Criminalizing e-biking

chessir

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I am surprised there is not considerable discussion around de Blasio corrupt dictator criminalizing e-biking for business or pleasure.

Bill de Blasio, Populist, Unleashes Police Power on Take-Out Delivery Guys

By Henry Grabar
OCT. 20, 2017, 3:07 PM
Deliveryman on two wheels, New York.
What’s the problem here, exactly?
Tassilo von Parseval, via Flickr.
Imagine a citywide policy that could reduce the incomes of the poor, worsen traffic congestion, make living in a city more expensive and less convenient, and fine small businesses. It would be a remarkable achievement, putting the limited power of urban governance to maximum bad effect.

Well, congratulations to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on hitting the stupid-policy quadfecta with his announcement on Thursday of a crackdown on electronic bicycles, or e-bikes.


Though technically illegal to use in New York state, the battery-powered bicycles have helped the city’s more than 50,000 bicycle deliverymen keep pace with perennial demand for take-out food and surging requests for deliveries of groceries and consumer products. The bikes are perfectly suited for the demands of the job: They facilitate affordable, rapid transportation of lightweight goods through a metropolis with virtually no remaining streetspace, without generating exhaust or noise.

On Thursday, de Blasio announced the nation’s largest city would start fining restaurants in addition to operators, expanding and formalizing a style of broken-windows policing favored by the NYPD, which has confiscated 900 e-bikes this year. His justification? E-bikes are “just too dangerous,” the mayor said at a press conference.
Pp
How dangerous are they? Nearly 70 pedestrians (and 13 cyclists) have been killed by cars, trucks, and buses in New York City this year. No one has been killed by a bicycle. As for e-bikes in particular? The NYPD has no data on e-bike accidents or complaints. Nor does the city have any information about how the crackdown affects restaurants or riders. De Blasio was acting on instinct: The crackdown began when a local cyclist, Matthew Shefler, called into his radio show to complain.

It’s not an uncommon grudge for old-school cyclists, who often seem to resent the e-bikes more for the minimal effort of their riders than for their high speeds. Pedal-assist bikes, which provide extra support as you pedal, make cycling a lot easier—especially over long distances and on inclines. They can expand the range of a comfortable bicycle commute by two or three times, and consumers are noticing. In the Netherlands, for example, e-bike sales for the first time surpassed traditional bicycles in 2015. It’s not hard to see why: A trial conducted by Portland State University researchers gave e-bikes to Kaiser Permanente employees, and found that after 10 weeks, the percent of participants who called themselves “strong and fearless” or “enthused and confident” bikers had risen from 38 to 52 percent. The number of people commuting once a week by bicycle more than doubled.

Still, the greatest potential gain for e-bikes could be in the logistics business. Deliveroo, the Seamless of Europe, has been making e-bike deliveries for years. Delivery app DoorDash has given couriers e-bikes in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C. UPS announced a trial in Portland in December. In addition to being much cheaper than cars, the bikes are easy to maneuver and park in crowded urban environments.

All this falls by the wayside if the city follows through on de Blasio’s announcement. And if the city fines restaurants, New Yorkers should be prepared for their deliveries to get slower, less dependable, and more expensive. But the real burden falls on the workforce. In the Village Voice, Stephen Miller has a great rundown on the perils of the profession, whose workers are caught between dangerous streets, exploitative bosses, demanding customers, and a police force eager to make a show of something, anything in a city with historically low crime rates. On top of everything else, the new policy creates more incentives for police to stop and question undocumented immigrants.

But don’t worry, says de Blasio: Restaurants and other delivery coordinators are welcome to make deliveries by car.

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Henry Grabar is a staff writer for Slate’s Moneybox.

Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company.
All contents © 2017 The Slate Group LLC. All rights reserved.
 
Cellphones are more dangerous to the public than eBikes...

de Blasio's a bum and tool for caving to the likes of Jessica Lappin and her cronies with their misplaced irrational vendetta against eBikes.
 
