Many shared paths post fifteen miles per hour. Guidance written for towns suggests fifteen on busy paths and twenty on quieter ones. Whether a number is posted where you ride, and what it is, comes off the sign at the top of that particular path.

But here is the sentence that matters more than the number, and it comes from the same source as the number: regardless of the speed limit, adjust your speed based on conditions. A limit is the fastest you may ever go on that path. It is not a description of what today is like.

On a pedal bike, going quickly on a path takes effort and you can feel yourself doing it. On this machine it takes nothing. Assist holds a speed for you on the flat, uphill and into a headwind, and it does it without the noise, the breathing and the effort that used to tell you how fast you were.

And the ceiling is high. In the US, anything still legally a bicycle can assist up to twenty-eight miles per hour — getting on for double what a busy path posts. Nothing on your machine stops you at the path limit. The only thing between the two numbers is you deciding.

The path rule about blind corners is written as a prohibition rather than as advice: do not pass others unless you have a clear view of oncoming path users to judge when it is safe to pass. No clear view, no pass. It is not a judgment call about how likely something is.

You already have this idea from the road, where you learned to hold the lane through the bit nobody can see past and release afterwards. This is the same rule with the vehicles swapped. The bend, the hedge, the underpass, the bridge, the tunnel of trees: those are the places you sit in behind somebody and wait, and the wait is about eight seconds.

Ask it out loud on your next ride, at every bend, bridge and underpass. Two seconds each. It turns the corner rule from a thing you agree with into a thing you actually run, which are very different.

Pick every one that is right, then press Check.

Find all 4.

A path bend with a hedge on the inside, seen from the rider's eye. A slider sets how far round you can see. Move it and the game shows what appears and when, at the speed you set: a dog on a long lead, a group walking abreast, a rider coming the other way, or nothing at all. Try to pass at each setting and see which attempts finish safely.

Set the sight line short and try to find a passing speed that works. There is not one, which is the whole point of writing the rule as a refusal instead of as advice.

At three blind spots, say how far you can see.

Walk the path you use most, with an adult, as far as the first three bends, bridges or underpasses. At each one, stand where you would be riding and say out loud how many feet ahead you can actually see. Then say what speed would let you stop inside that distance. Whoever is with you writes the three numbers down.