Badge Kids › Road Badge › Section 2 › Lesson 2.1
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The three questions that tell you what you are riding
Answer the three questions about your own machine from the label or the manual, and say where those three answers are written down.
1Watch
Two machines in the same rack
Two machines in the same rack
Two e-bikes leaning in a school rack look near enough identical; the camera moves in on the frame of each in turn and holds on two small labels carrying very different numbers, then freezes.
20 secondsSame shape, same wheels, same sort of price. Two completely different machines as far as every rule in either country is concerned, and the only thing that says so is about the size of a stamp.
2The idea
Why we are not going to teach you a class number
Plenty of courses open by teaching you Class 1, 2 and 3. We are not, for a plain reason: no Canadian province or territory uses those class numbers in law at all, and in the United States they are not the same everywhere. A class number is a local word, and this machine crosses borders.
Where you live, the system is this: set by your state or province. That is worth reading once. But the thing you carry around in your head has to work anywhere, so it is three questions about the machine itself instead.
3The idea
The three questions
How many watts is the motor?
What speed does the assist cut out at?
Does it have working pedals you could ride it with the power off?
Every rule in either country is built out of those three answers. Power, cut-out speed, and whether it is still a bicycle when the battery is flat. A rider who can answer all three can work out where they stand anywhere they go. A rider who knows a class number knows one word, true in one place.
4Look
Where the three answers live
Most machines carry the first one. Nearly all carry the second. The display is the least reliable of the three, because a display can be changed and a moulded label cannot.
5Decide
You go over the whole machine and there is no label anywhere, and no manual in the house.
Pick one to carry on.
6The idea
What the three answers actually buy you
A legal e-bike is not a motor vehicle: no licence, no registration, no insurance. In the United States, 28 mph is the ceiling for anything still legally a bicycle — over that line it is a moped or a motorcycle, with the licensing that goes with those. Wherever categories exist, the fastest one is the restricted one.
And where you live, how old you have to be is this: set by your state or province. That is a floor, not an opinion about how well you ride. The machine has its three answers and you have an age, and either they match or they do not.
7Your turn
Four machines
Four machines
Four machines appear one at a time with a label, a manual page or a display. Answer the three questions for each. The card then tells you what each machine is called in three different places – two US states and one province – using the same three answers you just gave.
The fourth one has nothing readable on it anywhere. That is deliberate, and it is the most common one of the four.
8Find them
Which of these actually tell you what you are riding?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 3.
9Say it
Three words, in order
Say it out loud, in your normal voice
“Watts, cut-out, pedals.”
Those three words are the whole test. Say them and you will remember which three things to go and look for, in a shop, in a friend’s garage, or in front of somebody asking you what you are riding.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Go and answer the three on your own machine, out loud, with somebody listening: the watts, the cut-out speed, and whether the pedals drive it with the power off. Write the three answers somewhere you will find them again. If one of them is missing, say which one and tell whoever bought the machine.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
How many watts. What speed does the assist cut out at. Does it have working pedals. Three answers, and they work everywhere.
Next lesson: What a throttle changes