Just flabbergasting how one guy can wield such power over the police force which conviscated 900 ebikes without even one tidbit of supporting data purporting the public danger of e-bikes vs automobiles vs cellphones vs guns vs etc. etc. Welcome to North Korea, NY. center for the "strangulation of personal freedom to choose your transportation"
 
markz said:
Maybe that bum has been, or was paid by a special interest group.

They're ALL paid by special interest groups/lobbyists. Obviously the ones that pay him don't like ebikes for some reason. Banning the future of sustainable public transportation seems particularly dumb though..... Sucks to be a New Yorker.
 
Just incredibly angering because this represents the outright criminal "institutionalization" of corruption at the highest level seeping and infecting the entire nation.We should hold the Mayor,police and business council responsible for turning our constitutional democracy into both an Oligarchy and a Plutocracy. No wonder America has turned into a 1% nation and a 1% world -Armpit-.
We e-bikers should be proud to expose this devastating decease with rock-solid proof.
 
Don’t worry, they will understand when they’re all stucked in their stinky 2 ton cages. Sooner or later, they will have to vote a law forbidding burning gas, and overtaxing vehicle size/weight.
 
chessir said:
We e-bikers should be proud to expose this devastating decease with rock-solid proof.
We could also help with the problem by doing things like obeying traffic laws.

One of the problems in NY is that cops are finding people on ebikes doing 40mph the wrong way down one way streets, and on sidewalks. Because that pizza is getting cold and they won't get a big tip!
 
There is always a flip side to every coin.

In the end, on a street level basis, it's the corner cop who makes the decision whether to bust you.

Until they take it a step further and ban Ebike production & sales. I highly doubt that will happen. I've yet to see a single ES NYC topic about their prized LEV being confiscated. :wink:
 
billvon said:
chessir said:
We e-bikers should be proud to expose this devastating decease with rock-solid proof.
We could also help with the problem by doing things like obeying traffic laws.

One of the problems in NY is that cops are finding people on ebikes doing 40mph the wrong way down one way streets, and on sidewalks. Because that pizza is getting cold and they won't get a big tip!

+1 For that!
Let`s show the good example.
I do TURN SIGNALS when I turn whith my hand, and when I slow dow and there a car a little too close to me in my back.
My motor rating is LEGAL... There`s just no way I cando 40 mph. I top out a 18 mph on my 250W... that is, on flat (speed limited to 20 mph downhill... I can probably do 5 mph uphill)... I`m not staped to a 25000W rocket (for that I would go on tracks alone in the wood or somthing).
I Always put on a HELMET. WTF, how can people still not wear Helmets to this day of age ?
I use a MIRROR.
I make sure I`m courtous to crossing pedestrian.
I`m consscious I represnent not just my self but ebikers using the public roads...

I wanna make it so that, if somebody stops me because just the fact that I`m sitting on an ebike, they have to feel ashamed to stop me, fine me and seize my ebike.

Think about it for a second.
The cops do all the scut work for these rich people that doent give a damn about ebike and don`t give a damn that cops risking their lives to protect us citizens. The people that make the law but dont understand the real impacts, or simply do not care, because it makes THEM more rich.
To be honest, the cop know very well that they have way more important things to do that to stop the ohhh sooo mighty dangerous and ooooooohhhhh sooooo illegal e-Bikes 20 mph 50 pounds ebikes... E = 1/2 mv squared ya know.... that just mean there`s no way bike kill more than cars, PERIOD.
Cop do great thing for the community and can be surprizingly approachable and human.
I kind of feel bad for them that they have to get the bad rep for this stupid law... a law that in fact is more just of an instrument to make easy cash (when do you ever get a 500$ ticket for driving a car ???) on the back of the poor, the environmentaly conscious or just the commen-sense type of guy living in a crowded city with not so efficient and overcrouded public transportation.
 
chessir said:
Just incredibly angering because this represents the outright criminal "institutionalization" of corruption at the highest level seeping and infecting the entire nation.We should hold the Mayor,police and business council responsible for turning our constitutional democracy into both an Oligarchy and a Plutocracy. No wonder America has turned into a 1% nation and a 1% world -Armpit-.
We e-bikers should be proud to expose this devastating decease with rock-solid proof.

