‘A Dangerous Combination’: Teenagers’ Accidents Expose E-Bike Risks' A New York Times Article

[JackFlorey]

But will it be for all classes of e-bike, or just ones that can exceed 20 mph?

It will be primarily the fast ones due to the greater potential for carnage and death. But the resultant rules will affect everyone.

 

[JackFlorey]

I've only seen a couple of Sur-rons, but one was also a kid probably under 16, no helmet and riding wheelies in the middle of the street. Really looking for trouble. They should write tickets for reckless driving and any of the applicable regulations.

I was talking to a very non-ebike, non-technical friend of mine who lives in Encinitas (nearby community) and her unprompted take on it was "these kids are all riding those things called Sur-Rons, and they get on the internet and they cut a wire or something and then they can go 60 miles per hour. And their parents don't care."

 

[nicobie]

The power of the internet.

 

[None]

In many countries around the world, cycling and traffic laws are part of annual curriculum required for their schools.
Cycling should be like a life long skill that everyone know, like swimming.. or maybe even math.
I feel that in America, most drivers think bicycles & motorcycles don't belong on public roads, which is a mentality that's been imbedded across decades of car culture and cheap oil in America.
Meanwhile, I still think parents should also be held accountable when their child is caught breaking traffic laws, causing accidents on high-speed e-bikes. If they can afford high cost, high speed e-bikes to for their children, they can also afford higher (x5 or x10) auto insurance premiums.

According to the NYPD's crash statistics, there were 44,754 reported crashes between January 1 and June 23.
Of those, 43,188 — or 96 percent — were caused by drivers of cars, SUVs, trucks, ambulances, vans and other heavy motorized vehicles.
Just 826 crashes — or 1.8 percent — were caused by the operators of e-bikes, e-scooters, mopeds or motorbikes, according to the police.
Another 740 crashes — or 1.6 percent — were caused by regular bike riders, the cops said.

Drilling down further, there have been 3,952 crashes that caused injuries to at least one pedestrian.
Of those crashes, 3,784 — or 96 percent again — were caused by car and truck drivers.
Only 168 — or 4.2 percent — were caused by the operators of e-bikes, e-scooters, mopeds or motorbikes, according to the police.

Source: Horrific Crash on Manhattan Bridge Bike Path Underscores Moped Crisis - Streetsblog New York City

 

[Jsizzles]

I'm gonna beat @Chalo to it: the takeaway is that cars are dangerous and there needs to be better infrastructure for bikes and pedestrians.
I don't want to diminish the tragedy, but:

He wasn't going 55mph, the cars were.

Struck by a van, not an ebike

He hit the car, but also somehow ended up under it?

I get that the article is trying to make a point that ebikes can go too fast for a sidewalk but not fast enough for a road. But that just lends to the argument that better pedestrian infrastructure is needed.

It's an irresponsible article, that tries to use the dangers of 2-ton motorized vehicles everywhere as a reason for why ebikes are bad. It's even acknowledged within the article:

That serious and concerning statistic has nothing to do with bikes or ebikes.

I can almost sympathize with the "news" articles using battery fires as a reason to demonize ebikes. But this article doesn't even do that.

I agree with you. There is a kid in my neighborhood maybe 12-13 or so with a sur ron and he is blasting around on it having fun, his dad is watching him every time i've seen him. when i was his age I was riding my yz70 doing the same stuff as him just making a lot more noise. I don't remember media hype about kids on motorcycles in the 1980s. They got to get clicks somehow.

 

[marvin78]

I agree with you. There is a kid in my neighborhood maybe 12-13 or so with a sur ron and he is blasting around on it having fun, his dad is watching him every time i've seen him. when i was his age I was riding my yz70 doing the same stuff as him just making a lot more noise. I don't remember media hype about kids on motorcycles in the 1980s. They got to get clicks somehow.

Are you insinuating that 'kids on Surron's' are always under proper adult supervision when needed?

