People of Mastodon!
I'm researching the growth of ebikes ...
... in cities around the US
I've talked to many people who love them!
But also want to include the perspective of folks who have concerns ...
... i.e. about the speed and weight of ebikes in accidents with pedestrians or other cyclists, and the like
If anyone has thoughts they wanna share, ping me! I'm all ears: [email protected]
Pass this along if you know anyone else with perspective they want to share
(The research, BTW, is for two things:
A book I'm researching about micromobility, and the quest to ease back as much as possible on our reliance on cars
and a piece for Mother Jones about how cities around the US are trying to kickstart more ebike riding by offering subsidies to buy them)
I just read the testes news a few minutes ago!
I'm definitely not writing that type of piece 😅
at least I don't think!
I'm a big fan of all forms of mobility that get people to rely less on big dangerous heavy polluting cars and trucks
Thank you!
@clive heh, there was literally a thread on this very subject just earlier today
@[email protected] @[email protected] i feel like an often overlooked aspect of it is also that electric/e-assist bikes bring riders that would never have broken ~30 km/h on their own up to speeds they aren't familiar with and for which they haven't developed all the necessary reflexes/abilities. what i mean is that the learning curve we go through to ride unassisted bikes at 30+ km/h naturally develops a set of handling and perceptive abilities that i've noticed to be lacking in the majority of e-bike riders
Aha, thank you! That's great
This may interest you: ebikes can be more dangerous to the rider too.
E-bikes are very cool and I'm glad they are getting popular. However. There is a big difference between a crash at 12mph and one at 20mph. Your ebike can give you injuries normally only found in motorcycle accidents. And there isn't enough advice on what constitutes sufficient maintenance for ebikes. If you don't get balding tires fixed on a regular bike you could fall off and bruise or break a leg. At ebike speeds that same fall will shatter your leg in dozens of pieces. BE CAREFUL
Thank you! @pierrotechnique just pointed out that thread to me too
I see it's gonna go viral, and a good thing too.
Aha, yeah, good point about sound and warnings
Usually when I say "on your left" on my regular pedal bike, I'm passing at a pretty slow pace
Have you had any accidents or near-accidents with ebike riders?
@clive @dougiec3
A very common one for me in town is waiting at a red light to turn left at a junction, only to have an e-bike doing 30 undertake and bomb round the corner.
Multiple times if I’d simply twisted my wheel to shift my standing weight, I’d have been smashed into bits.
Always always delivery drivers, occasionally souped up scooters.
@clive @dougiec3
Also: the large Junction ‘X’ crossings. Bikes will occasionally amble across the red light to cross over with pedestrians (while still giving them right of way).
But e-scooters and delivery bikes just see it as a green light and bomb straight across at full speed.
I have seen many heart-stopping near misses.
Ack!
What is a large junction X crossing? Is that different from a regular four-way intersection?
That's definitely the case here in NYC too
@clive @dougiec3
Maybe it's just me or because I ride a bicycle like, rather than scooter like, #ebike but I find my average speed has gone from about 18 km/hr on they hybrid to about 20 km/hr on the ebike. My max-speed is about 40 km/hr on either, though the electric assist turns off at 32 km/hr on the ebike.
http://the5thc.blogspot.com/2022/08/norco-scene-vlt-e-bike-for-people-that.html
@the5thColumnist @clive @dougiec3 this is similar to my experience. My top speed on a normal bike versus an electric bike would be about the same. My average speed on an electric bike would be faster on average because it’s easier to keep it at speed.
I don’t see weight of e-bikes versus normal bikes as a big issue. The extra weight of an ebike would be smaller than the variation of weight in riders. One rider could be 150 pounds heavier than another.
@scokop @the5thColumnist @dougiec3
Interesting point about the weight differences of riders
I have a loaner ebike, and I think I can detect myself going a little bit faster on average too when I ride it
So much so that I need to check myself to make sure I'm not being dangerous to myself or others here in the city
@clive I think people are riding e-bikes that may not be familiar with the rules of the road/paths for biking and it may be beneficial to start some sort of educational component (with any motorized mobility) about how to be respectful and safe while having fun!! I love my e-bikes but I hate seeing other e-bikes maneuvering recklessly (acoustic bikers do this too, but e-bikes add mass and speed)
I live in boulder, CO, an epicenter of e-biking, we’ve ebiked here for 6 years
Yep yep -- here in NYC we've had a real boom in ebiking, alongside a recent book in traditional cycling ... some of the same maneuvering/swerving issues
What ebikes do you have?
