Keep in mind I was responding to someone implying that "don't be an idiot" is all you need, which is pretty similar in bad reasoning.
I wanted to know why that particular person objected to 25mph.
> The one factor that is really counterintuitive for me is weight. We learned in the motorcycle course that a heavier motorbike will actually be safer in, for example, rainy conditions, as the weight of the internal-combustion engine pushes the motorbike against the earth, expelling water from between the tread and the asphalt.
> E-bikes, however, are often bicycle-ish in weight -- only twice as heavy as a standard bicycle, say, instead of ten times as heavy, which is what a motorcycle is. Nevertheless, they still vroom at motorbike-ish speeds.
On the other hand, motorbikes lose a bunch of pressure because of tire shape. And the rider provides a lot of weight. So I'd want more information here; it's more complicated than motorbike vs. motorbike.
All excellent points, but I think there's something like 2-5x as much tire surface area in contact with the road, and something like a x10 difference in weight, but I'm quite pointedly not googling either of these hand-wavey claims.
Suffice to say, you're quite right, and I don't have all the answers. And I suspect very strongly that regulators are similarly answer-tare.
Which is why, for now, it's a great idea to purchase e-bike-specific training if you're going to be spending a lot of time with an e-bike between your thighs, and, in a pinch, you can learn a lot from a motorcycle course.
Anecdotally, I use the controlled-skid technique at least once a week, when decelerating suddenly (to avoid a pothole, say.)[1] My middle-aged miniscuses would thank me, if they had the power of speech. ;)
[1] Sadly, I still have some of the bad cycling habits I picked up in my twenties in Chicago, blithely ploughing through six-way intersections and so forth, but none of the associated physical characteristics that made this activity if not safe then at least stochastically survivable.
Specifically, reaction time, strength, and flexibility are all reduced, but all the bad habits I acquired are still there. This is the other reason I took the motorbike course: pruning leftover bad habits that I can no longer afford to offset.
> All excellent points, but I think there's something like 2-5x as much tire surface area in contact with the road, and something like a x10 difference in weight, but I'm quite pointedly not googling either of these hand-wavey claims.
When you consider the total weight with the rider, the difference in weight might only be 3x.
I would suppose it would depend on the cc of the motorbike, so, tentatively, yes, that makes intuitive sense -- a Honda Ruckus for example might not be much heavier than 3 e-bikes.
All the same: big bikes are heavy, and that turns out to be a good thing, balance-wise. Really different feeling. You can't really put it in words, it has to be experienced!
> a Honda Ruckus for example might not be much heavier than 3 e-bikes.
I don't think you're following what I'm saying.
If the ebike is 50 pounds, and the motorbike is 550 pounds, and the human is 200 pounds, then motorbike+human is 3x the weight of ebike+human. And that's how much the tires are pushing down.
Keep in mind I was responding to someone implying that "don't be an idiot" is all you need, which is pretty similar in bad reasoning.
I wanted to know why that particular person objected to 25mph.
> The one factor that is really counterintuitive for me is weight. We learned in the motorcycle course that a heavier motorbike will actually be safer in, for example, rainy conditions, as the weight of the internal-combustion engine pushes the motorbike against the earth, expelling water from between the tread and the asphalt.
> E-bikes, however, are often bicycle-ish in weight -- only twice as heavy as a standard bicycle, say, instead of ten times as heavy, which is what a motorcycle is. Nevertheless, they still vroom at motorbike-ish speeds.
On the other hand, motorbikes lose a bunch of pressure because of tire shape. And the rider provides a lot of weight. So I'd want more information here; it's more complicated than motorbike vs. motorbike.