As I’ve said elsewhere, most of the safety concerns blamed on e-bikes are actually caused by cars. Until we deal with that larger threat, putting up barriers to using alternatives like e-bikes will force people back into driving, and make roads less safe.
Sorry, best we can do is
W I D E R
R O A D S
I’m very pro ebike, and cycling in general. A major, legitimate issue is when bikes are forced to use pedestrian paths.
I understand the root of that is there’s no space on the pavement for the bikes, because of cars. But safety legislation is not the same as public works development. It’s not the same tasks, it’s not the same people. (Necessarily).
So municipalities are stuck because they can’t fix all the roads fast enough, and they have pedestrians getting clipped on walkways.
It’s stupid that it is going this way, but temporarily inevitable.
But the problem is that the risk of a car to a pedestrian is so much greater than an e-bike. We think of a few prominent accidents but I’m certain that the number of incidents is fairly small and far less severe. It’s new and it’s surprising when someone whizzes by, so we notice it. But we don’t notice the thousands of pedestrians mowed down by cars every single day.
If you force even a few people back into driving, those same pedestrians are now in more danger. We have to solve that problem first.
Right, but I’m highlighting these are infrastructure level concerns, that take years to unwind. Changes to ebike legislation are quick.
I’m not advocating for this approach, or apologizing for it, but those tasked with safety have no means of changing the roads.
Well if road safety can’t be improved (which I reject) then it’s better to do nothing than implement a policy that makes things worse.
It doesn’t “make things worse” from.the perspective of the safety officials, who seek to reduce ebike collisions with pedestrians.
Do not shift the topic to cars vs pedestrians as that isn’t what we are discussing. We all acknowledge cars vs pedestrians is worse, but that is not relevant regarding legislation to get ebikes of paths.
Road safety can and should be improved, but as I said, is different people, different projects, different timelines.
But the goal of safety officials is not to reduce e-bike and pedestrian collisions. This is a (poor) method for achieving the real goal, which is improving pedestrian safety. And as I’ve pointed out, by preventing people from using e-bikes as a mode of transit, you force more people to drive, and this puts pedestrians in even greater danger. This is not changing the subject, this is pointing out the consequences of these proposed policies. And they are measured in injured and dead pedestrians.
My entire point is that these things are directly interrelated. You can’t just look at a single path in isolation when instituting broad and onerous rules on e-bike riders. If your point is that “that’s not the metric we measure” then you are measuring the wrong metric.
Once the broader safety issues around motor vehicles are solved, this will change the calculus and we may find that rules on e-bikes at that time improve safety. But today it is not so.
You are assuming control of follow on actions which isn’t available. You cannot, in this space, assume the ability to affect change beyond your current job/role/position.
For the last time: the people who did this cannot act on the reality that more ebikes is overall,long-term solution. They can’t change traffic. They can’t change roads. They can’t add ebike specific paths. It’s not how government works, and it’s not how individual employees complete their workweeks.
Pedestrians typically are not walking on roads the same way they walk on bike paths.
Pedestrians need to cross roads to go anywhere, and even when not crossing, they are typically directly adjacent to the road. And in some areas there is no choice but to walk on the road. So I disagree with this statement and when you look at the statistics, the vast majority of people killed while walking are killed by cars.
The way people walk on bike pathes is different from roads. Awareness is different. My bike is going a lot faster than their dog running all over without a care
True. But I would like to see data showing that this is a real problem before we throw up obstacles to one of the best alternatives to car transit we have right now. Then we can see if the benefits are greater than the costs. But so far the only arguments I’ve seen are teens ride too fast and it scares me. Which may be a valid feeling but it is not a good basis for public policy.
But also if you are on a mixed use path your dog really shouldn’t be running all over without a care regardless of the presence of e-bikes. That is also a hazard.
The reality is people walk this way. When I’m trying to get someplace I shouldn’t have to slow down like that. (this is the same way cars feel about me on ‘their’ roads)
I disagree that forcing a few cyclists to drive in cars will increase the danger. People are accustomed to cars. You can hear them coming. Even electric cars have noisemakers to continuously alert people of their presence. They are also very easy to see and don’t drive down the very edge of a city street next to parked cars where they are hard to see.
If “a few” people swiching to ebikes makes everyone safer, where is this obvious donwtick in pedestrian injuries? Instead, it’s largely the same, yet people are now also being injured by ebikes. Bikes that can go 28 MPH, weigh 50 pounds, propelling a human that weighs at least a 100 pounds, to slam into a pedestrian that didn’t see them silently cruising down the egde of a city road.
As an ebike owner and “fuck cars” supporter, [I feel like] your whole comment is nonsense. You’re making shit up to support your narrative.
In the entire US, for instance, 8,000 pedestrians were killed by cars in 2021. That’s one every 66 minutes, not “thousands every single day”. Your statement is not even defensible as hyperbole because it’s grossly wrong but not by several orders of magnitude as if you had said “millions”. You intentionally chose a misleading, arbitrary, maybe-sort-of-plausible number to make a flawed point and the makes you intellectually dishonest. Fucking stop.
If cars are so easy to see and avoid then explain those thousands? The exact number is not important in this context, it’s a rhetorical point about the difference in scale which remains true. I tried to look up the exact numbers but I couldn’t find anything on e-bike deaths—probably because it’s just a nonissue. It’s likely to be several orders of magnitude smaller than the victims of cars to use your language.
Not many people have replaced cars with e-bikes—yet, so it’s not surprising we don’t see much difference. And we never will if the dishonest campaign against them wins.
Edit: also I just found this article on traffic violence that found 1.7 million people killed annually by cars… so yes thousand per day. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267#s0160
Several orders of magnitude smaller than 8,000… So… 0.08 people? I do love your skill with numbers!
Not many people have replaced cars with e-bikes—yet, so it’s not surprising we don’t see much difference
Exactly! Then why are you so adamant that it would instantly become worse if they had to drive again? Those 10s of ebike riders who chose not to drive aren’t going to suddenly kill 10s of people when back in cars. Given how many cars there are on the road, and the relatively tiny number of fatalities, the change would be 0.
I’m with you, fuck cars, but don’t argue with fake stats and severe exaggeration on important issues. It just makes your argument look bad.
(I don’t recall saying anything that assumed you own an ebike.)
EDIT: Ohhhh! No, I’m the ebike owner and fuck cars supporter. I was saying that I’m on the side of ebikes, but I didnt like your arguments. I can see now how my words weren’t clear. I edited my original comment to add “I feel like”.
As an ebike owner and “fuck cars” supporter, [I feel like] your whole comment is nonsense.
Oh wow I didn’t realize several was always equal to exactly 5. Learn something new every day. And you again are pedantically assuming that this is meant to be an exact comparison when I literally said I don’t have the numbers—as far as I’ve seen, no one does.
My point is we’re shutting down a potential solution to pedestrian deaths before we’ve even proven that it’s a problem at all. But I will also say that just because pedestrian deaths are not declining doesn’t prove that e-bikes are not having an impact. Deaths have been rising for a while, perhaps they would have risen faster without e-bikes. Someone needs to do a study on this to find out instead of just panicking and banning everything.
Several is at least 5. I used the smallest possible value to give you the benefit of the doubt. smh.
Such laws also serve to make life more onerous for disabled people who rely on such transportation.
I guess its cheaper than building protected infrastructure to make things safer for everyone on the road.
Brutal but accurate.
Your comment looks like the continuation of the quote. Use two newlines, aka a blank line, to start a new paragraph
Fixed, thanks!
Smells like lawfare from the oil industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare
Classic oil industry