 

[None]

Why more teenagers should ride electric bikes​

Why more teenagers should ride electric bikes

The debate around whether teenagers should be riding electric bikes is hotly contested, but there are some undeniable truths.

electrek.co

 

[rafalg]

Both accidents involved an ebike and a car. In both cases car driver was unharmed, and ebike kid died. And conclusion: ebikes are unsafe. Just as everything else unlucky enough to find itself on US road among cars. Even for car drivers it seems an unforgiving environment

 

[offGridDownUnder]

Why more teenagers should ride electric bikes

Apart from people who are limited in mobility due to disability, all children are able to ride a non-electric bicycle to school, or the store, or around the neighbourhood, and it will do their development good to use their bodies and sleep at night because they have exercised.

It's not true that we are in an environment of infinite abundance, infinite space, infinite resource.

We are much closer to being in a lifeboat. "I have an urge" is not a good reason to act - as an excuse, it more points to lack of maturity, despite actual age.

 

[onemorejoltwarden]

@marvin78
Agree , the battery fire issue just is icing on the cake.
ALL kids know how to care for a dropped battery, instinctively,
and to avoid car traffic and vulnerable cyclists and pedestrians.

 

[None]

Battery fire issue is just media hype.

What's mostly ignored is the annual casualty from traffic accident, rarely discussed in the media.

 

[Chalo]

What's mostly ignored is the annual casualty from traffic accident, rarely discussed in the media.

Hey, that's just the cost of doing business (if your business is in the auto industrial complex).

Sometimes it seems like the entire goal both for car sellers and car drivers is to make the evils they do into somebody else's problem but not their own.

 

[None]

Hey, that's just the cost of doing business (if your business is in the auto industrial complex).

Sometimes it seems like the entire goal both for car sellers and car drivers is to make the evils they do into somebody else's problem but not their own.

So, maybe to avoid losing sales of automobiles, car manufacturers promote the media of ebike/battery fires to claim safety issues with ebikes?

 

[The Toecutter]

The proposal to force ebike riders to get drivers' licenses is even more retarded than forcing automobile operators to get drivers' licenses. It's become a means to force everyone into a global facial recognition database, without regard to whether they are actually competent enough to operate a vehicle, and without any consideration for their basic civil liberties and human rights.

Ebikes are literally a threat to almost no one. Maybe pedestrians, but there aren't many of them around in the U.S. The real threat to safety is what Chalo has termed "7,000 lb cod pieces". People are given licenses to operate these monstrosities in the U.S. as long as they obey all the intrusive/expensive BS imposed from their local DMV, BS which has absolutely nothing to do with whether one can competently operate a vehicle. Then these 7,000 lb cod piece operators proceed to pay attention to their social media feed on their damned phone or the movie on their infotainment center, rather than the road they are operating upon and/or what is in front of them or around them. Is it any wonder why vehicle deaths are now at a local maxima again?

Automobile operators killing ebike riders is being used as an excuse to allow the government control over yet another means of transportation that they don't yet have a full grasp upon. It should be resisted. Government has far too much control as it is, to everyone's detriment, and this control does nothing real to improve public safety, merely provides the illusion of such by politicians being able to claim they did something.

My vehicle at 100 mph would have the same kinetic energy as a Hummer EV moving at 15 mph, for comparison. In many states, my vehicle wouldn't be legal over 28 mph. Things have gotten so absurd, police arrested some meth head for operating a child's Power Wheels car at 2 mph for being a "public safety threat", when he was literally a threat to no one at all.

 

[999zip999]

Over here in my part of the country we have ebike gangs of 12 to 17 year old. Doing wheelies straight at you then after they do it they go forward 30 mph looking backwards at you. Time and time again. Daniel the kids with Surons the cops and San Juan Capistrano pick those things up as soon as they see them.
On my street the kid across the street 14 years old has a suron is father's teach him how to do wheelies and stuff of course his father has a Ducati. And a gang of those kids came over me the neighbor the neighbor's wife had to shut it down. As these kids are just playing rude and yelling at you before they used to give you the thumbs up now they want to challenge you and what can you do to a 14-year-old. The parents are just glad they're out of the house away from home they don't care they're a bunch of punks.

 

[marvin78]

@marvin78
Agree , the battery fire issue just is icing on the cake.
ALL kids know how to care for a dropped battery, instinctively,
and to avoid car traffic and vulnerable cyclists and pedestrians.

