hi i have not ride my ebike in snowy areas or snowy road does anyone have experience about this is it safe to ride ebike in snowy road does it cause slippinng or not. is it safe
Snowy? Yes. Icy? Nope.
Something I enjoy is riding in soft snow with my mountain bike. Of course, you need to keep your speed in check, but it is quite relaxing (also because the soft snow muffles the sound).
This morning I noticed ice on the road (after getting a warning from my weather app). That’s a risk I don’t want to take. Riding would only be safe if the roads are cleared (as I have seen it happen in some Nordic countries).
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It depends a bit on your tyres, and on the type of snow/the temperature.
Obviously you can always slip on the road, but in general fresh snow, when the ground isn’t icy underneath, and knobbly tyres are fine to ride.
If the snow has been lying for over a day, and it has frozen, it can be icy and become dangerous. Deep snow is better than thin snow.
A hidden risk is that the snow is covering potholes or obstacles on the road, and you can’t see them. If you know the roads you’re riding on, you probably know whats underneath, but if you don’t know them, and the road surface is generally bad, be more careful.
Usually fresh snow, when it is still relatively warm, just turns to slush when riding over it. You’ll get very wet, but it’s not much more dangerous than rain.
Also it’s usually safer riding off road, on grass or soil (not rocks), when there’s snow.
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Yes!
I wouldn’t even bother with a road bike or riding on the road if you can help it.
And the most fun! Even if you fall, you fall soft and you tend to fall at low speeds. So I felt quite safe in the right conditions. But the proviso in the right conditions does most of the work here.
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It might be fine it might not be..ice is tricky, the wider your tires are the safer you’ll be from ice and falling down. As someone whose rides a ton in snow conditions, studded tires are absolutely worth it, it’s very hard to know if there is ice or not underneath. It’s not worth risking a broken collar bone or cracked rib (done that) from falling on ice.
Yeah I’ve got a set of studded ice tyres and I wouldnt ride in icy conditions without them
Zermatt is a mountain village in Switzerland - no cars allowed! Half the village rides around on eMTBs with studded tires during winter. Common sense applies but with studded tires you should be relatively save
Snow on tarmac? Not safe. At least if I’m the rider.
But I’ll be honest, for the first half decade of my bicycle riding life I didn’t ride anything but gravel & I never gave a second thought to riding around on snowy gravel roads. Never had a problem except when I’d ride too fast into a too-deep drift and the front wheel would stop while the rest of the bike would continue to rotate around it.
Safety is not binary. It’s a continuum. I’ve ridden in snowy slushy conditions in the past, and icy conditions with studded tires. I think it’s unquestionably less safe than in dry sunny conditions. I always had to make a case-by-case decision as to whether the rewards of riding were worth the risk.
Also take into account it is not always about how skillful you are and how good equipment you have – in snowy/icy conditions your fellow road users do all kinds of funky stuff.
I used to be all year round rider but 2 years ago saw car doing pirouette and driving into road shoulder about 20m after passing me.
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What Svens says.
Even if you can handle the conditions, and you have appropriate tyres, you cannot predict what the other road users will do.
Same here.
We lived in Spokane and I was riding my gravel bike all winter one year if it was over 35F. Got chased by dogs one time. Outsprinted them and they quickly gave up but them I hit a shady part of the road that was a sheet of ice and fell and slide down the road about 30 feet. Super dramatic but funny in the end as I didn’t get hurt nor run over.
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I remembered reading this