Star Simpson

Anecdotally, these new obscenely-heavy e-bikes in SF seem considerably safer than other bicycles. Sure, the brakes are more likely in good repair, but I think the weight is actually helpful in a subtle way..

I used to have a featherlight carbon fiber road bicycle (bought it in college for cheap off of someone on the racing team — "feh, this is now last year's model!",) could routinely get up to 20-25mph. Cars never saw me coming and I would get cut off all the time. (caveat Boston)

When I am riding a bicycle that is speed-limited to provide only a certain amount of extra power, which I cannot merely quadricep into exceeding that speed — I think I'm actually less likely to end up running up to cars that aren't already aware that I am there; and am so, safer.

I find this interesting because I am not sure that I would have reasoned my way to this belief or necessarily immediately bought "heavier bikes with electronic rate controls are safer bikes to ride" if it had been posited.

I'm personally not sure about the ebikes; I personally think I feel less safe on them than I do on my hyperlight carbon-fiber bike because I don't feel like I understand how they respond well enough yet and they *feel* faster even if I'm not sure they are.

On the ebikes I feel like I don't understand when pedaling is just pedaling, and when pedaling is "whoops now I am twice as fast as I was a second ago" and that feeling is disconcerting to me.

Accidentally going twice as fast sounds really fucking awesome actually.