OK but I'm not 14 nor are most of the people riding electric bikes. You can voluntarily put a limiter on it if your kid is riding it.

What does the 14yo have to do with licensing, insurance and roadworthiness?

It's totally possible to put age restrictions on activities without requireing licensing, insurance or anything else. You don't need a license or insurance to drink, for example.

bash their legs on the tow hitch

I doubt that very much, see as it's practically at eye-level.

Tbf, an idiot in a 40mph temu deathtrap crashing against you would still do roughly half the damage of one of those trucks crashing against you at 10mph. But yeah, I hate them too.

I hit 50 MPH on downhills on my regular human-powered bicycle. Don't need a license or training for that either.

The arguments made for bicycles being speed limited make sense, because it's not just about licensing requirements (what precious few there are...) but also mechanical limits on safe operation and a need to find a balance between individual freedom and public safety.

This is also the reason why, in Europe at least, all trucks have a 90 km/h governor by law, even though truck drivers are licensed to a higher standard than car drivers.

Cars being excluded from the conversations we are having about trucks and bicycles and motorcycles is nothing but pure hypocrisy. But then again, when has hypocrisy ever stopped a politician?

They are there because ebikes often share space with pedestrians, and bycicle paths are much more likely to intersect

For instance my wrangler is limited to about 80 through the engineering of a low power engine and the wind resistance of a cardboard box.

The people getting the limiter laws passed aren't doing it for rider safety, they're doing it because their constituent's confirmation bias and motornormativity is causing them to phone or write in complaints that they would have never made over a near-death encounter with a pickup truck.

Cars operate in pedestrian spaces all the time.

Furthermore, in contrast to a car, I see people in bycicles and even ebikes far less willing to brake for any obstacles or civilians in their path. This is because they are less adept at accelerating and braking, so they want to conserve momentum above all else. They also have less visibility at a glance given how bad or completely absent most bicycle mirrors are, and maintaining stability, having to operate the pedals, and having to turn your head and body far more often while being in a far more uncomfortable position makes for a far more stressed operator.

I've always considered it absurd that scooters can't have seats in a lot of countries, this is the one thing bicycles and ebikes get right and it allows for a safer ride with the possibility to rest from the stress of it. Being able to walk and use the road shouldn't be a vehicle training issue, it should be road education training issue. Speed, that is one that varies significantly, like Germany's autobahn shows. Cars can receive traffic tickets and revoking licenses. On an ebike, there isn't a license to revoke, and 25km/h is already considerably dangerous to bystanders, specially coming from a vehicle that far from being designed and tested for collisions is a mesh of protruding elements instead that also has the absence of an insurance provider for when accidents do happen

This is fuck cars, don't expect common sense to predominate, people here hate cars as if they were in a religion dedicated to it. I wonder how many just live in a bubble of privilege where the countries are wealthy enough to have the carless transit infrastructure and their lifestyles are sedentary enough and localized in a sufficiently centralized urban hub where they can actually hold those beliefs.

The regulatory reasons are actually what the speed limit on bikes is about. Lots of places, once you're powered and going over 20mph they become motorcycles, meaning they can only be used on roads, require blinkers, brake lights, horns, registration, licensing, insurance, etc.

So the manufacturers have the motor cut off at 20mph to keep them classified as bicycles.

I suggest you look up the number of peopls killed evey year by bicycles and compare it to the number killed by pickups. I'll wait.

You could and you’d be making a similar point to the OP: cars are far more dangerous and have governors only to protect the engine from damage, not to protect people.