It’s good that Strava is now beginning to autoflag public “rides” that the AI thinks has either been done at least partially on an ebike or in a motor vehicle.
But what about the mess of public “ebike” ride segments corrupted by illegal ebikes?
As far as the law is concerned in the UK for road ebikes, if you’re getting motor assistance above 25kph (~15.5mph); the motor assistance is happenig without pedalling; or your ebike is providing more than a 250W average assistance over 30 minutes of riding, your ebike is considered to be an electric moped or electric motorbike.
So Strava is allowing electric mopeds and electric motorbikes on UK ebike segment leaderboards, as well as on many countries in Europe and beyond.
Electric mopeds and motorbikes have no place on UK public road ebike segment leaderboards.
No “Johny Average” rider is riding a 4% hill for approx 4 minutes on a 15-30Kg UK road legal ebike at an average of anything near 20mph, up a slight drag for minutes at 20mph, or riding essentially flat road for minutes at near 24mph.
Yet with no explanation/email, I now get a yellow banner telling me that I no longer have permission to flag such rides on UK roads.
This is not about me trying to have KOMs myself, it’s about preventing all these rides on illegal ebikes in the UK to be “public” view and getting them off the leaderboards, that are quite frankly often like the wild wild west.




