Cannondale Contro-E Speed Retirement

After roughly 8000 commuting kilometers I have ‘retired’ my Contro-E Speed today. You can read a short review in Dutch here. When I bought it back in 2016 it was a ‘trade in’ for my motorbike. I got rid of my unsafe motorbike and got an equally unsafe speed pedelec instead. Of course, going fast on a motorcycle in heavy traffic on the highway is more dangerous because of the speed but on my commute through villages I really believe the speed pedelec can be more dangerous. Riding 45 km/h on it you are going about as fast on a motorbike and you do that on the side of the road and without much protective gear. Also, the width is a lot less compared to a big motorbike so for car drivers it is even more difficult to gauge your speed and they are not expecting you to approach so fast. On a speed pedelec it is even more important to anticipate and ride defensive than on a motorcycle. Because the maximum speed is only 45 km/h it feels safer than it actually is and it took me some time in the beginning to adjust my riding style to build in a big enough safety margin. In 2016 when the speed pedelecs became all the rage quite a few people died in accidents. I had an accident myself early on. I was riding on a bike path next to a traffic jam and when the cars suddenly started moving again a driver took a turn and hit me because he didn’t see me/wasn’t paying attention. Luckily no harm was done and I only needed to replace my handle bar as a safety precaution. Thank goodness that was the only incident in over 6 years not counting a number of flat tyres. The bike I bought was a demo model from the Niels Albert bike store and I got a nice discount on a nearly new bike. Because it was a demo model it came with the large Nyon display with navigation. A nice bonus if you are into that kind of ‘thing’. I had also been looking at the Stromer ST1 but I hesitated because of the steep price of the Stromer and I wasn’t sure my use would justify such an expense. In the end it was the right decision. It gave me time to get used to commuting by bike regularly all year round. Also, in the beginning I still had to bring kids to school which complicated the logistics and then came the covid lock down and this all lead to less mileage than foreseen. But since 2022 the bike has become my main mode of commuting so now a more fancy (read more expensive) bike is ‘justifiable’. Although I will no longer use the Contro to commute it is not leaving the family. I just couldn’t get myself to give it away for a few Euros simply because the battery needs to be replaced if you want to do more than 35 kilometers on a day or because the rear fork has seen a lot of wear from the Ortlieb Sport Rollers.