[the three class system was designed to talk about how and where electric bicycle can be used]
[class three was designed for long distance commuting. And they’re designed to be written, not necessarily in the bike lane, but more in the road with traffic. And they can go up to 28 miles an hour, but you have to be pedaling, in order for the motor to engage. So similar to class one, you have to pedal.]
[New York, does not follow the model three class legislation. It adapted and amended the three classes to say that in New York, use class three goes up to 25 miles an hour and can have a throttle. So that’s not the definition. That’s the case across the rest of the country. But this was adopted relatively recently, and it was adopted with the delivery workers who work in New York City in mind.]
[the three class system has was integrated into the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and was adopted by Congress. But that doesn’t mean that so in some ways, it has been accepted federally, but in other ways, it has not. So the Consumer Product Safety Commission does not recognize the three class system. But the Consumer Product Safety Commission manages products at the point of sale, and not their use case. So that is why they haven’t really recognized that system. Yeah, it’s kind of two different uses.
“the big idea was that we wanted to help local municipalities and land managers and others determine what kind of electric bicycle should and should not be accepted on their trails and bikeways and roads…Another big reason that we helped lead this charge for the model three class legislation was to make it so that you didn’t have to get licensed and registration to ride your electric bicycle and that it would be treated like an electric, like a bicycle and not a motorized vehicle.”
[three class legislation has been adopted in 41 states across the country, and 48 states classify an electric bicycle as a bicycle instead of as a motorized vehicle.]
“The issue is that policy always lags behind technology. And what we’re seeing is that there’s some gray areas in the regulatory space that are problematic … It’s a different [question to ask] ‘what is an e-bike’] at the time that it’s sold or imported, versus ‘how and where can it be ridden’ once you take it home.”
“[We tend to ask] ‘how fast a bike can go?’ Well, how fast can our cars go? And how fast do we generally drive them? Just because a bike can go up to 20 miles an hour does not mean that you’re going to feel comfortable doing that — and most people don’t …
[What the studies have shown is that like, regardless of the classes, people ride, two to three miles per hour faster on an electric bicycle, and sometimes slower in crowded areas.] But the my experience writing, class three was this, essentially the same as it was riding a class one bike, because you still have to pedal. And it really has to do with like the comfort of the rider? Where, where do you feel comfortable with your speed? Personally, I don’t generally like going faster than like 50 miles an hour, just like a slow rider.
source https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/12/18/260457
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