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community weblog
Menace on the Streets
Aka some folks are real mad about e-bikes and e-scooters (slMaclean's)
I think my only opinion on the e-scooters is to please have kids wear a helmet.
posted by Kitteh on Apr 15, 2026 at 7:09 AM
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As a 68yro ebike rider, I think ebikes are great. But I'm not sure why the article lumps them with scooters because the problems between the two are quite different. Even it focuses about 90% on scooters.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:20 AM
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These people are going to have an aneurism when they find out about cars.
posted by mhoye at 7:21 AM
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I think ebikes and scooters are great. I don't use them myself and wouldn't get one for my kids, we're all good with the human powered versions, but every person using one is one less car on the road.
My one issue is speed. On the human powered versions people generally don't get fast until they've been using them for a while and have developed their handling skills and awareness, with the micro mobility devices people can just go. And on a bike you aren't getting above 30km/h on flat ground unless you're quite fit. We probably need a segment of gym class in middle school dealing with how to safely operate these and free lessons for everyone else.
In suburban Toronto these could also solve the last mile problem for transit, where a bus will drop you off at your closest stop but you still might have a 15-20 minute walk to get home. We'd need some secure storage near the stops though or something like Lime. I'd imagine in places with even less extensive transit they'd be even more useful.
As far as sharing space is concerned, my preferred solution would be that bikes and micro mobility devices get a full width lane once a road is more than one lane wide each way. So a single lane road can just be a "regular" one but before adding another car lane you'd have to add a bike/micro mobility one.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:28 AM
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Speaking as a London pedestrian, I just wish they'd stay off the pavements. I've nearly been mowed down several times by fast-moving e-bikes and e-scooters who weave in and out of the pedestrians on even quite busy sidewalks. Cyclists who do this are dangerous enough, but powered bikes increase the risk substantially.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:29 AM
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Public streets have always been contested, as drivers and cyclists and pedestrians jockey for their allotment of our crowded, finite road space. But until e-machines arrived, we could usually take a few basics for granted. Speed limits were non-negotiable. Sidewalks were for people, bike lanes for bikes and roads for motor vehicles. Everything had its place.
This seems wishful.
posted by postcommunism at 7:39 AM
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I do think the biggest challenge but the one most important to tackle is in restricting the really fast ones - how do you prevent someone from going on Amazon and purchasing an e-scooter or e-moto (I refuse to call something that goes faster than the normal e-bike classification system an e-bike because that's how you end up with blanket bans) from China that can go crazy fast and has a potentially unsafe battery?
posted by misskaz at 7:41 AM
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The e-bikes aren't as common here in Kingston, and when I have seen them, it has usually been more working class low-income folks. Now when I'm in Toronto, they are everywhere and mostly seem to be delivery drivers. I live in a university town so there are more e-scooters in play by the young and old. I do agree that those modes of transport, much like bicycles, should not be on sidewalks.
posted by Kitteh at 7:43 AM
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Less cars, especially in a place like Toronto, is a quantifiable good. The issue really is the rental scooters rather than the e-bikes or the privately owned scooters.
Locally, they were initially a mess: they were left everywhere / blocking pedestrian pathways, in varying states of disrepair, many of the drivers of the scooters had a profound and sometimes catastrophic misunderstanding of road safety but... over time we see less of that. As a pedestrian, mostly, I rarely have to dodge them now. I don't see as many incidences involving them in the road collisions or public transit mishaps. The rental scooters are restricted to where they can drive so they can't, for instance, drive in the cemetery where I walk the dog. Regular scooters can go everywhere of course but the ownership of those seems less prone to the randomness I saw with the rental ones.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:50 AM
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The one thing I do hear about more frequently, that the article mentions in passing which seems like a greater issue, are the battery fires. Our colder temperatures and temperature swings seem to stress the lithium ion batteries and I'm not sure that people are fully aware you shouldn't charge a frigidly cold battery.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:55 AM
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re: non-automotive vehicular traffic: The pocket rockets that the food delivery people ride here are a menace, given that they drive aggressively and unpredictably on the road and then tend to screech onto the sidewalk without warning. Powered scooters are annoying af because they're not fast enough not to annoy drivers, yet just fast enough to present a hazard on the sidewalk. e-bikes and regular bikes are always on the fucking sidewalk even when there's a bike lane right there.
tl;dr: People are selfish assholes, whose solipsism seems to increase annually.
posted by the sobsister at 8:06 AM
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As a visually impaired person these are a restriction on my ability to safely get along pavements and have safe access to and from public transport because of the design choices of the lanes for those with more options for travel. Having to cross a bike lane to get to and from a bus shelter or worse accessing a bus into/from a lane with vehicles is insane design especially with the speeds and entitled attitude of the riders.
