Ebikes tend to be significantly heavier than regular bikes. Once you add speed or a throttle to a 60+lb ebike, they become much more dangerous in pedestrian collisions.
I think bicycles need dedicated infrastructure, hands down, and ebikes over a certain speed/weight/throttle combination need to be kept off of pedestrian mixed-use pathways and sidewalks.
The ~30l-40bs difference in an ebike vs. a road bike seems kind of negligible compared to the weight of the rider (never mind comparing it to something like a car). How many people get killed by e-bikes every year vs. vehicles?
The argument that e-bikes are super dangerous to pedestrians just doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny when you compare it to cars.
This is what I see when looking at this topic. So much talk about dangerous ebikes, but in my area most of it is coming from anti-tax groups who are mad that a tiny portion of money went to paint a bike lane or fix a trail. So they blame bikes while they drive around hitting peds in their Excursions and F250s.
Can evokes be dangerous, yes. Are ebikes the pressing danger menacing our roadways, no. If we could keep full blown gas dirtbikes off multi-use paths and make a few cars stop at crosswalks, that would make a bigger impact than every ebike in the state disappearing overnight.
Ebikes tend to be significantly heavier than regular bikes. Once you add speed or a throttle to a 60+lb ebike, they become much more dangerous in pedestrian collisions.
I think bicycles need dedicated infrastructure, hands down, and ebikes over a certain speed/weight/throttle combination need to be kept off of pedestrian mixed-use pathways and sidewalks.
The ~30l-40bs difference in an ebike vs. a road bike seems kind of negligible compared to the weight of the rider (never mind comparing it to something like a car). How many people get killed by e-bikes every year vs. vehicles?
The argument that e-bikes are super dangerous to pedestrians just doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny when you compare it to cars.
This is what I see when looking at this topic. So much talk about dangerous ebikes, but in my area most of it is coming from anti-tax groups who are mad that a tiny portion of money went to paint a bike lane or fix a trail. So they blame bikes while they drive around hitting peds in their Excursions and F250s.
Can evokes be dangerous, yes. Are ebikes the pressing danger menacing our roadways, no. If we could keep full blown gas dirtbikes off multi-use paths and make a few cars stop at crosswalks, that would make a bigger impact than every ebike in the state disappearing overnight.