The answer is simple: ban teens
Just wait until all those teen grow up and figure out that old farts on social media are responsible.
Yeah, they can wipe thier own ass when they are in a care home!
In my community a couple of years ago some middle aged guy assaulted a teen who was riding his Surron (non peddle ebike/motorcycle) in the park. Was he speeding? Probably, but that doesn’t excuse what that twat did. For the most part kids on these types of bikes aren’t the problem.
Our real problem has been pre teens on 110cc dirt bikes. They ride in groups and have been literally terrorizing people. I talked to one lady who had to put her horse down when they scared it and caused it to break a leg. Then they laughed at her and rode off. The police can’t catch them, though they’ve tried, but not that hard since they could actually do some simple detective work if they wanted to
Just gotta keep making the world as hostile as possible to teenagers.
Because the school to prison pipeline can only do so much
This is such a gross oversimplification, it’s insane. They could also join the military.
“Get off your phones and meet people your age in real life!” “Wait not like that!”
Feels like kids can’t win these days.
Can’t wait for the e-bike gang wars of '26.
Waaaaaarriors! Come out to playay!
Let me rephrase: Australians concerned about children on vehicles that can go 25mph with no requirement for a license or training.
The issue is more that they sell 500-1000W ebikes that are not specced for road usage, only for riding on private ground - and then hand them to teenagers. As so often, the parents are the issue, not the teens. As so often, everyone will pay the price for it through stricter regulation.
Wrong.
we have two issues
One is crusted old cumstains losing their shit about the presence of Visible Teenagers after the social media ban. They can go fuck 'emselves
The other issue is teens on illegal wattage ebikes that are souped up to 50/90kmph and ridden in areas not designed to have things at that speed tearing through them. Because of pedestrians, kids, horses, etc.
25 kph, not mph. Which isn’t very fast.
25kph is the legal speed limit for ebikes. It does not magically prevent them from going faster.
I googled top e-bike speeds.
That’s pretty close to my average speed and I’m just a commuter on a 30lb hardtail MTB with shitty infrastructure. I’d wager anyone who can ride a bike can easily go faster than that on a flat, even if they weren’t a regular rider.
You can go 25mph and faster on a bicycle no problem, I reject the argument that e-bikes (not e-moto) are a significant danger. That’s mostly cabrain propaganda that people who chose to stop thinking accept.
Not unless you are are really gunning it and on a fitted road bike.
There is a pretty big psychological aspect to it in that without putting in the work, you can become disconnected in how fast you are accelerating/moving. With bicycles you tend to work up the speed as you start to understand and get comfortable with what you are riding; a process that isn’t really present with e-bikes.
It’s 25 KILOMETERS an hour. I often end up cycling faster than my ebike motor can keep up with.
Fitted road bike? I do it regularly on a 3x7 hardtail MTB loaded down with pannier bags and a frame bag. That’s not downhill, that’s on a flat. I am just an ordinary bike commuter too, not an athlete and I have a low end steel Trek meant for single track MTB riding. It weighs at least 30 lbs with all my stuff on it.
I think you are overestimating how hard it is to go fast with little to no training and the right gear, even someone who doesn’t ride regularly could probably hit 20 on a flat if they tried. Downhill you can hit 35mph+ even if you aren’t in shape and barely know how to ride.
or you are going down a big and somewhat steep hill, in that scenario your point doesnt work
A dude got up to 90mph on a bike just off his own steam before
I remember all the adverts when I was a kid telling me that if I got hit by a car at 30mph there was a 90% chance I’d live (this was the happy path of the advert). This is also cars ostensibly driven by licensed people.
E-bikes with a 25mph limiter are not a risk if we allow cars in the same space as pedestrians
Yeah sure, but we’re not going to create laws just for Lance fucking Armstrong.
90 on a bike? That’s nuts, do you have a link to that? I’d like to see what kind of a machine that is
Honestly I remember someone telling me and I’ve never seen it myself so I went looking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cycling_records
Turns out there’s even faster now
The article doesn’t mention any “miles per hour”. Do people in Australia use mph?
