Yes, Trex... I've tired quite a few throttle bikes....
....I just knew someone would have to say that
Perhaps I need to explain some of the advantages of E-bikes for people with Mobility problems, none of which would be covered by a moped.
1) Firstly the E-bike provides an opportunity for exercise where exercise is a difficult thing to do. With a throttle you have the option to use your legs until it is either too painful or too difficult to do and then cruise for a bit on the throttle and then try a bit more and so on. I am not talking an occasional oversight in overdoing things. If you have a disease that causes Mobility issues it's not a choice.
2) Many mobility issues are not predictable from day to day, you get good days and bad, myself on a not so good day. I ride around the bike lanes in my local country park, because I don't feel well enough to deal with traffic and noise but the exercise is still beneficial. Also I get plenty of fresh air in the park, not so much on a street full of traffic.
3) I can get across my town almost solely on bike lanes. This is much safer, not sure I could handle some of the traffic on a moped.
4) Mopeds on a train - I think not. The Bike/Train/Bike option opens up the life of many disabled people massively. Places that were impossible to get to become easy.
I understand all this...and I have pretty good experience of working with a lot of individuals with special physical needs, so I do appreciate this need. Maybe what I'm trying to say, is that if you want/need a throttle on your eBike maybe it should be classed as a moped... Not that you should have an actual moped under the current legal definition.
I see the throttle as a one of the clear lines in the sand that make something not a pedal cycle, for obvious reasons.
Surely you can appreciate the problem with allowing people to ride around public parks, canal paths on cycles with throttles? You can't pick and choose the people who are allowed to do something... you have to allow or not allow the activity. Does that make sense? The concern is that incidents (or more likely, concern about incidents) involving cycles with throttles will result in reduced access for pedelecs, or even bicycles more generally because decision makers don't understand the difference and make blanket policies.
(and I fully appreciate the vast majority of people who currently ride throttle powered pedelecs in the UK are not riding the type of bike or are the type of person that is likely to cause a problem). However you can't make rules, that say... sensible people can do this, idiots can't. Which is a shame, because that would be a nice system to adopt across a lot of society I suspect.
Or maybe there should be a class of disabled vehicle or something, that needs special badges or the throttle only works to 10mph or something.
But anyway, the law will continue to align with Europe, so I suspect all our discussions about this are slightly moot anyway. But its interesting for me to read these discussions and see how lots of different people use their bicycles.