After almost a year of a parliamentary inquiry into e-mobility looking into the issues surrounding the wide array of small electric personal vehicles, the Qu...
Yes, a heavier vehicle has more kinetic energy at the same speed. That’s…obvious. It’s so obvious it’s basically pointless to feel the need to specify it.
But if that extra kinetic energy is not translating to more injuries in the real world, it’s completely irrelevant. The reasons that it doesn’t translate into real-world effects might be interesting academic discussions to be had—maybe it’s the fact that they aren’t actually that much heavier, maybe they tend to go slower (because of that 25 km/h cap on motor assist), maybe their owners actually tend to be more careful, or something entirely different—but from a practical point of view, when it comes to answering the question “should there be regulation here?”, it doesn’t matter. The answer remains “no”. Because there is no evidence to date indicating that safe, legal ebikes are causing more damage than regular bikes.
What part of it was wrong?
Yes, a heavier vehicle has more kinetic energy at the same speed. That’s…obvious. It’s so obvious it’s basically pointless to feel the need to specify it.
But if that extra kinetic energy is not translating to more injuries in the real world, it’s completely irrelevant. The reasons that it doesn’t translate into real-world effects might be interesting academic discussions to be had—maybe it’s the fact that they aren’t actually that much heavier, maybe they tend to go slower (because of that 25 km/h cap on motor assist), maybe their owners actually tend to be more careful, or something entirely different—but from a practical point of view, when it comes to answering the question “should there be regulation here?”, it doesn’t matter. The answer remains “no”. Because there is no evidence to date indicating that safe, legal ebikes are causing more damage than regular bikes.