In December, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, announced a plan to halve ebikes’ power – and therefore reduce their top speeds – to 250 watts…
No. It’s kph. Ebikes are restricted to 25 kph.
“We really recognise the tremendous opportunity that ebikes can offer for getting anyone, including younger people, from A to B, independently,” McLean said. “[It] is a really, really positive thing that connects them to education, to work, to social things and communities as well.
“There’s lots of benefits that go along with them, but when we have really high powered ebikes and people driving them dangerously and without helmets, then they certainly pose a significant risk.”
Seems like a pretty balanced take honestly.
If it goes faster than 28 mph, has a motor more powerful than 1000w, or lacks usable pedals, it’s not an e-bike at all. People riding these things get people who ride actual electric bicycles fucked over though, which is unfortunate because electric assisted bicycles open up a lot of opportunities for people who are elderly or have other physical disabilities.
I am all for making e-moto and e-bikes legally distinct but punishing cyclists because of e-moto bullshit is a stupid decision. Also, parents who buy their kids motorcycles with no training, safety gear, or evaluation of their child’s judgement should be held accountable instead of the people who are just trying to get to work on an e-bike.
Yeah I completely agree. This exact issue kind of triggers me, and I did draft a longer diatribe complaining about exactly this, which I didn’t post.
I have an assortment of bikes including e-bikes, all of which I love equally. They’re truly amazing machines.
If you purchase a $200 k-mart commuter, and a $400 wheel hub motor and battery from temu, then perch a 12 year old precariously in the saddle that’s not an e-bike it’s an unregistered unregulated electric motorbike. This type of set up can easily achieve 50km/h with the majority more like 60km/h and some exceeding 80km/h.
The bikes just aren’t built for this kind of stress, and the people riding them don’t have a reasonable understanding of the risks. They scream around on bike paths weaving around kids and babies in strollers.
The current rules here in west aus (as I understand them) merely allow pedal assist up to 25 km/h. Critically, that means the bike can allow you to switch between modes providing more or less assistance, but no throttle. Additionally a lot of the temu bikes require you to move the pedals but do not require you to provide any effort - the pedals moving is more like a switch that allows the motor to engage.
The basic problem is that existing legislation just isn’t sufficient. Guilting parents isn’t enough. There needs to be better laws, and they need to be actively policed.
you expect other people commenting to actually read the article?
sounds like a good thing. man do i miss actually going out and meeting people. i mean, i can go out, but i’m mostly alone, idk where everyone else is, the world feels so empty, devoid of people in it
I hope Australian kids annoy adults enough that this moral panic about social media dies from adults just giving up because kids resort to even more annoying behavior, that would be poetic justice.
Moral panic? Dude, social media is a fucking scourge. It’s not some 80s Satanic panic bullshit. It seriously hurts kids.
Why are you here then?
I get your point, but it’s not some GOTCHA, like you think it is. I’m an adult and Lemmy doesn’t use algorithms to instill emotions or push ads. It also is moderated as to where hate speech is less likely. You can go on Meta products and make comments about gassing Jews, calling blacks monkeys, and so on.
In my opinion, algorithms and dark patterns in social media need to be destroyed. Any of us who remember early social media will remember it not being anywhere near as bad as the monstrosity it has evolved into today.
Instagram was quite fun when it had a reputation for being a “hipster” platform and before Facebook bought it and absolutely butchered it, for example. Now it’s genuinely horrible.
Fuck man, I’m old enough to remember Facebook was exclusively posts by my friends. Shit has come a long way.
Yup. I’d log in, scroll for maybe 10-15 posts before I saw the first one from yesterday, play some Wild Ones, and that was that.
Couldn’t agree more. Social media isn’t the problem, sure. The hyper aggressive algorithms that most of them use are extremely harmful to individuals and society.
I think most people agree but when we slip into trashing social media as a concept and lose the nuance I get concerned.
Ok so sounds like the problem isn’t actually social media then?