Yes, i know about cars etc, they are already terrible for pedestrians/wheelers especially those with sensory impairments, these machines are an addition to the number of vehicles that decrease safe travel.
God, i wish that people ( UK here ) knew, understood and practiced the highway code. In addition ( specifically Scotland ) that they knew about the SOAC to know what core paths allow. Urban design is by able bodied people for able bodied people , not for those restricted by disability, age, money or care responsibilities.
I have already had to get my City Council Active Travel group to alter the restrictions map of the e bike hire company to ensure it followed the core path restrictions as they just had not bothered or cared about safety of pedestrians/wheelers.
Whenever you see the overly promoted cross section of "modern urban" street design that has pavement.cycle lane, car, median then repeats remember that a public transport user has to cross cycle lanes a minimum four times to get to and from a location. ( off bus, across two to get to return bus, then across another to get onto bus), even more if the start of journey has the same ).
posted by stuartmm at 8:09 AM
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69 km/h is over 40 mph, which is INSANE, especially without a helmet.
I've put over 1000 miles on one of my e-bikes the last year or two ferrying my daughter to school and it tops out at 28mph when I'm solo. The speed limit on my route tops out at 35 and the school zones are 25, so I'm pretty comfortable on the road, and I've got the option to hop on sidewalks if I need to, which I do when she's riding on the back. I barely break 20 on the sidewalk, and I always slow down to a coast when pedestrians are coming my way, and I've got a bell or yell when I'm coming up behind people to warn them. So many kids are wearing headphones or looking at phones...
My municipality has some issues with sidewalks on one side of the street, and they're putting more bike lanes around the city, and I'm hoping to work to make it even more bike friendly, but the main drag here in town is 45 and people have been killed because it's like eight lanes divided and people race it like it's the freeway. And what did the city do? Spent over $100k putting up a pedestrian fence to keep people from crossing between lights...
But yea, bikes/e-bikes all round. Class II (20mph) is fine for kids under 16. Class III (29) is still pretty reasonable for most places.
posted by daHIFI at 8:11 AM
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I don't understand how these services are making money. Or, rather: I think their entire business model is incredibly suspect and that some level of fraudulent, fishy, or downright deceptive accountancy is taking place. In the city where I live, most of their repeat customers are school kids using free promo codes, which have been zip-tied onto every scooter.
posted by The River Ivel at 8:13 AM
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There's this fucking tool of the universe who unfortunately for me apparently lives near me and who commutes on a one-wheel on the pedestrian path at like 20 MPH. He has elbow pads, knee pads, gloves, and one of those whole-head helmets that make you look like a bleedingedge outerspace wasprobot of extreme lethality. He weaves in and out between walkers and normal bike riders without slowing down or announcing his presence. You don't know he's on you 'til he's on you, when it's too late to change course if you were drifting toward the other side of the sidewalk preparatory to going into a building or something--you know, because you're used to treating the sidewalk like a sidewalk: a place where people WALK on the SIDE of the road where motorized vehicles can safely travel at pedestrian-destroying speeds because there are predictably no PEDESTRIANS in the road because the PEDESTRIANS ARE ON THE SIDEWALK RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR.
