Originally Posted by
Classtime
There you go...claiming that motorized vehicles are equivalent to human powered vehicles.
Funny i didn't read that.
Yes ... an ASSISTED bike is ASSISTED. is that the point you are struggling to make? Good ... did it for you.
A person can want an assist for any number of reasons ... none of which involve morality. A person is not better or worse depending on who many watts he or she outputs. Sorry, if you didn't know that.
So yes, if a person on a Assisted bike gets out and rides ... guess what? it increases the population of cyclists. It encourages city planners to build more bike facilities. It encourages more employers to build bike lockers and showers.
And if those riders on Assisted bikes are dicks ... then they always were. They were the ones squeezing you over when they drove by, or shouting at you, or throwing things ... or just hating you for being there.
One the other hand, if they were former cyclists who understand, or simply decent human beings ... then a small electric motor won't change them.
No one is saying an E-Bike is a Non-E-Bike.
People are saying they are two-wheeled transports which can operate in the same approximate speed ranges and in the same areas as unassisted bikes. People are saying that hating on E-Bikes is like hating on bents, or trikes, or tandems, or blacks or Muslims or whites or Christians or white men---it is irrational hatred which shows the sickness of the hater, not of the object of the hate.
If people who hated irrationally were all kept out of the general population, there would be no hate. And we could all ride together happily on whatever we chose to ride.