Just today I saw a crazy e-bike kid cruise down a major highway, going back and forth between the north and south lanes on the shoulder at intersections, narrowly missing several tractor trailers. And when I am in major cities I am regularly almost run down by scooter people.
What are the stats on injury rates on these things?
40,000 people are killed each year by cars in the United States. We do need to ensure bikes and scooters are not on the sidewalks. The best way to do this is to build dedicated bike lanes that remove bicycles and scooters from the sidewalk and from the road (where cars are too dangerous).
But I can't take humans serious as this stage where 40,000 of us are dying each year and so little is done to prevent it despite it being something we can dramatically improve. But people shake their fist at a scooter laying on it's side on the sidewalk while 7 Eleven says a car drives into one of their stores (through the building) on average once a day.
I get that. But those are cars generally driving at highway speeds, and there is a lot of safety built it.
These e bikes and scooters are going quite fast in urban environments with more or less zero protection for the cyclist/scooterist, and who are closer to pedestrians.
> I get that. But those are cars generally driving at highway speeds, and there is a lot of safety built it.
Tell that to 40,000 dead pedestrians every year.
> These e bikes and scooters are going quite fast in urban environments with more or less zero protection for the cyclist/scooterist, and who are closer to pedestrians.
And e-bike or scooter with a human weighs at most 200kg total. That 20% of the weight of small car (1000kg), which means 20% of the energy in a collision. The e-bikes and scooters would need to travelling well in excess of 30mph before their deadliness to pedestrians in a collision would get even close to a car.
Something backed up by the stats, if you can even find them. So few pedestrians deaths are caused by bikes and scooters that most countries and municipalities don’t even bother tracking the data. In the UK an upper-bound on bike caused pedestrian deaths is about 2 per year, and more likely number is 0.5 per year.
Last week I saw an elderly driver going over the speed limit and the wrong way on a major street in London because there was a bit of traffic on the lane going his direction. Unlike your crazy e-bike kid, he could easily have killed somebody who was travelling normally.
Your anecdote mistakes electric motorcycles with e-bikes. In the USA, there are three legal classes of ebikes; with the fastest class having max legal speed of 28mph.
Ok, but its an important distinction to be aware of when interpreting safety statistics. Advocates of ebike adoption are not talking about motorcycles.
What are the stats on injury rates on these things?