This fucker's commute takes him past a busy hospital entrance, where he narrowly misses patients standing around with IVs in their arms and people getting pushed in wheelchairs. He gets screamed at with some regularity, and I'm assuming he's somehow collecting all that terrified shrieking to fill up his nightly spankbank. Eventually one day he will murder somebody who didn't realize that to walk to work or limp miserably out of your hospital room to find somewhere they'll allow you to smoke you need to suit up as if you were going to ride a speedbike on the interstate.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:16 AM
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on a bike you aren't getting above 30km/h on flat ground unless you're quite fit
and your wheels are almost always big enough, and your centre of mass far enough from the front, that if you run into a raccoon or a bit of sidewalk lifted by a tree root or even a patch of coarse gravel you will most likely not suddenly find yourself maintaining your previous road speed in fully ballistic mode.
posted by flabdablet at 8:20 AM
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I'm pro e-bikes and e-scooters. I ride an e-bike to work a few times a week when I'm not bussing it. My e-bike's assist tops out at 15 mph and have very small wheels, so I'm not going so fast. Lots of people pass me, but I get to work sweat free and I don't have to wait in traffic ever.
I do think class III bikes are an issue, especially on multi-use trails where people are jogging, walking, pushing strollers, etc. The spandex bros aren't much better. The difference in speeds leads to conflict.
I do take issue with the pedal free e-bikes (mopeds?), they aren't really bikes, they definitely go very fast and I've seen kids under 16 on them in the street with traffic. Just no. If you can't get a license to drive, you don't need to be in the street with the rest of traffic popping wheelies.
posted by brookeb at 8:20 AM
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A couple kids in our neighborhood have scooters with two stroke engines on the back. I suppose that there isn't a significant safety difference between standing on a scooter and sitting on a moped but it looks insane to me. The only thing that strikes me as more dangerous are electric unicycles- whenever I see one I just imagine what would happen if the device came to a sudden stop at full speed.
posted by simra at 8:22 AM
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I was compelled to make sure the illustrator wasn't AI. She's a talented artist who looks like she's getting plenty of work. These images remind me of The Onion cartoons.
Should we be investing in public education campaigns to create safer use of these vehicles? Absolutely! Some inexpensive form of licensure? Hard Maybe! Are they 1000% safer and better than more cars on the road? Christ, Yes!
posted by es_de_bah at 8:23 AM
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https://xkcd.com/2832/
posted by Previous username Jacen at 8:29 AM
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It's pretty clear to me at least that beyond bike lanes:
- there is a new class of vehicle on the streets that we might call "single user light electric".
- that they probably should have their own legislative framework and space on the roads, and
- we should take that space away from cars, probably via street parking.
posted by mhoye at 8:32 AM
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These people are going to have an aneurism when they find out about cars.
The person who wrote this is going to have an aneurysm when they find out that laws regulate the operation of cars, which is what the article is about.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:43 AM
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I suppose that there isn't a significant safety difference between standing on a scooter and sitting on a moped
Oh but there is! As I learned when I bought an e-scooter instead of an e-bike without understanding how much wheel radius matters in a city full of potholes. That combined with the higher center of gravity from standing instead of sitting means it's way, way easier to tumble forward onto the pavement at speed.
Unrelatedly, would anyone like to buy my scooter so I can buy a bike
posted by canisbonusest at 8:45 AM
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We wouldn't tolerate people riding motorcycles on sidewalks, or on multi-use paths, or operating one without a license... and most "e-bikes" are effectively e-motorcycles. It's the same discussion as was previously had about mopeds, when the "power assist" was gasoline-powered but nobody really pedals the things.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:50 AM
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My regular reminder that some of the people on the sidewalk are deaf and won't hear your bell or your yell. Until I got hearing aids I used to infuriate a lot of bike scooter or e-bike users who thought they had been perfectly clear they were approaching behind me.
posted by Peach at 8:50 AM
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The ebikes in particular are about having motorbikes that don't need licences and worse can be sold to minor who can't get a motorcycle licence at all. They also don't have the rules motorbike owners need to follow like properly-rated helmets and other gear. Owners also don't need insurance so when they hit a car or a pedestrian, those people are out of luck.
So it's a problem of unskilled and uninsured drivers of bikes capable of 60 to 70 kph who aren't legally required to follow the rules for gas motorbikes.
The scooter issues are similar but not quite as extreme.
posted by bonehead at 8:51 AM
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My area seems to have mostly gotten things in hand with the e-things since they were first dumped en masse on our streets over a decade ago by tech bros and we lacked any kind of regulatory framework to handle them.
