Some friends and I were talking about the laws regarding this stupid 200W restriction on bikes the other night.
And this thread is right.... We need to do something about it. The most convincing point that one of my friends put across was that now that the government has changed sides... and we've signed the Kyoto thingy, then the government really has an incentive to cut emissions. Yeah, it' not going to make a huge difference to the amount of pollution that the power stations etc pump out.... in fact it might mean more brown coal needs to be burnt to recharge our batteries every night. But it's still a step in the right drection.
We would have been pushing SH#T up hill trying to get the Liberals to change any laws because there's not really much in the way of taxing on an E-Bike, and I don't think the emissions targets were quite so hard to achieve. Labour however now have a target that they absolutely have to meet (and I'm sure there are penalties for them if they don't), so we came to the conclusion that they could quite possibly be more willing to do something about it. Plus Peter Garrett is partly our environment minister.
A change to 750W would be an awesome thing.... but even if it was changed to 500W I think we'd be doing a lot of people a favour... including ourselves. I've got a 500 watter at the moment and it's not that bad. I built one for each of my folks who live out in the country and it means that they can get up the hills that they otherwise never would, and they actually enjoy going out on their bikes again. I know for a fact that a 200W motor is only any good on a flat road, but 500W will give you enough assistance to get up some pretty steep stuff, and at the same time an unfit person can still get some excercise.
I also have my own 1.5kW and 2kW bikes, and yeah the 500W bikes feel a lot slower.... But they're a hell of a lot safer for a kid or an inexperienced adult to ride. Most pushbike frames, rims and brakes aren't designed to go much over 40km/h and that's why at higher speeds with a heavy back or front wheel and batteries on board they can resonate and the speed wobbles will start. Not to mention the additional structural stresses that may be placed on a cheap bike. The geometries are also no good for those kinds of speeds.
A good example is one of my bikes that runs and X5 motor and has a top speed of around 65km/h and has Vee-Brakes. I had an incident once when the front rim was worn across the braking surface, and while I was aware of it, I chose to keep riding it flat out. I was riding at about 60km/h and just as I touched the front brake, the heat and tyre pressure caused the side of the rim to blow out. This left me with no tyre, a destroyed rim, and no front brakes..... and at the same time I was still travelling at 60km/h. Luckily I didn't crash, but I did come close... and in amongst cars it would have been a nasty one.
Push bikes are not designed for this kind of thing. You can get away with it, but if your maintenance isn't thorough, sooner or later someones gonna get hurt. That's not to say that it couldn't happen without a motor on board, but the odds go way up when you're doing those speeds because you can go fast everywhere... not just down a hill. It would mean a total new range or much better quality control of bikes designed for this type of application.
To allow bikes with more than 750W to be on the road with other cars is asking for trouble. Can you imagine a 12 year old jumping on a bike like that and riding around on the streets? Dangerous.
Much over 750W and I can see a lot of people either breaking bikes or getting hurt or both.
I think the limit should be increased, but I can see why they don't increase it, and I can see what could happen if they did. I don't think that more than 750W on a standard chinese bike would be a responsible move.
One thing that I've noticed when riding my higher powered bikes around is that some cyclists on conventional bikes don't like them. I've noticed that there are a large amount of people on bicycles that are what you would call purists. They tend to believe that a bike is a bike and the whole reason that you ride one is to get fit so an electric motor has no place on a bike. I'm sure that we all have many different arguments to a comment like that, but I know quite a few people in the push bike industry and I've taken a lot of notice of their reactions... even after test riding my bike. A lot of them think it's really cool.... but they don't want one. So I thin Bicycle Victoria might take a little convincing because of that.
