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E-nough: Electric bikes and gas-powered mopeds are reversing more than a decade’s safety progress
re: City Journal
Electric bikes can be useful and do have their advocates, but are also problematic.
I find them extremely annoying on the road due to inexperienced and inconsiderate riders overtaking (on hills), surprising me with no warning and too-little room. They are a terrible mix with regular cyclists and walkers/hikers on trails especially, but on roads they can be nearly silent and thus dangerous.
E-nough
2023-09-21. Emphasis added.
Electric bikes and gas-powered mopeds are reversing more than a decade’s progress in making New York’s dense streets safer for pedestrians and traditional cyclists.
Early this month, after more than ten years of operation, New York’s Citi Bike bicycle-share program marked a grim milestone: the first-ever death of a pedestrian hit by a Citi Bike rider. The cyclist wasn’t riding one of Citi Bike’s traditional blue-pedal bikes when he allegedly hit and killed 69-year-old Priscilla Loke, but rather an electric bike.
Loke’s death is yet another reminder that battery-powered electric bikes, and their new cousins, gas-powered mopeds, are not bicycles but fast-moving motorized vehicles. Those vehicles’ proliferation on New York’s dense streets, encouraged by supposed safe-streets advocates and city government, is reversing more than a decade’s progress in making New York’s streets more hospitable to pedestrians and traditional pedal cyclists.
...Those vehicles have also discouraged traditional pedal cyclists, particularly female cyclists. The percentage of female commuting cyclists plateaued in 2018, at less than half the rate of male cyclists, after more than a decade of growth. A major goal of the livable-streets movement until recently was to encourage more women to bicycle, but it has been largely silent as fast-moving, wrong-way male e-cyclists and moped drivers who commandeer bike lanes scare female riders off the streets...
...E-bike advocates will argue that the bikes have benefits, such as allowing older cyclists and people with weak knees to ride. That is true but irrelevant in the real-world New York City context, where the costs far outweigh the benefits. There’s no evidence, for example, that the proliferation of e-bikes has lured people out of cars, thus reducing traffic...
Nor is there evidence that e-bikes have calmed traffic, making streets safer and more pleasant. As livable-streets advocates have long argued, the presence of pedestrians and traditional cyclists helps to slow car and truck traffic, making streets safer for everyone. But car and truck drivers who must look in all directions for fast-moving e-cyclists and moped drivers aren’t made calmer and more attentive. They are made more anxious, frustrated, and angry—and so are the rest of us as we attempt to walk or pedal around town.
WIND: electric bikes have become dangerous IMO, because new riders do not follow any of the accepted protocols when riding (eg no warning when overtaking), and have deadly-poor situational awareness. Then they go burn down the apartment when the cheap Chinese-made batteries explode.
EBikes are also heavy, weight 50 to 100 pounds or more. At 20 mph, they become deadly projectiles just from 5mph more speed (energy is mV^2 so 20 mph is 77% more energy than 15mph). For context, my road bike is 15 pounds.
At least here in California, you have to pedal to make an electric bike assist you. But there are ebikes that just have a throttle just like a motorcycle, and can hit 30+ mph with no physical effort. The latter should be regulated just like motor vehicles IMO.