Locally, they were initially a mess: they were left everywhere / blocking pedestrian pathways, in varying states of disrepair, many of the drivers of the scooters had a profound and sometimes catastrophic misunderstanding of road safety but... over time we see less of that.
Yep, same. There were no standards on where people could leave them after use so they were just strewn about. Now we have designated areas marked off by painted rectangles where they can go. For a while, we had a startup company that would collect scooters that were strewn about in places they shouldn't be that charged the scooter companies ransom to get them back.
In the ensuing years, my city has been pretty active in creating curb-separated bike lanes on major urban thoroughfares and enacted speed limits or restrictions on motorized things of any kind in some spaces so that most of the problems with pedestrians are because a e-thing user is just being an asshole.
A separate thing is the recent trend of faster e-bikes that kids are riding in the traffic lanes of major streets that are basically motorcycles. My area requires helmets, but having 14 year-olds without any kind of traffic training or licensure going 30mph on a 4-lane street is a problem.
Generally, my city has some topography and things people would want to do can be far apart, so having the e-things instead of cars has mostly turned out to be a benefit.
posted by LionIndex at 8:52 AM
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More children died in 2025 in non-moving cars than died scooter related accidents. The majority of deaths that happen when operating a scooter or e-bike involve an automobile.
posted by 99_ at 8:55 AM
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The one thing I do hear about more frequently, that the article mentions in passing which seems like a greater issue, are the battery fires.
in my immediate neighbourhood, a big multi-suite house burned down a few years back due to a battery fire. Nobody hurt but it was a big fire. so yeah, definitely a thing.
I've been living on a major bike route for over five years now and in that time, I can't recall a single incident. Lots of pedestrians too because there's a school and a park nearby. So on a nice day, you have more or less steady movement -- thousands of people and bikes and e-bikes and scooters etc a day. Every now and then, some idiot races on through going way too fast, which is scary but so far, so good (as opposed to the nearby main road where a pedestrian was killed a couple of years ago).
And it's worth noting, due to the bike route being downhill in one direction, there's nothing stopping an old school bicycle from going every bit as fast as any scooter etc. So as far as I can see, the issue is really speed ...
posted by philip-random at 8:55 AM
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I'm fine with privately owned e things as long as they stay on roads and off sidewalks and paths. The lack of bike lanes sucks, but the solution isn't for bikes and scooters to do to pedestrians what cars are doing to bikes.
The Lime and other rental options could be good, but the city needs to pick 1 vendor and impose strict rules, take a big revenue share, and fine the vendor per bike found blocking a path or in the wrong place. My friend had so many of these tipped over and blocking the area around his pub and other businesses that he went out one night and spent an hour piling all the different vendors' scooters into an enormous mound, which he then posted to social media. It was awesome.
posted by caviar2d2 at 9:12 AM
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Then, there's this guy.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 9:15 AM
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I'm not real fond of the things, but I'm not real fond of the scare-bait tone of the article either.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:41 AM
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as far as I can see, the issue is really speed
Speed, speed difference with anyone you might hit, and total mass for much of the risk a vehicle poses to others. That makes the restriction on motor power physics-reasonable despite being enforcement-nonsense.
Speed, geometry, and wheel size for the risk to the rider alone, maybe?
I'd like to know more about how they're handled in China! The article mentions huge adoption there, and much later that one city started requiring licenses and saw a drop in accidents. But a license can't by itself stop an accident, so what was the linkage?
posted by clew at 9:49 AM
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Yeah my main complaint is that the rental vendors suffer no consequences for illegal parking/abandonment of their property.
The vendors know who last used a bike or scooter, so they can try to pass the cost on to the offenders if they want. But ultimately it's weird and shitty that cities act as if there's no possible way to enforce existing laws about e.g. blocking ADA ramps etc.
Personally I think most cities should run their own bike/scooter rentals alongside their transit systems, and make docks at every bus stop (as well as new vehicle docks). This would eliminate a lot of the problems caused by "move fast and break stuff" tech profiteers. And if some cities want to contract with existing vendors, fine, but there should be just one provider just like there's one bus system. We're trying to have a society here!
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:50 AM
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If it's only method of movement is an motor, get it out of the bike lane and off the sidewalk.