I don't think children are born with an innate ability to understand traffic safety other then just plain built in terror which happen when you have your first real crash and you don't know what's going to happen at the end of it, and then you keep that feeling for the rest of your life and you try to avoid it happening again. I think that's called an adaptive ability.

Traffic laws are not something you're born with, or we wouldn't have license exams. Children are born with an overall properly working sense of danger avoidance, it's up to us as parents / politicians to ensure the environment aids this natural danger avoidance pattern.

It's quite simple when going to it's basics: my oldest once ran into a truck trailer on his bike.. The trailer was parked, he wasn't watching in front.

Hasn't happened since

 

[marvin78]

My vehicle at 100 mph would have the same kinetic energy as a Hummer EV moving at 15 mph, for comparison. In many states, my vehicle wouldn't be legal over 28 mph. Things have gotten so absurd, police arrested some meth head for operating a child's Power Wheels car at 2 mph for being a "public safety threat", when he was literally a threat to no one at all.

I agree on tin cans on wheels being the issue with road safety but I do think this part deserves a partial rebuttal.

Your vehicle at 100mph comparing with a truck at 15mph might achieve the same kinetic energy ( let's say it does at least ) kinetic energy is not the only factor.

Traffic calming and especially traffic separation is the biggest reason Dutch cycling network is so safe relatively speaking. That is why a 28mph limit to me doesn't sound bad, in fact our limit is 18mph for ebikes. 28-30mph is what I think it should be here, it would be a great fit for our infrastructure.. I say as someone who would be utilizing it. Maybe other users of the same infrastructure would disagree.

 

[The Toecutter]

Traffic calming and especially traffic separation is the biggest reason Dutch cycling network is so safe relatively speaking. That is why a 28mph limit to me doesn't sound bad, in fact our limit is 18mph for ebikes. 28-30mph is what I think it should be here, it would be a great fit for our infrastructure.. I say as someone who would be utilizing it. Maybe other users of the same infrastructure would disagree.

I live in a country that doesn't have a cycling network. I have to "share" the road with 7,000 lb codpieces moving at 40-60 mph when the speed limit says 35 mph, as they are fixated upon their ironically-named "smart" devices. And there are also random people driving 4,500 lb Dodge Charger Hellcats without tags or plates or insurance that run from the cops because they know they won't be caught, and can often be found street racing and doing street takeovers where they do donuts in intersections.

That's quite a far cry from what you have to deal with.

28 mph will get me splattered in the middle of the road. No universal healthcare, either. There's no shortage of people who ended up homeless because of medical complications and resultant bankruptcy in this country.

100 mph is more than enough to get me away from trouble, most of the time.

My current iteration does 50 mph, limited by my 46.8V battery, but I am running 10 kW and have adequate acceleration to get away from problems. The 72V upgrade will increase the top end to about 80 mph.

 

[marvin78]

I live in a country that doesn't have a cycling network. I have to "share" the road with 7,000 lb codpieces moving at 40-60 mph when the speed limit says 35 mph, as they are fixated upon their ironically-named "smart" devices. And there are also random people driving 4,500 lb Dodge Charger Hellcats without tags or plates or insurance that run from the cops because they know they won't be caught, and can often be found street racing and doing street takeovers where they do donuts in intersections.

That's quite a far cry from what you have to deal with.

And I am eternally grateful for it, I think I would have been death if I had the same cycling habits over there as I can get away with here.

The I keep having with this is that what you're riding then isn't an electric 'bike' as in bicycle, but an electric motorcycle ( or moped it it's not that fast ). As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the same conditions for riding an electric motorcycle as a regular one ( eg license / registration and so on ).

28 mph will get me splattered in the middle of the road. No universal healthcare, either. There's no shortage of people who ended up homeless because of medical complications and resultant bankruptcy in this country.

28mph would only be great in my infrastructure as I said earlier, and then only for the one riding that limit. Other users would likely complain about it and who am I to claim they would be wrong if they banned mopeds doing those speeds from the cycling network unless you leave city limits and tin can's are allowed to go over 50km/h so there would be a to big speed differential between a moped and a car. I feel like I 'can' ride those speeds on my mtb and be safe, and it doesn't matter if there is an engine helping me when doing it. But I fully acknowledge that statistics clearly indicate my assessment might both be flawed for my own abilities to start with, but certainly isn't applicable to large groups of people.

