u/brot

But is there really a fundamental difference? If I build a throttle on my bicycle, it still has the same breaks, the same lights, the same driver, the same max speed. The only difference is that I do not have to pedal, everything else is exactly the same. There are countries where it is totally legal to do this and others where you get quite harsh fines. There is no reason for it to be a different thing.

This way you basically made out a scooter out of your bike, that is what the regulation probably want to avoid.

And that is exactly the point: The regulation doesn't make any sense. It is the same vehicle. Me pedalling doesn't bring any safety improvement. It's not suddenly a scooter, it's the same vehicle.

There are a lot of countries where throttles on eBikes are legal and they do not have much problems either. So yeah, there might be a big legal difference, but that is totally arbitrary and we could do better.

I really can't see this in the traffic accident statistics. Yes, there are a lot of motorcycle accidents, but if you look deeper into them, those are in most cases "real" motorcycles and not those slower variants. And if you take a look at those eScooters, most accidents here are people driving those rental scooters while drunk. That's a problem, but that's also a problem you won't solve by regulating the dude going to the train station in the morning.

The problem is that a licence is expensive as fuck here in Germany. If I wanted to upgrade my drivers licence to those 125 motorcycles, that will be around 800€. A full motorcycle licence is several thousands of Euros. There are also age limits in place. So a young person can just hop on a bicycle with a motor for free or "simply buy a small bike" with costs of several thousands of Euros. It would make sense if we bring the cost of thoses licences down.

The point is that a ebike and a bike are two separated things that follow different rules.

Yeah and that is exactly what I wanted to say: Why is a motor assisted thing that can go 25km/h a different thing from a motor assisted thing that can go 25km/h? I'm not talking about full motorcycles, but to give you an exemple: I own an eBike. There is a throttle available that would let me cruise at up to 25km/h without pedaling. That is totally illegal to install here, because that would make it a legally totally different thing and that would e.g. also prevent me from using my current brakes or to install the current tires. Which makes no sense - the risks are the same, brakes and tires are of course normal bicycling components which are totally fine to use at 25km/h, but the regulation is crap.

and regulations have evolved out of need

That's not totally correct. Here in Germany we have so called "Mofas" which translates to "motorized bicycle". Those are different from eBikes and heavily regulated. There are age limits, drivers licence, insurance requirements, regulations where you are allowed to drive and so on. And yes, they are also restricted to 25km/h. Why are there this heavy regulations which are not in place for our pedelecs? The reason is plain racism in combination with "old people hate young people". Those Mofas were popular with young migrant workers back in the 50s and 60s. And therefore they were regulated as fuck. You will see stuff like this with modern eScooters where the whole class will be restricted because they are popular with younger people.

What I wanted to say was exactly this: There is a rule in place that basically created artificial differences between the same thing. A 25km/h vehicle with a motor and pedals is heavily restricted, another one is totally free. Which makes no sense.

There's a whole class of electric vehicles being held back by regulation. We can slap electro motors on wheels and bicycles are not the only vehicles you can build with that tech. Many EU countries are e.g. banning throttles on eBikes, but why are we forcing all those delivery drivers to pedal the whole day? Just give them a gas throttle. For many eBikes uses it really doesn't make sense to include the whole bicycle complexity of gears, chains, shifting and so on. Just give them a motor and a throttle.

Killing the eBike with additional rules, insurance, mandatory inspections and so on would be absolutely idiotic and a good business model for insurances, car companies and so on, so I'm really afraid that this could happen

Just casually advocating for mass murder. Great post, dude, I'm sure that you are a nice fellow to have around here. Not.

It's not so bad if you take wind & hydro into account. Germany managed over 56% renewables in January (and over 70% in June!) Those are really great numbers.


I really doubt that 5% is the limit here. That would bring Eurozone GDP to somewhere before Covid hit. If you really think about what climate change is doing, that sounds really low: We're looking at killing tourism in the mediterranean area, because it is getting too hot and there is not enough water. Widespread natural disasters like we are already seeing causing billions of damage every year. Disruptions in agriculture. Invasive species going north. Disruption of major rivers because there are no glaciers to feed them in the summer. Drought. That's more than 5%

This really puts the insane propaganda about alternative clean energy into perspective: 22,1% solar and 15,8% wind energy for a whole continent is a lot of fossil energy not being bought from the Saudis, Quataris, Texans and other nice people. Nice people who would totally do nothing to protect their profitable business model

Your post just shows how normalized alcohol and tobacco are. "Greece passes law to jail people for selling harmful drugs to children" would also be a correct headline.

Yes, putting paint into a jet engine damages a jet engine.

The British House of Commons voted by 385 votes to 26 to add Palestine Action to the list of terrorist groups proscribed under the Terrorism Act. Maybe you want to tell us why your definition of terrorism is different from the one in the British parliament?

Please inform yourself: People of the Palestine Action group have sneaked upon a british military airfield and sprayed paint into the jet engines of several RAF planes.

Please tell me where you park your car and your number plate. I will then throw red paint on it. If a bit of paint can damage your car, why did you spend 40.000€ on it?

Just listen to yourself - of course throwing paint into an aircraft engine will damage a plane. This is exactly why this group did it. And there is nothing to prevent this - throwing paint will destroy every engine and esp. jet engines. If you do not believe me, throw a bucket of paint into your car engine. You can support Palestine, but please use your brain and try to think about some things before posting. You can do better than this.

What really happened here: Members of this Palestine Action group sneaked onto a military base and attacked the aircrafts there. This act of politically motivated vandalism resulted in this group being officially banned by the government. Which is totally ok, no state in the world will and can tolerate some group doing acts of terrorism and/or doing sabotage.

Supporting banned terrorist organizations is of course also not allowed (which really makes sense) and yeah, this priest totally did that on purpose. You are therefore totally fine holding up a sign supporting Israel and you are also totally fine holding up a sign supporting Palestine, but you are not fine holding up signs supporting banned organizations.

Yeah - you've escaped the country and then the regime starts following you wherever you're going. Absolute nightmare.

It's totally possible to swim in many german rivers and lakes. It's awesome! Most dangerous thing about it is not the pollution, but the river itself or peoples inability to swim. But if you have the chance to jump into a river and you can swim, do it. It's great

Doing military sabotage in european countries will not help the palestinian cause. That will cause a totally justified crackdown as no government in the world can and will tolerate radical militants who are sabotaging it's own military in times of global crisis. I'm also not sure if such acts really are helpful at disproving the popular resentment that all palestinians are radical islamists, terrorists or in bed with hamas.

If you're honest: It totally is possible for Trump to force a FOSS project that is based in the USA to comply to sanctions against european countries. They can arrest project leads and developers and there really is nothing stopping Trump from doing it. And that applies to nearly every other country out there: I wouldn't trust China here. Or India under Modi. Russia. The arab countries or the military dictatorships in Africa.

You really do want to run your governments on software that is independent from that. The only way to do this is to develop it in your own country.