And Skip and Door Dash riders should have license plates that tie to their employee account, and those companies should foot the bill. Riding on the sidewalk? Ticket for rider. Ticket for employer. This will rid the sidewalk of them super quick. Does this punish the poor, or make it racialized? No, it targets law breakers. Get your motor vehicle off the sidewalk!
posted by dobbs at 10:08 AM
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I got an ebike a bit over a year ago and it's been a lifechanger. My car got too damaged to drive in a hurricane (and FEMA completely punted on it, saying my insurance should cover it), but the ebike gives me enough local mobility in this bus-less town to get food for myself. So of COURSE there are people out there using them thoughtlessly and unsafely and threatening to make using this lifeline difficult for me.
posted by JHarris at 10:12 AM
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Also a lot of people here don't seem to realize that most all legit ebikes sold in bike shops in the US follow the CA class system, which means a class 1 ebike cannot run on throttle only, and tops out at 20mph. See more info and discussion from the CA AGhere.
It's true you can buy what's effectively an unlicensed
/Illegal electric motorcycle online, but that's not what bike shops are selling.
As above, we should call those emotos or similar, because it's unfair to conflate the rebel teen endangering the public and violating current law with the 55yo grandma commuting to work on a bike that helps her maintain a safer 15mph when she's going uphill and sharing a lane with cars. I have both in my town, fortunately relatively few of the former. It's actually pretty easy to tell them apart by the hardware and behavior, if you care to actually look.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:18 AM
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The bicycle menace! Scourge of rage bait journalism for centuries!
I hate that this article focuses on individuals and technologies rather than governance and terrible billionaires that seek to thwart good governance of transportation.
The conflict is really billionaires vs infrastructure.
For example. New Orleans wanted to promote cycle infrastructure and e bikes.
New Orleans held meetings with communities and the state on how to do it, where to do it, and how to regulate it.
New Orleans spent money on parking hubs and lanes, and coordinated with a non profit to hire local e bike mechanics to maintain a public fleet.
Lime and Byrd came into the city, with complete disregard for the planning, the rules, the demands from residents.
Their shit was banned from the city. The City Parking fleet eliminated them from the streets.
But there are many residents using the bike lands and the parking hubs, made for the public bike fleet, to park their scooters.
So I feel like, most of these conflicts are a result of crippled infrastructure budgets.
Kids at 40mph notwithstanding, 90% of the GRAR can be avoided with separated lanes and designated parking areas.
I dislike the article's framing of "bike infrastructure vs scooters" because i dont see that conflict where I am, where the city planned and executed infrastructure planning, at least a little bit well.
posted by eustatic at 10:27 AM
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oh hello fellow New Orleanian :)
I sure wish there were more places to park my bike around town that were as well-secured to the ground as the Blue Bike racks, there's so many racks that aren't screwed down to anything.
posted by egypturnash at 10:56 AM
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and your wheels are almost always big enough, and your centre of mass far enough from the front, that if you run into a raccoon or a bit of sidewalk lifted by a tree root or even a patch of coarse gravel you will most likely not suddenly find yourself maintaining your previous road speed in fully ballistic mode.
posted by flabdablet at 1:20 PM on April 15 [1 favorite +] [⚑]
maybe most - some? - of the time, but a few months ago, I hit a 2inch pot hole (in a bike lane!) and went flying right over the handle bars. I landed mostly on my elbows, but I am so glad that I was also wearing a helmet.
Re e-bikes: one HUGE problem is that throttle controlled ones where you can go faster are much, much cheaper than true pedal assist bikes. My partner rides a throttle-powered e-bike that maybe could go more than 30km/hour, though he doesn't. He treats it like a regular bike a lot of the time and uses the motor to help pull our kid's trailer up big hills. He would be better off with a purely pedal assist bike but the cost difference was a factor of 5-10: $1500 for throttle, vs $10-15,000 for a pedal assist.
