We need to roll back much of the the vehicularisation of cycling that empowers risk seekers, predominantly men, to ride invisibly amongst massive trucks. That means building out more separated infrastructure for old people, children, families and risk averse cyclists who don’t want to live out the rest of their lives with severe brain injuries sustained when the driver of a motor vehicle has a momentary lapse of attention.

We can’t have high powered electric motor bikes amongst human powered bikes on separated infrastructure. If they want to kill themselves riding amongst cars, just class them as motor bikes and upgrade their brakes and helmets and let them do 300km/h on the roads. Their organ donations are much appreciated.

25km/h is fine for mixing with other traffic not protected by steel boxes and airbags. It might even be too much for some older cyclists. You might need more power than 250W for a heavily laded cargo bike going up a hill but those things also have the potential do more damage if they hit someone. So its a tradeoff. First we decide to provide safe cycling infrastructure independent of the roads and cars so we aren’t fighting over who gets what.

Then we decide what is compatible with that infrastructure. I think we need to be more accepting of risk on mixed bike/pedestrian paths and less accepting of risk on mixed bike/motor vehicle roads. The pedestrian lobby kills cyclists. But not sure exactly where the balance lies. Some states don’t even let cyclists on foot paths. Insane.