When is a bike not a bike? When it’s an e-bike, then it’s a motorcycle. Recently a teenager driving one of these e-bikes at night with no lights or reflectors, drove through a stop sign entering Fisherville Rd., then crossed both lanes of traffic to get in the “bike” lane all the while wearing headphones. He was doing 25 mph. Pretty dangerous behavior if you ask me. If someone (me) hit that e-biker, I imagine I’d be at fault regardless of how stupid the actions of the e-biker were.
I think we need regulation of this class of vehicle to include safety equipment and rules of the road education. And while I am at it, let’s regulate motorized skateboards if they operate on public roadways. On a recent Saturday, a skateboarder was motoring along between the traffic and the cars parked along Main St. That skateboarder was very unexpected and hard to see to a driver backing out. I can see the resulting accident as the skateboarder swerves to avoid the backing car and collides with the traffic instead. When I was a kid in the late Paleozoic, a bicycle was something you would pedal and if you were going 25 mph, you were going downhill. Once that bike is motorized and wants to share the road, I expect it to act civilized and predictable just as I expect bicyclists and other drivers to obey the law.
Jack Shields
Penacook