You won't get the mopeds off the roads unless the price of pedal assist e-bikes comes way down.
posted by jb at 11:05 AM
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I regret that I've entered my curmudgeon era when it comes to these things.
posted by peachfiber at 11:06 AM
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My Lectric XP 3.0 e-bike can do both throttle and pedal assist, and was only $1,000.
posted by JHarris at 11:16 AM
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The coverage in the local papers about the debates in municipalities in the area always seems to quote the police chief. If the cops are for banning or regulating ebikes, I'm against it.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:24 AM
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As far as delivery people being menaces on these things, the alternative is them going back to driving cars and exhibiting the exact same behaviour but now in a couple thousand kilograms of steel. Also either fees would go up, because cars are way more expensive to buy and run than ebikes, or the drivers would be even more reckless to get more deliveries in the same time.
Don't get me wrong, I am for some kind of sensible regulation of these but it has to be a light touch because we really ought to be encouraging them.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:53 AM
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Yeah jb those numbers are way off. $6k will get you a top notch car replacer like a bakfiets e- cargo bike. Which is default configured as a class 1, pedal assist only, 20 mph limit. As JHarris points out there are $1k options too. Generally you don't want to touch anything that costs less than that though, for safety and reliability reasons.
Or maybe it's different where you are, I expect eg Canada to cost a little more than US but not 10x more.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:26 PM
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In suburban Toronto these could also solve the last mile problem for transit, where a bus will drop you off at your closest stop but you still might have a 15-20 minute walk to get home.
My husband got an e-scooter for the last mile ride at work - he gets off the GO train and it's a 40-minute walk with no real other transit around. Otherwise his commute is driving 140km round trip (85 ish miles) - through Toronto rush hour traffic.
He has to travel off peak so it means leaving early and coming home late the days he's in the office. He doesn't use it in the winter. And he can't carry it on TTC due to the fire risk. (If the GO train has issues.)
I give it mixed reviews. The more I learn about e-scooters and head injuries the more I want him to just use a bike, but he prefers standing on the scooter for comfort in work pants.
My mother in law has an e-trike which is pretty fun. But that means we have two small possibly suspect (they are certified, but...) batteries in the garage at times which makes me double check our home insurance is paid. :P
posted by warriorqueen at 12:31 PM
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The regular bike industry- e.g. Trek, cannondale, etc are campaigning for unregulated ebikes that fall outside of the Class 1, 2, 3 system to be specifically called e-motos. They are just a fundamentally different beast from the Tern HSD that I toodle around town in, to haul my kiddo and groceries.
posted by rockindata at 12:34 PM
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As far as delivery people being menaces on these things, the alternative is them going back to driving cars and exhibiting the exact same behaviour but now in a couple thousand kilograms of steel.
In my neighbourhood they're on the sidewalk. I don't really blame them on a few of the arterial roads because people are idiots about bikes, but I've had a narrow miss with my dog.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:41 PM
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E-bikes are the best last mile solution but anything over class I should require a license. We lose several kids a year to e-bike accidents in my community. I had a relative recently die hitting a speed bump at 30mph. The fast "bikes" need to be taken seriously.
As long as we're in grar mode what about all those lovely motorized mountain bikes on hiking trails? If ever I could launch someone into the sun...
posted by q*ben at 12:42 PM
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We should find ways to accommodate these new-fangled personal electric vehicles but also we still haven't grappled with skateboards, rollerblades, and all sorts of other human-powered transportation that substantially enhance urban mobility. We mostly just criminalize them.
For instance, I have a kick bike, which is basically a foot-powered scooter with a full-sized bike wheel in the front. It is a lot safer than the small-wheel electric scooters. It's also far more useful, as I can carry a good-sized load of groceries in the handlebar basket.
They're popular in the Amish community and the operating costs and maintenance are extremely low, well below my bicycles.
This vehicle doesn't really fit anywhere in the city. Too slow for the road and bike lanes. But also fast and big enough to be dangerous on the sidewalk. It's best on the neighborhood streets with aggressive car filters, where I often spot skateboarders as well. The answer is always taking space from cars.
posted by Headfullofair at 12:54 PM
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As much as we might disagree on finer details, it's refreshing to see a discussion where it isn't just "get a real bike you lazy loser."
Where I live it's too hot and humid for several months of the year in order to bike comfortably once the sun is up. If you're not already really fit and acclimated to the heat, it can actually be dangerous. I see more ebikes these days and I think it's great. Most of those probably would have been car trips.