One day, one dude (the delivery guy who alway uese eBikes are more vulnerable to this) somewhere might just get soo frustrated because of this stupid law that he/she might just decide to hide a remote controlled bomb in his eBike battery pack and use the eBike as a troy horse to gain access to the cops headquarters. Get the bike confiscated by the police... It goes to the eBike pound... Get 50 ebikes confiscated by the police... it goes to all the eBikes pounds. Then one day he presses the remote controlled buttons... no more ponds to store the eBikes that were stollen from the citizen for no valid reason.
Or put a Zyklon B can in the ebike battery, once again remote controlled.... poof, no more life around the ebike pound. Heck... just charge up your eBike battery and give it a good short circuit and it becomes an icendiary device and a potential bomb...
[youtube]E1d5VvCa8Fo[/youtube]
Hopefully it doesn`t get to that level of stupidity though.
Violence always leads to more violence and no settlement.

But the way this law is designed and the way police can just decide to steal your goods for no morally valid reason doesn`t help to calm the frustrations.
It just make no sense that they don`t just enforce the law on those who ride the sidewalks instead of penilizing everybody, including the one on religiously conforms the road codes.
Anyway, for now it`s the cops that are seen as the bad guys... Just look at all the comment on the Tweets of the NYC police.... Most people laugh at them and say how ridiculous !


Personally, It's been a long time since I've lost hope to understands the logic behind certain american law.... Yes, they will continue to sell guns at Walmart.... No need to register guns in USA.... Yet you can`t register an eBike in NYC even if you want to.
 
Its nearly impossible to enforce ebike laws. Unless your riding like a moron or on the sidewalk, the police wont even bother you or can even tell you're riding electric.
 
Personally, It's been a long time since I've lost hope to understands the logic behind certain american law.... Yes, they will continue to sell guns at Walmart.... No need to register guns in USA.... Yet you can`t register an eBike in NYC even if you want to.

We e-bikers bring attention to how laws are passed particularly in our leading metropolis that is NYC. The mayor promotes law by "Pure Instinct", the business council prods the mayor to action by "Pure Instinct", and the Police force executes 900 seizures in just the last year based on "pure Instinct" This my fellow ebikers is the definition of "Banana Republic". Just where are our major media organizations on this "not a peep from any for the last decade" - The reason "Instinct" decease (credit- Henry Grabar- Slate's Moneybox"). We e-bikers the only ones not suffering this "Instinct" decease have an unprecedented opportunity to truly transform our nation for the better by continued public attention to this gross injustice perpetrated on ebikers.
 
All my guns are registered. When you go to buy one and do an FBI background check they know what you're buying and get the serial number, make model, etc. State background checks do the same thing.

If you legally buy a gun, the government tracks it. Did you know that Matador?
 
De Blasio was paid off by the taxi cab drivers as they were losing business to forms of transportation that can save people money.
 
heavymetalthunder said:
De Blasio was paid off by the taxi cab drivers as they were losing business to forms of transportation that can save people money.


Do we have rock-solid proof of this?
 
lester12483 said:
Its nearly impossible to enforce ebike laws. Unless your riding like a moron or on the sidewalk, the police wont even bother you or can even tell you're riding electric.

EXCEPT when they decide they do an eBike seize blitz like they do in NYC...


BTW is it me or De Blasio is making it on purpose to especifially avoid adressing the issue of NON-delivery people wanting to use eBikes as well... More money for him if He can all put us in the same panier an ticket us regardless of the circumstance.... But I don`t ride the sidewalks or streets in the opposite direction of traffic at 30 mph...
He is ignoring our existence... As if there were only delivery people using eBikes ...

