America's and Europe's geography are much different. The road rules are much different. These debates about ebike regulations are therefore pointless. Im not going to argue with a European about regulating my American ebikes. Yall love your licenses, but that doesn't really work with the American mindset or even it's geography.

Over here we have more than 2 lane roads. We have higher speed limits on most of our roads. This means that when a European is wanting 15/20 mph limits they are thinking about their cramped roads with slower speed limits. The sidewalks over here in America are largely for show. Almost Noone walks outside of a few cities. There is also a difference between rural and city. I don't think it's fair or smart to blanketly regulate ebikes based off of city conditions. These are the arguments I see going on.

The limiting of speed in the machine itself and not by speed limits is naive and misses the picture. Cars don't have speed inhibitors because thats not how people work. Giving up control of my freedom to someone else for the sake of ignorant and wrong speed data is the weirdest thing of humanity - they love being governed and ruled because they don't want to have to think or stress any more than they already do. If a pack of cars is moving at 25mph per the speed limit and im on my bike, where is the safest place? Infront going 30-35? Or behind doing 15 where cars are trying to go 25 and therefore having to move around me into other lanes? The answer is obvious. Stopping distance and reaction time to cars pulling out still happens to an ebike in the pack of cars going 25, so you aren't getting rid of that danger by limiting the speed of the ebike, you are just creating more danger. Also there are two ways to get away from danger, speeding up or slowing down. Slowing down is risky for a bike because the people behind you probably don't see you or your brake light. Speeding up is valid because of the maneuverability of a light ebike. So, if you enforce a speed governor you also limit a potential ability to dodge an accident.

Sidewalks. Yes an ebike shouldn't be ripping through a sidewalk at great speed, but I belive an ebike should still be able to get on a sidewalk because the less they are in traffic the better for everyone. Bikes and bikes pose the same risk to pedestrians in this section and bikes and pedestrians have been getting along forever. Yall are too reactionary, or actually now yall are being weirdly too preventative based off some events that are not happening and yelling for regulatikns which never really work. 1/3rd of rwgulations are even effective and produce a demonstrable good, and those are in food production mostly lmao. Yall are really weird.

Also again american and European sidewalks are different. Noone walks in America. If an ebiker is going a little faster on a sidewalk then there is almost no harm being done. If there is 1 pedestrian who walks on a particular sidewalk a day then the odds are insanely low that that pedestrian is gonna have a collision with an ebike going way too fast. Do yall see that? So regulating for that instance in America by putting speed limiter on the bikes is insane. So by focusing on these few pedestrians and demanding lower speed ebikes you put the ebiker in more danger on the road as I mentioned above. Insanity.

Yall are too emotional. Too reactionary to made up scenarios in your heads. Too bogged down in your subjective geographical experience . I have not seen one person in these forums saying how they were horribly disfigured by ebikes or insurance companies showing staggering figures of the dangers of ebikes. All I see in these forums is bickering about subjective ideals about the speed limit of ebikes. I wouldnt care if yall weren't responsible for flag raising for laws.

TL;DR: lets start with very light regulation and see how it works before jumping to insanely limiting speeds to 15mph.