Rather it is a question of the choices we make about the architecture and design of social media.
Well, duh. That’s the problem. That’s what I’m saying. That’s like saying beer doesn’t cause alcoholism, the alcohol in it does. You’re being pedantic.
No, when you just say social media = bad you feed into the moral panic with your intellectual laziness.
Try harder with formulating your arguments please.
You are insufferable.
you seem like a very fun person to be around.
He’s just being argumentative. Some people think that’s a personality trait.
Every teenager, edgelord and redditor (but I repeat myself) thinks this way. That being some kind of contrarian/devil’s advocate dipshit is some proof or evidence of their mighty intellect.
“Oh, but have you thought about this!!! It seems only I am so smart as to have such enlightened thoughts…”
Every teenager is the Gotcha-Man and they think they’re unique and novel.
:)
Social media is a terrible for us. Me included. It’s addictive - that’s why I’m here. It’s even worse for kids as it fucks up their social skills development. And we have the power to help them avoid it, just like we were lucky enough to grow up before it. Once they’re old enough they can then choose to fuck them selves up, like they can with alcohol, weed, porn, etc.
Social media is a terrible for us. Me included. It’s addictive - that’s why I’m here.
If that is how you feel I encourage you to start from a position of curiosity about what draws you here beyond a simple thought terminating comparison to an addictive physical substance or our sex drive.
This is a forum.
Forums and blogs could be classed as social media, but they predate widespread use of the term, and are fundamentally different from the corporate social platforms.
It’s the combination of an individualized engagement algorithm and user-generated content that defines modern social media.
It’s the combination of an individualized engagement algorithm and user-generated content that defines modern social media.
This is precisely what is supercharging this moral panic, people don’t automatically think critically about this and will bandwagon on social media = bad because it feels righteous and is easy unless WE force a more nuanced conversation.
I better not see any Gen-X b!t¢h about “kids on bikes”. Don’t be a hypocrite.
I’m a gen X “bitch”. I was raised cycling everywhere. Get lost with your generational divisive bullshit.
Read my comment again. Slowly.
“B!t¢h” is used as a verb not an adjective.
Nothing to do with social media, all to do with at what point and electric bicycle becomes an electric motorcycle and the lack of laws and regulations keeping up with it. It used to be easy if the thing was making a noise, due to petrol engine, it’s a motorbike. It’s happening in every country and it feels like Chinese manufacturers are making all the money whilst the rest of the world catches up.
Nah it’s about being mad at teenagers or just mad at not driving a car. The US under Biden passed ebike regulations that are already a lot more strict than just a limit where it becomes a motorcycle, but a bunch of (mostly Democrat) states are either banning all ebikes period or banning most of the federal regulation classes because if Gavin Newsom sees a black kid have fun he instantly becomes Ronald Reagan.
I know of a guy who had his driver’s license permanently revoked because he racked up so many DUI’s. He lived in rural Indiana, and bought a moped because they didn’t require a license to drive. Obvious he did not stop driving drunk.
But also, the moped did in fact make noise.
Beware! The anti fun police are in effect!
Your throwing stick trick has boomeranged on us!
The article has nothing to do with social media, the only mention of it is how adults put a comment on FB about antisocial behaviour of ebike riders. And clearly the clip of ripping up a golf course is antisocial. So actually the issue is, like in the UK, illegal emotorbikes that people should be prosecuted for.
I guess the question is, is ripping up a golf course more or less antisocial than having a golf course?
From the view point of the law it is.
Well, it’s a good thing laws are never wrong!
And clearly the clip of ripping up a golf course is antisocial.
Naw, ripping up a golf course is environmental activism, fuck golf courses.
I agree with most of it.
If kids are acting out, it’s because they’re feeling powerless and/or unheard. So they banned social media. What did they replace it with? Did the government build public spaces meant for under-16s to gather and be social?
Golf courses are not a good thing,though. They are an absolute waste. The amount of water and chemicals used is atrocious.
We should force them all to join the marching band 🙄
