OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). This letter is in response to a letter regarding a hit-and-run involving an e-bike, published Aug. 7.
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You cannot group all electric bicycle riders in together like that.
I ride an electric bicycle, as I have a bad knee due to an accident and I cannot ride a normal bicycle or walk long distances but I still need exercise and I find an electric bicycle works great. I can still pedal and get exercise but it does not put as much of a strain on my knee.
I ride over a half an hour on that trail one or two times a week.
The trail is also mostly two lanes: one for people going one direction and the other for people going in the other direction.
I have a bell to warn people as I am going to go around them which I use. Some people will move over and allow me to pass and some people just ignore the bell and keep blocking the whole trail and many times I have had to completely stop as people are walking in a group across both lanes, or walking in the wrong lane and do not move over as they should or just walk right out in front of me.
The trails are for bicycles and walkers both and I think both need to take responsibility and respect each other and follow the proper rules of the trails.
Who knows what happened here. Should the person on the bicycle have stopped, most definitely. Should you try to ban all electric bicycles from the trails based on the actions of this one individual, most definitely not!
Are you going to ban all walkers that do not follow the rules? Of course not.
Lee Ann Lambe
Orillia
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