Front page LA Times today regarding Ebikes

[pmcdonald]

Love it! The first rule of EBR: every thread will eventually devolve into a debate about throttles. This one didn't disappoint.

 

[PedalUma]

The guy with bad arthritis today tried one of my new bikes stet up to increase power delivery more with increased cadence than with increased pedal pressure, and he loved it. This goes against most major manufactures. It feels so good to spin fast lightly and go. This looks natural to observant others & feel natural for the rider. Shifting is the key. It is like a classic Italian sports car. Revs before shifting up, coast for a second and down sift before slowing. It is so smooth and nice for the initiated. Jimi asked, Are You Experienced? With his electric guitar. Riding this bike is like that. It is super expressive, immediate, with feel. My City Gov. is testing it Friday as a fleet prototype.

 

[Nomad]

Sure its a thing for a LOT of people. Especially the ones who gear their riding to urban mobility and transportation, and have no roots whatsoever in cycling. They are in effect a new class of rider uninterested in exercise, who would otherwise be driving a car or an ICE moped or small scooter to get where they are going (vs. a recreational ride where the journey is the goal).

Interestingly, the tourists in the Monterey Bay area who rent the Rad step thrus and mini-bike style ebikes like have been pictured earlier here are all pretty much throttle-only and riding so they can get around and see the sights. They tend to be riding slowly as a result since they are sightseeing. the complete opposite of the characterizations here.

The same types of bike riders on the main paths in the Fresno area are the opposite. They are riding these same style of bikes and they ride to go places, so they are at the 20 mph limit often as not. The riders in that same town who are going thru the parks (Woodward Park in particular), tend to be slower. One couple I see all the time that drive me nuts roll on the sidewalk, although they are both going slowly. Riding on the sidewalk in a bicycle is expressly against the law here. Sidewalks are for pedestrians. But some people are just plain chicken when it comes to riding on streets (they also go on the wrong side of the road facing traffic which makes it even worse).

part of the whole sidewalk thing and going the wrong way is because the police don't stop them. To give them warning not a ticket but, educate them regarding it. Then after doing this a few times if it doesn't work then take the necessary steps. It's not an ebike thing it's a cycling thing. Sound it out s i d e w a l k

 

[Rexlion]

Um, I think the First Amendment gives us the right to complain and pray, and has nothing to do with defending us from the British.

Brain fart. My bad. Never said I could count to two, did I?

 

[Rexlion]

are you serious? the actual deterrent is the world’s largest navy, the world’s first and second and maybe third largest air forces (depending on how you count the planes of the various branches), a whole lot of nuclear missiles, and the logistical impossibility of moving an entire f’n modern army across thousands of miles of oceans against the aforementioned navies and air forces. anyone who thinks that a bunch of untrained civilians with pistols are a significant factor in the united states avoiding imminent invasion is seriously delusional.

there is no “legitimate concern” of invasion from the seas against today’s america. and the actual legitimate security concerns are so far removed from civilians with handguns that i can’t even make an analogy.

I can understand why some people think that way. But try to realize that if the citizens have no weapons, some other nation could contemplate using a couple of well-placed nukes and an ultimatum, rationalizing that our leaders should capitulate; then they can come in with conventional ground forces and run the place with soldiers on every corner. But if everyone has a couple of firearms, they know the citizens will fight tooth and nail and they will struggle to take the cities and countryside inch by inch. No soldier would be safe outside of an armored vehicle. They won't simply decimate the whole country with bombs or whatever, because they want the prize: the natural resources, the farmland, the buildings, the infrastructure. Not saying it would be easy or that we could necessarily win in that scenario, but we would make them pay dearly. That's the deterrent.

edit: Sorry, I just took comments as I read 'em, and didn't read through to the end first. Everyone's moved on. Ehhh.