When people suggest you should just bike I always think of that Black Books episode where the joke is that things fall apart and people go insane at 88F, an unfathomably hot temperature (when that episode was made I guess).
But ebikes really do illustrate the need for better regulation and infrastucture. On many streets, the choices are (a) die, (b) use the sidewalk, or (c) give up and use your car. Our sidewalks aren't as busy as in a denser city but if we want more people using bikes, e- or not, it is going to become a bigger issue than it is now.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:55 PM
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Chiming in here from Amsterdam...
As people have mentioned, the problem is speed. There's plenty of bike lanes here but fast e-bikes on normal bike lanes cause problems for other bike riders.
So, bikes are not legally allowed to be able to go above 25 km/h to use bike lanes. If they do then they are mopeds and face stricter license/helmet requirements.
Just today, there were a bunch of police by one of the main bike roads stopping electric (fatbike) riders and testing their bikes. If their bikes were able to go above 25 km/h (some people get their bikes modified) then the bike as deemed illegal and confiscated and thrown in the back of a van. And the rider was also fined.
Rules and enforcement and enough space for everybody (separation of cars and bikes) seems to be working.
posted by vacapinta at 12:57 PM
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Where I live it's too hot and humid for several months of the year in order to bike comfortably once the sun is up. If you're not already really fit and acclimated to the heat, it can actually be dangerous. I see more ebikes these days and I think it's great. Most of those probably would have been car trips.
IMO, bikes create such a large amount of windchill that I don't see how people ride them comfortably below like 20F. Up to 100F is fine, as long as the dew point is below about 65F, so sweat is somewhat productive.
That's not to say one still wouldn't get sweaty while riding, which can be rough on make up and clothes. But that's true above like 70F, especially with a hill or two, for those of us who sweat when exercising. I can see how an ebike would remove some of the pedaling to save make up and clothes from sweat.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:05 PM
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Where I live in South London there's the usual plague of amateur moped food delivery peeps, but the scooters are the real menace. I can't count the number of times one has whizzed past me when I'm driving, way over the speed limit, dressed in black, hoodie, no lights. It's a wonder there aren't a lot more fatalities.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 1:11 PM
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I was a defender of e-bikes for a while, pretty sure I commented here on an older thread how everyone needed to relax.
As they've gotten more common I admit my negative visceral reaction to seeing them doing unsafe stuff (whether I'm biking or driving) has gotten stronger. There is totally a class of people who somehow manage to ride them with even more indifference to traffic laws than the typical pedal cyclist, and they are super obnoxious when they ignore speed of "traffic" on a multi-use path.
I also get a bid old-man judgy about young school kids using them so often, when they could easily be riding around on old fashioned bikes. Getting people from cars onto e-bikes is a net positive, less convincing getting people who walk/bike onto an electric moped is a win.
(Also bonus points if you are riding an e-scooter on the busy street and dangling your helmet from the handlebars. What, does your mom make you put it on when you leave in the morning and you take it off the second you can?)
But even with my now prejudiced attitude cherry picking the ones that I don't like, I have to say that in my area objectively the vast majority of e-bike riders are fine, they don't skate more laws than the typical car driver, and banning them outright because you can't figure out enforcement is a bad idea.
posted by mark k at 1:13 PM
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Peach: "My regular reminder that some of the people on the sidewalk are deaf and won't hear your bell or your yell. Until I got hearing aids I used to infuriate a lot of bike scooter or e-bike users who thought they had been perfectly clear they were approaching behind me."
Headphones too, are super prevalent! I was almost mowed down from BEHIND on the sidewalk years ago by a man on a bike who then yelled at ME because I didn't hear him zipping up. On a quiet residential street he could have easily ridden in instead. Some people are rude as hell. I'm not sure where else he wanted me to be walking but the sidewalk?
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:39 PM
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I am definitely anti-scooter - at least in the US, we already struggle to safely design urban spaces so that they work for pedestrians, cyclists, and cars. I get why I see a lot of people on scooters avoiding bike lanes, but they don't belong on sidewalks. I have had more close calls with scooters than any other vehicle lately, and I rarely see scooter riders wearing helmets. Not to mention their greater risk for head injury (which I think is a better metric than death - I mean yes, death rates matter, but so does serious brain damage).
