Fabio Manganiello on Nostr: npub14d70x…zdm4s as an Amsterdam resident, this sounds like a well-intentioned ...
npub14d70xk632yuqshz7hdrnnj79j3yufrphy4u7ryekmpr7vztwvf5q8zdm4s (npub14d7…dm4s) as an Amsterdam resident, this sounds like a well-intentioned solution to a real problem, just executed in the most awful way.
I cycle basically everywhere, on a daily basis. Cheap old-fashioned bike, no e-bike. And e-bikes on bike tracks in the center are indeed a problem - when your bike moves at 20 km/h and you want to overtake the bike in front of you that moves at 15 km/h on a small lane, having an e-bike behind you moving at 30/40 km/h can be hazardous. We’ve already had some nasty accidents because of that. A good principle when designing safe bike lanes is that all the vehicles on the same lane need to move at about the same speed, or you’ll have the same problem that we had with scooters until a couple of years ago.
But this solution…is really the worst I could think of.
First, there are cases where you need indeed to steer and move faster because of unexpected hazards on the road.
Second, it assumes that all e-bikes have similar GPS + 3G/4G hardware and/or software interface, so they can just collect the beacons from all of them and automatically send a notification to the bike to make it go slower. It’ll probably be a weekend hacking exercise to bypass such a limitation on an e-bike built by a vendor that decides to implement it, just like it was a weekend’s mechanical exercise to replace speed suppressors from old mopeds. And, if I decide to build my own e-bike by just mounting a battery and a motor on my old piece of rust, there isn’t probably much that they can do to slow me down.
IMHO traditional speed bumps are far more effective, far cheaper, and far more secure.
I cycle basically everywhere, on a daily basis. Cheap old-fashioned bike, no e-bike. And e-bikes on bike tracks in the center are indeed a problem - when your bike moves at 20 km/h and you want to overtake the bike in front of you that moves at 15 km/h on a small lane, having an e-bike behind you moving at 30/40 km/h can be hazardous. We’ve already had some nasty accidents because of that. A good principle when designing safe bike lanes is that all the vehicles on the same lane need to move at about the same speed, or you’ll have the same problem that we had with scooters until a couple of years ago.
But this solution…is really the worst I could think of.
First, there are cases where you need indeed to steer and move faster because of unexpected hazards on the road.
Second, it assumes that all e-bikes have similar GPS + 3G/4G hardware and/or software interface, so they can just collect the beacons from all of them and automatically send a notification to the bike to make it go slower. It’ll probably be a weekend hacking exercise to bypass such a limitation on an e-bike built by a vendor that decides to implement it, just like it was a weekend’s mechanical exercise to replace speed suppressors from old mopeds. And, if I decide to build my own e-bike by just mounting a battery and a motor on my old piece of rust, there isn’t probably much that they can do to slow me down.
IMHO traditional speed bumps are far more effective, far cheaper, and far more secure.