In your case I think I would preserve more of my own sanity if I looked at myself as not a cyclist but a motorcycle rider. Then again, no one claims those are 'safer' in a collision with a car, far from it since the kinetic energy potential has only increased now ( I assume a full blown electric motorcycle should weigh quite a lot more as a mtb with a motor and battery slapped on it so more mass involved in a collision even a one sided accident ).

100 mph is more than enough to get me away from trouble, most of the time.

My current iteration does 50 mph, limited by my 46.8V battery, but I am running 10 kW and have adequate acceleration to get away from problems. The 72V upgrade will increase the top end to about 80 mph.

Personally, for my feeling that's right on the edge of ebike - motor difference. If I could be going 100mph, I would consider myself a motorcycle driver even if 100mph for a motorbike is nothing to write home about. If usable speed doesn't exceed 45-50, you're still in moped territory ( though, 'angry' mopeds without restrictions lol ).

The upper and lower limit of this statement is heavily influenced by the environment.

If I had no access to safe infrastructure for a proper ebike, the next best thing is an 'ebike' which doesn't get me killed. If that turns out to be an electric motorcycle, well I'd have no issues ( I think.. can't say for sure since I don't have those circumstances to deal with ) with getting a motorcycle license, and registering and insuring my vehicle.

Even if it's not going to keep me safer, it might save me a lot of money down the road for if I do get into an accident and they decide my vehicle didn't adhere to the vehicle class requirements or whatever it's called?

I think that's the best way to look at it, but that's with very limited understanding of the situation perhaps.

 

[The Toecutter]

The I keep having with this is that what you're riding then isn't an electric 'bike' as in bicycle, but an electric motorcycle ( or moped it it's not that fast ). As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the same conditions for riding an electric motorcycle as a regular one ( eg license / registration and so on ).

My vehicle is perfectly functional as a "bicycle". It has bicycle pedals, bicycle crankset, bicycle chain, bicycle sprockets, bicycle grip shifters, bicycle cables, bicycle front/rear derailleurs, and because of its aerodynamics, I can disable the motor and race lycra-clad Lance Armstrong wannabes on bicycles and have a decent chance of running away from them, because it has a mass that is less close to that of a motorcycle and more close to that of a bicycle. The only time they lose me is going uphill. I can disable the motor and reach 35 mph on flat ground, with nothing but my own two legs providing motive force. The next body shell might increase that to over 40 mph. Cruising speed on a disabled motor is about 22-23 MPH on flat ground. Keep in mind that this is WITH my hubmotor's cogging torque losses adding significant resistance, otherwise I'd gain 2-3 mph.

Using my own legs, I can exceed "street legal ebike" speeds, as long as I'm not going uphill. Going downhill, this vehicle is delightfully stable, and I love careening downhill at 60 mph.

 

[marty]

The real threat to safety is what Chalo has termed "7,000 lb cod pieces".

What is COD?

Fish?

 

[Chalo]

What is COD?

Fish?

Codpiece - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[The Toecutter]

What is COD?

Fish?

No, a "cod piece".

Fisher has proposed that the codpiece embodies duelling visions of masculinity. Before the Renaissance, a man’s identity was predicated on his ability to have children, ideally lots of them. The codpiece had one stockinged foot in that world—“cod” was slang for the scrotum, not the penis—and the other in a racy alternative that valued “sexual conquest” more than reproduction. Seen in this light, codpiece-wearing men were essentially performing their performance anxiety; Marjorie Garber has called the codpiece “the thinking man’s (or woman’s) bauble, the ultimate detachable part.”

A Brief History of the Codpiece, the Personal Protection for Renaissance Equipment

Chalo likens modern trucks and SUVs to this form of adornment. I agree with him.

 

[nicobie]

Jesus marty, did you have to ask...

 

[The Toecutter]

Jesus marty, did you have to ask...

I want a diamond-encrusted one like Murderface from Dethklok. I'd totally walk around wearing that.

Since that is beyond my budget, my trike will make for a decent substitute.