re feeling powerless and/or unheard. So they banned social media. What did they replace it with? Did the government build public spaces meant for under-16s to gather and be social?
Golf courses are not a good thing,though. They are an absolute waste. The amount of water and chemicals used is atrocious.
So you can’t talk online and you can’t go out on a bike to meet your friends.
Just sounds like they want kids to be miserable.
