Leva

UK Petition to Increase Speed Limit of 25 km/h E-Bikes

1222 days ago

2 minutes

On 1 January 2021, the UK definitely leaves the EU, even though it is still not decided under which terms. For light, electric vehicles, this could mean that the UK decides to deviate from EU law. One petition is already calling for change.

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With less than 2 months to go for the UK’s final departure from the EU, nothing has been decided yet on LEV-legislation. For a while now, British civil servants are no longer participate in relevant EU discussions. Nevertheless, no-one has a clear idea of what is about to happen. Will the UK simply transfer L-category legislation? Will they stick with the Machinery Directive and the harmonised standards, such as EN 15194? The whole business is eagerly awaiting final answers.

A few weeks ago, we have announced that the UK is about to end the anti-dumping duties on conventional bikes, but any further news about the anti-dumping on e-bikes is not forthcoming. Nevertheless, the logical path for the UK would be to cancel these as well.

In the meantime, a petition to increase the speed limit for 25 km/h electric bicycles has been online for some time. The signatories are  asking the British government to consider adjusting this speed limit to be in line with US legislation of 20Mph, i.e. around 32 km/h.

Further justification for the request is as follows: “Its commonly accepted in the cycling community that the current limit reduces the likelihood that people will swap their car for an electric bike and that the speed difference being so much lower than a car increases the danger presented to cyclists when sharing the road.
Additionally, there are a large number of bikes in the UK that have bypassed or do not conform to the current legislation. Increasing it would prevent much faster bicycles from making their way onto the roads and paths.

It is strange that the petition does not include a request to allow for the so-called “twist and go” again. The UK allowed a throttle on an ebike for a very long time, thus breaching EU legislation. The alignment with Regulation 168/2013 happened not that long ago.

If the petition gets 10,000 signatures, the UK government has to respond to the petition. The counter is currently at 4,235. The petition is here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/332333.

Photo by Jay Mullings on Unsplash

Annick Roetynck

Annick is the Manager of LEVA-EU, with decades of experience in two-wheeled and light electric mobility.

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