 

[pmcdonald]

I can understand why some people think that way. But try to realize that if the citizens have no weapons, some other nation could contemplate using a couple of well-placed nukes and an ultimatum, rationalizing that our leaders should capitulate; then they can come in with conventional ground forces and run the place with soldiers on every corner. But if everyone has a couple of firearms, they know the citizens will fight tooth and nail and they will struggle to take the cities and countryside inch by inch. No soldier would be safe outside of an armored vehicle. They won't simply decimate the whole country with bombs or whatever, because they want the prize: the natural resources, the farmland, the buildings, the infrastructure. Not saying it would be easy or that we could necessarily win in that scenario, but we would make them pay dearly. That's the deterrent.

edit: Sorry, I just took comments as I read 'em, and didn't read through to the end first. Everyone's moved on. Ehhh.

I too enjoyed the fictional movie Red Dawn. It was such a great time capsule of Reagan-era Cold War paranoia. Though on the topic I guess the ultimate failure by Russia and the US to subdue a heavily armed subset of the Afghanistan population speaks to your point.

 

[tomjasz]

I can understand why some people think that way. But try to realize that if the citizens have no weapons, some other nation could contemplate using a couple of well-placed nukes and an ultimatum, rationalizing that our leaders should capitulate; then they can come in with conventional ground forces and run the place with soldiers on every corner. But if everyone has a couple of firearms, they know the citizens will fight tooth and nail and they will struggle to take the cities and countryside inch by inch. No soldier would be safe outside of an armored vehicle. They won't simply decimate the whole country with bombs or whatever, because they want the prize: the natural resources, the farmland, the buildings, the infrastructure. Not saying it would be easy or that we could necessarily win in that scenario, but we would make them pay dearly. That's the deterrent.

edit: Sorry, I just took comments as I read 'em, and didn't read through to the end first. Everyone's moved on. Ehhh.

Guns kept those North Vietnamese sampans off our beaches and the entire coast safe from those invaders..

 

[Mr. Coffee]

I can understand why some people think that way. But try to realize that if the citizens have no weapons, some other nation could contemplate using a couple of well-placed nukes and an ultimatum, rationalizing that our leaders should capitulate; then they can come in with conventional ground forces and run the place with soldiers on every corner. But if everyone has a couple of firearms, they know the citizens will fight tooth and nail and they will struggle to take the cities and countryside inch by inch. No soldier would be safe outside of an armored vehicle. They won't simply decimate the whole country with bombs or whatever, because they want the prize: the natural resources, the farmland, the buildings, the infrastructure. Not saying it would be easy or that we could necessarily win in that scenario, but we would make them pay dearly. That's the deterrent.

edit: Sorry, I just took comments as I read 'em, and didn't read through to the end first. Everyone's moved on. Ehhh.

In such a scenario would personal firearms be the weapons of choice? I kind of doubt it. More likely there would be some mixture of IEDs and commercial drones converted to loitering munitions.

Also there is a huge scale problem. To occupy a country as large as the United States, even assuming very little resistance, would require an army of about 30 million. I note that no army currently in existence, even if we interpret propaganda and reserve numbers generously, even approaches that number. There are too many streets and not enough tanks in the whole world to pull that off.

Smart thing to do if invading the United States is figure out how to nuke us back to the stone age without us figuring out who did it. Wait 30 years for the radiation to wear off and then invade and you are likely only dealing with a few million survivors. That would be easier (and probably take less time) than an invasion with most of the population and infrastructure intact. I'd argue that figuring out how to nuke the USA without anyone figuring out who did it would be easier than that invasion.

 

[srolle]

Lmao from the OP's article.
Average Californian throttle enjoyer.
It's exactly as my mind pictured it. Amazing.

 

[PedalUma]

We are occupied! There are millions of highly armed delusional people killing us daily in large numbers. Darwin is the only upside. They mostly kill, in this order, themselves, their family members, their personal community members. Assault weapons are like the Ring on Gollum. 'My Precious'. Possession makes them warped and possessed. They fantasize about delusional scenarios that will justify possession, even making them heroes. And then enact their offensives. One lady shot at a guy she thought might be a shoplifter. They might even point overseas to deflect from their own heart of the real problem, their twisted minds. When is enough, enough? Gun Nuts need to go. There is no justification or excuse for these mass killings. Those who side, cover with excuses, or deflect for those nuts are on the wrong side of history and opposed to the founding ideals of America. Our reason for being and goal, is for a more, and more, and more perfect Union. Change is how we get there. Doing nothing will not make for a different result.

