If I've got the throttle pressed on my Gran Camino, the motor does not cut out when I stop pedalling. So is it legal?
No it isn't legal, the exemption that permits a pedelec is very clear, the assist power must cease when pedalling stops.
However, when looking at the detail of the law it can be important to cut some slack in respect of the DfT who make the law, the police and those who sell the pedelecs. They are trying very hard within the confines of politics and the law we are stuck with to satisfy what pedelecers need.
Politically to maintain our all important trade with the EU we have to comply with EU transport law, which as a result is still fully in force here, despite our leaving the union.
So we have an impasse, the EU's no fully acting throttle law in conflict with our traditionally always having fully acting throttles. The DfT have done their utmost to resolve the problem and clearly are not at all sympathetic to that EU provision, so have provided the following work arounds:
1) Grandfather rights, meaning all pedelecs manufactured prior to 1st January 2016 when the EU law was implemented can have fully acting throttles indefinitely, on the basis that retrospective law is unfair and in some respects unlawful. And they have required the police forces of Great Britain to comply with that ruling.
2) To deal with the problem of more recent pedelecs, they have introduced a somewhat convoluted provision using a part of EU law, that which says a pedelec with a throttle becomes an LIe-A moped which needs to be type approved at manufacture.
So they have stretched that in three ways to mean that, post manufacture, a fully acting throttle can be added, providing that the machine is individually taken through Single Vehicle Approval. If that is done they are prepared to accept that it remains a bureacracy free pedelec classed as a 250LPM within the L1e-A law as a Britain only class given permanent ministerial approval to be still a bicycle in law. Once again they have required the police forces of Great Britain to comply with that ruling, despite the legal conflict.
As is very clear, the police are complying with both the above measures, taking absolutely no notice of fully acting throttles, providing all the other pedelec rules are complied with, as the DfT has ruled.
In turn the trade have taken note and apply the law with similar flexibility. So we should be tolerant about their interpretations which, after all, are only provided to satisfy what we ask for and feel we need.
Woosh regards needing to pedal to activate the throttle allows it to remain active during the journey since it is a thumb throttle not necessarily continuous at all times. As I said at the outset, that does not comply with the letter of the law, but it obviously does comply with the spirit of the DfT's provisions to resolve the impasse mentioned.
So it's in our own interests to cut them some slack, as the DfT have generously done for us.
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