As for the fines for riding an over powered bike, I think it goes something like this.... If you're over 200W then your bike needs to be registered and the rider licenced.... So technically it is a motorcycle. The fine for riding an overpowered motorcycle bike is $135... providing it is registered and you have a licence.... But the fine for riding an unregistered motorcycle is about $240 from memory..... So I'd say you're more likely to be fined for an unregistered motorcycle. On top of that, if you don't have a licence, then there's an additional couple of hundred bucks for riding without a licence. If you do have a licence but it's been suspended or cancelled for whatever reason, then you're riding an unregistered motorbike on a cancelled licence... which becomes a serious offence and you end up in court and most likely with a suspended jail sentence or something (if your licence had already been cancelled for drink driving or speeding). Then you have to wear an approved motorbike helmet.... and if you've ever tried exerting yourself in a motorbike helmet, you'll know how much this can suck...... If you hit a pedestrian on a bike path or footpath with an unregistered motorbike and a cancelled licence or even no licence.... You're in a lot of trouble because I don't think there's any kind of TAC (Insurance) cover for you or the pedestrian... andif either of you end up in a wheelchair or something then who's going to sue who??? and who's gonna win?? The pedestrian..... If you hit another car on the road.... you're still on an unregistered motorcycle with no licence.
Dirtbikers can get what's called Recreation Registration (Rec Reg) which covers them if they're out in the dirt and hurt themselves.... They still need a licence for this though... Small scooters have a registration fee of less than $100 per year. Which covers their TAC fees for the year. The thing with motorbikes and scooters however is that they have to pass ADRs (Australian Design Rules) before they can be sold to be ridden on a public road. The ADR's are what they use to regulate what is and isn't safe on our roads. So to get registration the bikes would need to pass some sort of cross the board check of their components. It'll never happen. There are far too many biycle components around and they couldn't keep tabs on it all. All these Chinese and other imported bikes and bits would need to be checked, crash tested etc etc.... And that still won't filter out some kind of dodgy bike that an inexperienced DIYer could make.
I am of course talking about worst case scenarios here, and we are only talking about 750W, but and as a keen motorcyclist with bikes that have outputs above 150kW, ex push bike and motorbike courier, as well as E-biker, my friends and I have had plenty of experiences with crashing, suspended licences and the law that make me think twice about going crazy on my X5s.... And even then I still ride flat out most of the time. It'll only take a handful of bad accidents (which will happen with DIYers or kids getting hold of their dads bikes or me) experimenting and they'll stuff it up for the rest of us who are already riding overpowered bikes but might do so responsibly. And if they decide that E-bikes are bad, they'll increase the fines and they'll also make life hard for us. They'll do things like making it compulsory to have the output stamped on your motor, or some sort of compulsory stamp on your controller...That kind of thing. Not that it would be that hard to change.... but they'll find some way to make it hard.
I did read somewhere the other day that scooter sales quadrupled this year and there is talk of allowing scooters to ride in bicycle lanes in the CBD areas. So if they're considering that, then we may have a chance of swaying their opinions our way.
It's a tricky topic because we want to keep riding our bikes, and there's definitely a future for them. It's a logical step and to everyones advantage to increase the limit and get more of these things out and about, but I think there are a lot of scenarios or probabilities that need to be considered.
There are a lot of different approaches that we could take.
Possibly some sort of provisional registration (like $50 a year) which might force you to have a headlight, brake light, indicators and rear view mirror on your bike (which is relatively easy) might work, and some sort of provisional licence that will allow you to operate a bike below a certain output. (something quick and easy like basic road rules that can be tested at the local cop station or Vic Roads office). Maybe some sort of minimum age requirement. Or even just a simple speed limit for E-bikes.
Again we're only talking about 750W or less and this is probably OK for most bikes and riders to handle but I think the idea of paying taxes is to protect the community from baddies and also protect them from themselves. This how I think a politician will approach such a proposal if it were presented to him/her.
My prediction is that the roads will go haywire with E-Bikes over the next few years because they are now at a level where they can be fast, reliable, and cheap to operate, and as traffic congestion, emissions targets, and fuel prices increase the goverenment is going to be forced to do something about it. Accidents will happen, and people will get hurt.
It's probably better than we go to the politicians first and get it sorted out beforehand, rather than wait till they come to us with some crazy schemes and laws that we probably won't like. It's harder to work against them and change the laws once they've been passed. So I think now is the time to approach them with a safe and sensible proposal.
So what do we do?
I'm willing to build a 500W or 750W bike to give to the prime minister or some other dude in a suit to ride around for a day and see the advantages.
Mark sounds pretty motivated..... Anyone else got any ideas?