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

We are occupied! There are millions of highly armed delusional people killing us daily in large numbers. Darwin is the only upside. They mostly kill, in this order, themselves, their family members, their personal community members. Assault weapons are like the Ring on Gollum. 'My Precious'. Possession makes them warped and possessed. They fantasize about delusional scenarios that will justify possession, even making them heroes. And then enact their offensives. One lady shot at a guy she thought might be a shoplifter. They might even point overseas to deflect from their own heart of the real problem, their twisted minds. When is enough, enough? Gun Nuts need to go. There is no justification or excuse for these mass killings. Those who side, cover with excuses, or deflect for those nuts are on the wrong side of history and opposed to the founding ideals of America. Our reason for being and goal, is for a more, and more, and more perfect Union. Change is how we get there. Doing nothing will not make for a different result.

With all due respect

There are millions and millions of gun owners that have never committed a crime, have no intent of committing a crime, and basically just want to be left alone. Owning a firearm does not make one into Gollum, that has got to be about the silliest thing that I've ever read.

You have basically just spouted a bunch of bigotry that if one were to say that about black people you'd be quickly excoriated. It is just flat out wrong to dump millions of law abiding gun owners into the same bucket as those that willingly commit crimes. Trying to seize firearms from those millions of people will do nothing to stop the killings, considering the fact that the states with the most stringent gun laws, are the states with the highest amount of gun crime.

In closing, I'd like to point out that Obama's presidential motorcade has killed more people that all my firearms combined.

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

As a lawful gunowner, today I went to the dog groomers, spent 10 minutes getting puppykin's nails trimmed. Went to Costco and got gas, and then went into Costco to pickup something I forgot the other day, then went to the grocery store, then came home. A little later I took two of the kids to the eye doctor to see if they needed glasses or not. Spent almost 2 hours in there.

Throughout all that running, I carried a firearm with me, no one but me, and my kids knew that. No one got shot, and at no point in time was anyone in the public in danger from my firearm. I am a friendly, well adjusted extrovert, and I spend much of my time helping other people.

If you were to meet me, and not know that I was carrying you would never actually suspect that I was.

Among the Amish community (there's Amish in 42 states and 6 Canadian provinces), they own 10's of thousands of firearms, and there are zero mass shootings committed by the Amish. It's not a gun problem, it's a people problem. Gun ownership does not make one crazed or inherently evil.

 

[PedalUma]

Possession of an inherently evil thing does twist a brain. Making it also Evil. Seeking justification. Apologizing, and making deflections and excuses and pointing fingers in odd directions. The fact is these are intended to kill local humans. There is no justification. 3,628 American have lost their lives to guns in January, 2023. That is 100% upon the mentally twisted possessed. It makes them feel POWER. Insane. When is enough, enough? This has got to change. Or the trend is for a growing more of the same insanity.

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

Possession of an inherently evil thing does twist a brain. Making it also Evil. Seeking justification. Apologizing, and making deflections and excuses and pointing fingers in odd directions. The fact is these are intended to kill local humans. There is no justification. 3,628 American have lost their lives to guns in January, 2023. That is 100% upon the mentally twisted possessed. It makes them feel POWER. Insane. When is enough, enough? This has got to change. Or the trend is for a growing more of the same insanity.

Ahh, I found where you got that number. 2/3's of those deaths are suicide. Do you think that if those people didn't have a gun, they wouldn't find another way to commit suicide that is just as easy as a firearm? Didn't Kate Spade, hang herself? People throw themselves off tall things, people drive into lakes and off cliffs Was the rope Kate hung herself with inherently evil? How about bridges and buildings? No, they were just a convenient method to check out. No different than using a firearm. People use what they have at hand.

