Amsterdam is one of six European cities that will soon test a system that can remotely limit the speed of electric bicycles. Amsterdam’s traffic alderman, Melanie van der Horst, tested the system herself last week, NRC reports.

Alrighty,

So your system knows the exact situation and still is slowing down my bike, just at the moment I need to accelerate to avoid being overrun by that large truck heading into me.

How stupid are these folks? We’ve got rules, when people don’t follow those rules, you fine them. Case closed.

No system to prevent a bike speeding, teach people to obey the law.

  • @[email protected]English
    27•9 months ago

    So your system knows the exact situation and still is slowing down my bike, just at the moment I need to accelerate to avoid being overrun by that large truck heading into me.

    After reading the article, it seems like the system is supposed to temporarily jam pedal assist, turning your ebike into a regular bike. And the system would need to be installed in all street legal ebikes for that to happen. Since you’re still free to accelerate by pedaling like a normal bike user, that significantly reduces the amount of situations where the pedal assist would actually save you. If you can’t avoid collision by pedaling harder, you probably had no chance in the first place.

    Considering most of the inner city’s roads now have a 30 km/h speed limit for cars, collision safety is probably even less of a concern now.

    I do share the concern of others in the comments that such a system would probably be broken on day one, and you have a bunch of script kiddies with flipper zeros running around bricking ebikes.

    The only way for that not to happen is to use proper encryption for any wireless signals being used to control this system. Considering the Dutch governmental reputation for IT failures, this is probably not going to go well.

    • @[email protected]English
      14•9 months ago

      Precisely; for context, it was recently discussed in Dutch media how some of these e-bikes reach 60 km/h. Together with a culture of people refusing to wear bicycle helmets, there’s certainly some more nuance and middle ground.

      There needs to be some kind of solution, but doing nothing is not really an option.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•9 months ago

      Since you’re still free to accelerate by pedaling like a normal bike user, that significantly reduces the amount of situations where the pedal assist would actually save you.

      Bro e-bikes are like 3-6x heavier than normal bikes, manual pedaling sucks and you can’t accelerate for shit

    • @[email protected]English
      2•9 months ago

      And the system would need to be installed in all street legal ebikes for that to happen.

      Wouldn’t street legal ebikes not go too fast by default anyway? I feel like if that’s the case, this would mostly inconvenience people with legal ebikes and have barely any effect on illegal ones that can go faster.

      • Da Bald EagulEnglish
        2•9 months ago

        Street legal bikes can be modified. This system would, in theory, make it harder to exceed speed limits on assisted pedalling, or at least easier to find those who do it and fine them.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•9 months ago

          at least easier to find those who do it and fine them.

          Missed that part, can you please clarify how?

          • Da Bald EagulEnglish
            1•9 months ago

            This is speculative, but since it uses a standardized system, it should be easier to check if anything has been modified. And it is connected to some remote system, so that may allow for extra opportunities to catch them too.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•9 months ago

      But pedal accelerating an ebike is not quite as easy as a regular bike. They’re over 20kg due to steel frames and batteries.