[*BCM*] MassBike To Blame For Biker Awareness

[David Hammond]

>> * Defining a class of electric/electric-assist micro-
>> vehicles, and enacting legislation facilitating their
>> development and proliferation;

=v= Why is this a goal?  These gadgets may be hyped as some sort
of eco-whiz-bang replacement for car use, but in practice they
do no such thing.  Indeed, they are marketed to compete with
bicycles and they are an annoying, noisy, polluting, obstructing
addition to bike facilities.

=v= (I of course make an exception for people with disabilities
who truly need an electric motor assist, but that's not what the
above says at all.)
    <_Jym_>

I'm not trying to start a flame war here, but you have NO IDEA what you're
talking about. Did you think I was referring to those nasty scooters powered
by weed-whacker motors?  Read my posts again.

Even if you charge your electric bicycle's batteries from a grid powered by
coal-burning plants, you are causing far less incremental pollution than if
you drive a Prius in making the same trip. Have you ever even seen, much
less ridden, an electric-assist bike? Where's the noise?? The most noise
mine generates happens when I pass a peloton in a full up-hill sprint, and
I'm pedaling backwards as a joke. The "Holy s*it!", "Whatthefugizat?" and
"Hey, you're cheating!" comments can be deafening. Never mind that I'm
coming back from the supermarket with 12 bags of groceries and the Sunday
Globe on board.....

As it's designed, my bike is completely undefined by Mass. Laws. All the
references to Assisted Bicycles vs. Mopeds vs. Motorcycles talk about engine
displacement, a concept completely alien to electric motors.  For me, this
is both good and bad - good in that a judge or jury would be compelled to
accept the "undefined, therefore unregulated by law" argument; bad in that
when I finally retrieve the bike from police impoundment, it'll be wrecked.
That's why I want favorable legislation for electric/electric assist
micro-vehicles - 500 lbs and under - so that more people will retire their
"annoying, noisy, polluting, obstructing" AUTOMOBILES.

And as for competing with bicycles, how many more people do you think would
take up cycling if a majority of the vehicles on the public roads were less
than 500 lbs and going less than 40 mph? Just picture the morning rush hour
on the S.E. Expressway - twice the people moving twice as fast, with half
the crowding, and every other vehicle a bicycle ..... what's wrong with this
picture? It's a pipe dream, that's what, unless we get the enabling
legislation.

Oh, and to the OTHER guy, who said that headlights and helmets are for
dorks-  I'M A DORK. DEAL WITH IT.

Dave Hammond



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