As a human, I have the right to defend myself and my family if need be. So far, and I hope it stays this way, I have never had to do that. At the same time, I carry a fire extinguisher in all my vehicles, including my boat, and I have them on every floor of my house, and in every garage. Have I ever had to use them? No, but they are there, just in case. It's more about preparation than it is about being evil.

To punish millions of people by depriving them of property due to the crimes of a very few is rather anti-freedom don't you think? I'm also not sure how an inanimate object can actually be evil? It isn't the one ring of power as you stated before, Sauron isn't talking to people through their firearms and giving them long life in return for evil acts. Can you explain the science behind that statement? Is it the chemicals in the gunpowder, maybe the Hopps #9?

People can be evil, and commit evil acts with objects regardless if it's a firearm or not. Remember, the Boston bombing was done with a pressure cooker, I have 4 of them, I never considered building a bomb out of them and placing it in a public place. A firearm, is no more evil than a hammer or any other tool. But someone just assaulted Paul Pelosi with a hammer, I don't see anyone screaming to have hammers banned. But the hammer was the tool that was used.

The vast majority of gunowners in the US are not how Hollywood portrays them, we're not Burt Gummer. But ya know what? When the graboids came, Burt saved the day with a few household chemicals in the right proportions.

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

Okay time to get Grandpa's bicycle out of the bunker and electrify it. .

Needs to be steam powered.

Or you could do this, but it has a throttle.

 

[Rexlion]

Possession of an inherently evil thing does twist a brain. Making it also Evil. Seeking justification. Apologizing, and making deflections and excuses and pointing fingers in odd directions. The fact is these are intended to kill local humans. There is no justification. 3,628 American have lost their lives to guns in January, 2023. That is 100% upon the mentally twisted possessed. It makes them feel POWER. Insane. When is enough, enough? This has got to change. Or the trend is for a growing more of the same insanity.

I have yet to see an inanimate object that was inherently evil. Unless it was a Vado.

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

I have yet to see an inanimate object that was inherently evil. Unless it was a Vado.

Apparently to some, every ebike with a throttle is evil.

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

This is what I say about guns and ebikes.
It's better to have it when you need it more better than needing it and not have it.
I ride in some fucked up sections of Pearl Harbor Bike Path where there are homeless people sent here from the Mainland US and they have camps along side the pathways.
Vicious looking dogs, if you don't stand your ground you don't deserve to ride through.

I thought Hawaii was difficult to not only get a firearm, but also to get a license to carry? Unless you're Magnum PI

 

[JedidiahStolzfus]

You must be thinking of 'Open Carry'.
I has to be approved by the Police Chief.
Legally registered guns are easily acquired, all you needs to be is a law abiding citizen no felony, no domestic violence, no mental problems and you good to go.

Cool, now all you need is a Ferrari 508 with the plate Rome1 on it.

 

[kevinmccune]

I can understand why some people think that way. But try to realize that if the citizens have no weapons, some other nation could contemplate using a couple of well-placed nukes and an ultimatum, rationalizing that our leaders should capitulate; then they can come in with conventional ground forces and run the place with soldiers on every corner. But if everyone has a couple of firearms, they know the citizens will fight tooth and nail and they will struggle to take the cities and countryside inch by inch. No soldier would be safe outside of an armored vehicle. They won't simply decimate the whole country with bombs or whatever, because they want the prize: the natural resources, the farmland, the buildings, the infrastructure. Not saying it would be easy or that we could necessarily win in that scenario, but we would make them pay dearly. That's the deterrent.

edit: Sorry, I just took comments as I read 'em, and didn't read through to the end first. Everyone's moved on. Ehhh.

We would kill each other and there would end up few enclaves and warlords, the warlords would either side with the oppressors or challenge them and get wiped out, modern tech would get most of us pretty fast, just like the old groundhogs when you come out of the burrow thats when you get them.There would probably be a few as tough as the Afghanys, that certainly wouldn't be the norm.We would be killing each other over gas and groceries.
The best scenario would be to work for world peace, not the 'Red Ryder" "Christmas Story" fantasies.