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Andre Jute:
A motorbike helmet would be a deal breaker for most cyclists, I think. It's a nasty, isolating, and very heavy excrescence. Most bicyclists in my experience belong to the more reasonable section of the environmentalist continuum (I'm a conservationist myself, at the most reasonable end of that continuum), and I've never met a cyclist who didn't enjoy being in the open air. A compulsory motorcycle helmet -- as distinct from a lightweight, open cycling helmet -- is outright hostile to that whole attitude to nature held in common by almost all cyclists.

Not that I think these speed freaks and people who ride electric bikes without ever pedaling are real cyclists at all.

Tigerbiten:
But you don't need a helmet on a motorized trike.
So something like an ICE Fat trike with a big motor and a fairing to deflect the bugs would be road legal, once you comply with all the other paperwork, without a helmet.

Luck ..........  ;D

Andre Jute:

--- Quote from: Tigerbiten on March 02, 2018, 03:34:14 pm ---But you don't need a helmet on a motorized trike.
So something like an ICE Fat trike with a big motor and a fairing to deflect the bugs would be road legal, once you comply with all the other paperwork, without a helmet.

--- End quote ---

I agree. But a trike has built-in stability from its three wheels, which a bicycle does not have. But I couldn't ride a trike here. I ride in lanes only one trike wide and soon a farmer on a tractor, literally overlooking me, would run over me. On my bike my whole head clears the top of a Range over, and I present a profile that no one can doubt will damage even a sturdy tractor.

Note that where I live a cycling helmet is not compulsory, though it is advised by the police if you ask them. In fact, where we don't have a specific law, if you say, "Oh, this is okay in England," or "Man, this is okay in Germany. See the CE and TUV marks?" that's a convincing argument. Not that I've ever been stopped on my bike, not even once in nearly thirty years of cycling here, except by policemen who wanted admire my bike.

But the people I cycle with think nothing of embarrassing a clergyman for asking for salt at dinner; you can imagine how they would react to anyone who turns out for a ride without a helmet. It would be worse than turning up without your trousers, which would be overlooked as mere absentminded eccentricity. Not that I normally succumb to that sort of peer pressure, but I'm very fairskinned, so I burn even on mild, overcast days, and am always under some kind of a hat, on the bike or off it. For me a helmet is a skinsaver, mandated or not.

Andre Jute:

--- Quote from: jags on March 01, 2018, 05:07:31 pm ---my idea of a ebike would be a hidden motor on my audax help me get up those hills ,not at all interested in speed .Bianchi have a lovely ebike looks exactly like a roadbike .
--- End quote ---

Where are you going to hide a battery big enough to carry you over all the hills on any ride of about 20km or over, Anto? By my reckoning, even a small helper-motor in the seat tube will require a battery around 350 cubic inches. That's a lot of space on a bike. You'll have to wave goodbye to your snacks and tea-making equipment. I think you'd do better to give up the hub dynamo and get a front hub motor and a water-bottle battery. When I had those, people consistently pointed to the Rohloff and asked me if my bike was electrified. Hide in plain sight.

energyman:
Bio-gas driven but I won't go into details..........

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