As it is now with the new law, an eBiker will have to pay the fine to get his own ebike IF he is the proprietary of the bike. That is, even if he is not using is bike for working purposes...
So yeah, restorant people or just the dude who likes to reide an eBike.... All have to pay for the City's "easy money"... Just one ticket... 500 US dollars. How outrageous...
 
Bill de Blasio, born and raised Warren Wilhelm, is your standard issue left wing Democratic which has overrun my formerly great party in the last 10 years and ran it into the ground. It should come as no shock that he follows Obama's lead and just orders what he wants without concern for legality.

Typical de Blaisisms said:
He ran for mayor promising to end stop and frisk. . . .

The NYPD union claimed he put the interests of protesters above. . . .

reduced prosecutions for cannabis possession. . . .

Basically your typical "My way or the highway" Democrat. Stands to reason he has the support of Barack Obama and the NYC 'Barack Obama Club,' as well as Alec Baldwin, Sara Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, etc. He's been arrested for disorderly conduct, is being investigated for the preferential treatment of campaign donors including antihorse groups that wanted them banned in New York City, oh, I'm sure there's much more if one isn't already convinced. So many Democrats just want to be king and answer to noone, he's just another example.

I guess there just isn't going to be any electric bikes there. . . .
 
Dauntless said:
Bill de Blasio, born and raised Warren Wilhelm, is your standard issue left wing Democratic which has overrun my formerly great party in the last 10 years and ran it into the ground. It should come as no shock that he follows Obama's lead and just orders what he wants without concern for legality.

Typical de Blaisisms said:
He ran for mayor promising to end stop and frisk. . . .

The NYPD union claimed he put the interests of protesters above. . . .

reduced prosecutions for cannabis possession. . . .

Basically your typical "My way or the highway" Democrat. Stands to reason he has the support of Barack Obama and the NYC 'Barack Obama Club,' as well as Alec Baldwin, Sara Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, etc. He's been arrested for disorderly conduct, is being investigated for the preferential treatment of campaign donors including antihorse groups that wanted them banned in New York City, oh, I'm sure there's much more if one isn't already convinced. So many Democrats just want to be king and answer to noone, he's just another example.

I guess there just isn't going to be any electric bikes there. . . .

When you take the george washington bridge to manhattan....15 US dollar toll everytime.....
Get an eBike... no more toll and you can still do the longrun to work
 
So it's ALL still Obama's fault? Precious, just absolutely precious, ROTFLMAO....

+1 eBike GWB...

Matador said:
Dauntless said:
Bill de Blasio, born and raised Warren Wilhelm, is your standard issue left wing Democratic which has overrun my formerly great party in the last 10 years and ran it into the ground. It should come as no shock that he follows Obama's lead and just orders what he wants without concern for legality.

Typical de Blaisisms said:
He ran for mayor promising to end stop and frisk. . . .

The NYPD union claimed he put the interests of protesters above. . . .

reduced prosecutions for cannabis possession. . . .

Basically your typical "My way or the highway" Democrat. Stands to reason he has the support of Barack Obama and the NYC 'Barack Obama Club,' as well as Alec Baldwin, Sara Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, etc. He's been arrested for disorderly conduct, is being investigated for the preferential treatment of campaign donors including antihorse groups that wanted them banned in New York City, oh, I'm sure there's much more if one isn't already convinced. So many Democrats just want to be king and answer to noone, he's just another example.

I guess there just isn't going to be any electric bikes there. . . .

When you take the george washington bridge to manhattan....15 US dollar toll everytime.....
Get an eBike... no more toll and you can still do the longrun to work
 
Ykick said:
So it's ALL still Obama's fault? Precious, just absolutely precious, ROTFLMAO....

In some minds, Obama is all powerful. Kind of like a god in many ways!

I don't really understand why the mayor is doing this, but then again I moved from NYC during the Bloomberg years (I still love NYC though). I agree with De Blasio on many issues, but in this instance it looks like he is making moves against ebikes without any data to back him up.
 
Ykick said:
Cellphones are more dangerous to the public than eBikes...
Crooked politicians are much worse than either of the above.
 
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