Why do you say that? It seems as if you're singling out ebikes because you are not advocating further regulation of pedal powered bikes. Should pedal powered bicyclists be required to have special training before they operate a bicycle on a road with cars?
I say it because Commuter style eBikes are instantly 2-3 times faster than a pedal bike with similar or even less effort, most of the ones I have seen locally have Throttles on them. Yesterday on my drive home from work I saw 3 teens riding commuter eBikes from the High School to home. They were all riding correctly in the bike lanes and not doing anything dangerous, but they were not pedaling. I think it is great that kids have a faster way to get around, but these Mo-Peds are different enough from pedal Bikes when it comes to speed the regulations need to be different.
These are not Class 1 Ped-elecs that only work when the rider is pedaling. These are mo-peds.
At the very least a Mandatory Safety training class is needed. Someone mentioned having a Police officer speak to his class as a student about the legal ramifications of being treated the same as a Vehicle when riding a bicycle, maybe the answer is something like that, mandatory in school lessons on them?
Better infrastructure is always good, San Diego is almost done with a dedicated Bike Path that runs north/south between the 5 Freeway and the Coast, that is going to be awesome. But no amount of infrastructure is going to stop dangerous behavior on city streets where there are cars and intersections, and even with good bike paths there is always going to be some surface street riding to get to and from the bike path.
Lets remember, this was a Teenage Boy. Most of us here were Teenage Boys at one point. Most of us did dangerous things with our vehicles or our parents vehicles at that age. I know I did. I had a quad and then a dirt bike and did all sorts of dumb stuff with it. I also got each of my parents cars air born on a local street with a big bump. My brother flew out of the back of a pickup bed as a teen cause he and his teenage buddy were practicing climbing from the cab to the bed while doing donuts in a parking lot. Teenage boys do dangerous stuff, that is why Car Insurance for them is higher than any other demographic. This is not some sort of thing where insurance companies are picking on Teenaged boys, it is just a result of the facts.
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