Frankly if it's found the bike has illegally fast assistance and it results in a widespread crackdown on illegal e-bikes, I won't shed any tears.
Sooner or later this whole issue is going to blow up, since illegal speed or power seems to be increasingly the norm. At least half the new entrants in here speak of derestricting intentions and higher power than 250 watts and such widespread illegality is unsustainable.
Much better action is taken now by a clampdown before e-biking grows very much larger and the outcome becomes much more unpleasant via restrictive legislation.
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Firstly, why are we all assuming this bike is an ilegaly fast one?
Secondly, I wonder how such a clamp could be downed.
If every bike were stopped for a check like they do with HGVs how exactly could they be checked? I suppose there could be a portable trainer type device to see where the assistance ends but I really can't see that happening, unless there is a spate of fatal ebike related incidents. A few hundred in a year perhaps?
I suspect that it would need a transgresser to be severely and publicly punished to have any effect and even then it would be voluntary. I wonder if the other newsworthy case has stopped anyone riding fixies? Probably not!
To be fair my views are based on me never having riden a bike iner city so find it hard to imagine what it's actually like and how different it is to my rides up the valley A roads, and B roads over the moors where there isn't even a footpath, let alone pedestrians.
I was watching tv this morning (Dom on the spot) I think it was called, he interviews an HGV driver asking how cyclists were a problem to him.. not a mention of ebikes at all. His gripe was couriers who zoom in and out of traffic.