@clive @spots1000 it’s a weird thing in boulder, I often feel safer on a road than a path because I can ride defensively and cautiously and predict what others (mostly cars) will do, good or bad.
On bike paths, there is no rhyme or reason, people pass each other in insane ways, dogs dart out from owners, small kids are on them. Paths feel incredibly problematic when e-bikes are traveling on narrow spaces with limited visibility at speeds exceeding 15 miles per hour.
When I visited Denver last month I rode around on some of the multimodal trails/routes -- it was unusual for me because NYC doesn't have too many of those ... most bike paths are for bikes (and are in the street)
It definitely took some getting used to
Have either of you witnessed any accidents on those trails? bike/bike, ebike/bike, bike(ebike)/pedestrian, etc
@clive @spots1000 @KirstenAnne
I ride a multimodal trail (https://www.the606.org/) as part of my bike commute. It gets crowded on nice days, and I've seen bikers and peds of all types do some sketchy shit, but I personally have never witnessed a collision.
I ride an ebike and personally I feel /more/ willing to slow down because getting back up to speed isn't a big effort.
Aha, that's interesting about the slowing-down speeding-up on an ebike
Very true that slowing down on my regular pedal bike always carries this tiny incremental sense of cost, because I know I'll need to exert extra work to get back up to speed ...
... which isn't true when I ride an ebike
On multimodal paths:
I have seen a dog/bike collision (which I’m embarrassed to say I contributed to but it wasn’t my dog, everyone was ok but the biker flew off his road bike and was furious—also didn’t slow down at all given potential commotion)
I saw the scary outcome of a bike/bike head on collision that required EMT.
So many close calls, but it’s surprising I haven’t seen more.
Both of these influence how I bike on these paths.
@spots1000 @clive that could be. These days I’m usually biking about 15-20 mph in bike lanes on 20-35 mph roads. I’m lucky that my radius of activities by bike are all within about 4 miles of my home.
Maybe one other thing that makes me uncomfortable about bike lanes vs bike paths (that are like sidewalks). CARS COMING OUT OF PARKING LOTS FREQUENTLY STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATH. The most dangerous thing. Don’t even try to slow down before they are in my bike space
@spots1000 @clive I find they are much less likely to stop in the middle of a bike lane because it is part of the road. People do not treat sidewalks as if they are a lane of traffic. Even with tons of paint and signage.
And when I am riding with traffic on a road, I feel more seen in these cases. I feel like on sidewalks I am less visible to drivers (or they don’t make the effort to see me).
mastobikes!
Yeah, this feels like a fairly common reaction I hear from traditional cyclists
Good to have more cyclists on the road -- critical mass and all that ...
... but concerns about the sheer size of some of these rides
Good idea!
Excellent! I mostly ride my regular pedal bike, but my family has had a loaner Rad ebike for a while now (I've been slow-baking a piece about them) so I ride it every so often -- it's a really smooth ride
I've heard a lot of positive stories from all manner of folks with arthritis or other slight mobility issues that make traditional pedal bikes a strain
Yes, excellent point
I think it's highly contigent on this stuff
Here in NYC, it's heavily infrastructural: There was a noticeable increase in cycling propelled by COVID -- plus the consistent rollout of bikeshare stands -- that has continued to this day; it's made a couple of major bike routes in and out of manhattan surprisingly congested during peak periods ...
... with conflicts between bikes and regular bikes
@clive yeah, I wonder how much some of the concern about "ebikes" is really concern about infrastructure. (I hate having to drive on sidewalks, for example, but sometimes that's far and away the safest thing...)
There's also status quo bias. It drives me nuts the number of SFans who genuinely believe that cyclists in SF are as dangerous to pedestrians as cars, when cars have killed nearly 300 people since the last time a cyclist killed a pedestrian in the city. But those deaths are normalized.
I think these arguments are very heavily propelled by infrastructure yeah
A few years ago I spoke to the folks at Citibike, the bikeshare firm here in NYC
They were talking to the city about the overwhelming popularity of the ebike option in citibike -- only 20% of the bikes are ebikes but they are disproportionately preferred by riders
The city and citibike were realizing, damn, ideally, we need two-by-two bike lanes
One "slow" and one "passing" lane in each direction
No room for that, though, without a more substantive reallocation of streets from ICE vehicles to things-roughly-the-size-of-a-bike-or-smaller
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