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California Wants to Put License Plates on E-Bikes and Slow Them Down. Cyclists Are Not Happy About It
(guessingheadlights.com)
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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I'm not the commenter you're replying to, I'm just a stranger who likes to play devil's advocate.
Last summer I visited San Francisco, and there were a bunch of e-bikes around. One almost plowed into me in the walkway at Golden Gate Park. It looked like it was going faster than all cars on the road next to us at the time. The guy was not wearing a helmet, didn't honk any kind of a horn or ring a bell, and barely called out a warning. It was a near miss, right after he swerved around the people in front of me.
I was looking up at the trees in the park (as you do in parks), when I hear a slight scream from one of the pedestrians in front of me, followed by a frantic "LOOK OUT" from the guy on the bike. I quickly stepped off the walkway onto the gras, so no accident happened, but it was still scary.
I can see the reasoning behind this law. There's no reason that the motor on that bike should go that fast without requiring inspections and some kind of license. Certainly no reason to be driving it that fast in a walkway, but I think that's already illegal.
As someone who's lived in San Francisco, the Bay Area has some of the all-time worst drivers bar none. Driving in the city is like Mad Max; there are seemingly no laws and it's every man for himself. Then out in the suburbs it's just people who are actively bad drivers. Gonna get tagged for this, but there might be a racial component to it. I once saw a Lexus driving around the East Bay with skis mounted to the roof horizontally (not that that is bad driving per se, but I think illustrates the type of drivers we have.)
That person was literally walking though?
I guess pedestrians are also disgusting polluters to you?
To be fair to them (even though I don't think they are engaging with me in good faith), I did take a plane to get there. Hard to bike across California, even on one of those e-bikes lol.
How does someone flying make them in any way dangerous in traffic, compared to someone who rides an unlimited speed electric motorcycle on a pedestrian walkway though?
I do hope you at least keep your money where your mouth is and only take bikes everywhere, even if it's several hundred or thousand miles.
Lol that still pollutes, you nimwit.
It's also more likely to kill people than a plane.
Don't get me wrong, I think the proposed legislation is taking the wrong approach and I think e-bikes are overall a good thing. I'm just saying that I see the reason why California wants to add some additional regulation to a motorized transport.
I have no problem with people riding regular bikes on sidewalks. Roads are scary as a cyclist surrounded by vehicles several times heavier than yours. People are riding e-bikes on the sidewalks everywhere I go. It makes walking scary on infrastructure made for walking. If you get hit by someone on a bike going 20 mph (~32 km/hr), someone is getting seriously hurt. This guy was actively endangering pedestrians.
Also, no matter how you look at it, e-bikes (individualized transport) are a worse thing for the environment than public transportation (communal transport), and certainly worse than walking (what I was doing in the walkway).
Motor + bicycle = motorcycle.
Except the house on fire doesn't share the pedestrian walkway with them, but the stove is speeding down the walkway lol
I'm whining about someone swinging a bat at people on the sidewalk while the whole neighborhood is on fire. The fire is a worse problem, and we should take care of it before it burns down everything. But someone should really take that bat away from that guy or at least replace it with a wiffle ball bat before someone gets hurt.