Meanwhile, most of the e-bike riders I come across seem equally responsible as analog cyclists.
I'm not sure the issue with delivery people is the mode of transport so much so that they are no longer wage employees to a business but tied to a App that punishes them if they are delayed, even for reasons outside their control. Many will behave recklessly in whatever vehicle they are in/on if their livelihood depends on it.
posted by coffeecat at 2:47 PM
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Dunkley's injury was no anomaly. At Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, e-scooter–related admissions jumped 600 per cent from 2020 to 2024.
Well, one also imagines there weren't many pre-teens racing home from school to their friend's house on one in 2020. Or at least, not as many as 2024.
posted by pwnguin at 2:51 PM
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Yeah jb those numbers are way off. $6k will get you a top notch car replacer like a bakfiets e- cargo bike. Which is default configured as a class 1, pedal assist only, 20 mph limit. As JHarris points out there are $1k options too. Generally you don't want to touch anything that costs less than that though, for safety and reliability reasons.
Or maybe it's different where you are, I expect eg Canada to cost a little more than US but not 10x more.
We're in Toronto, Canada - and a bakfiets e-cargo bike like the one you link to costs something like $13-15k Canadian here. I know two different families who have one (specifically Urban Arrows), and they point out that it costs less than a car (which is does), but it's a long way from $6k. We've looked at them, longingly, but it just wasn't in the cards (also because we don't have anyplace to store it - you can't leave an e-bike outside in a Canadian winter if you want it to last).
As for regular e-bikes: yes, cheaper ones might have pedal-assist, but does it work? My partner's bike's pedal assist doesn't kick in when he has to pedal hard, but rather when he is pedaling fast, which is the opposite of what he wants. So he uses the throttle.
My point is: so long as the cheaper end of the market is dominated throttle-based e-bikes, that will be the what the delivery people will get and that's what will be on the streets.
This isn't just true in Canada - in Europe, "fat bikes" are taking off (and are also too fast) because they are simply cheaper than the e-bikes with more limited speeds - Urbanist Agenda talks about this problem in Amsterdam (link to the relevant bit of the podcast).
posted by jb at 2:56 PM
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I'm not sure the issue with delivery people is the mode of transport so much so that they are no longer wage employees to a business but tied to a App that punishes them if they are delayed, even for reasons outside their control. Many will behave recklessly in whatever vehicle they are in/on if their livelihood depends on it.
There is research that has shown that Uber rideshare drivers faced the same incentives - and responded with dangerous driving that even they were not comfortable with. For app-based delivery, it's not the vehicle, it's the system.
posted by jb at 2:58 PM
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For delivery we should just go back to mandatory prominent visual id as a starting point. When I delivered pizza in my personal car in the 80s I was required to attach a giant lit Pizza Hut sign to my roof using the window tension before every shift. I'd like to see these atop every Uber/Lyft car. For scooters, just give each driver a nice jacket and t shirt with a big Uber Eats logo on the back. Simple.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:05 PM
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For instance, I have a kick bike, which is basically a foot-powered scooter with a full-sized bike wheel in the front. It is a lot safer than the small-wheel electric scooters. It's also far more useful, as I can carry a good-sized load of groceries in the handlebar basket.
I think that the real thing driving people to e-scooters is that they are foldable and thus storable in small spaces - whether that's your office or your tiny studio or shared apartment. This was why I had a non-electric scooter back in the 2000s - I could fold it up and get on a bus for my 15km trip to my university, and then have the scooter when I got there. Anything close to the size of a bicycle wouldn't work.
posted by jb at 3:06 PM
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Fwiw, if you want to ride a human powered bicycle at a the kind of safe speed where helmets aren't really required, and the danger to your fellow humans is minimal, you probably aren't going much faster than 12.5mph/20kph. I've read that they average less than that in Amsterdam. It's only once you start taking inspiration from racing and adding things like more than three gears, drop bars, awesome brakes, a less upright riding posture, skinny wheels, that the speed goes up. Which is fine, I prefer a bicycle that can go fast.
However! It does seem to me that 20 miles per hour is a awfully fast for the slowest class of e-bike. It's way faster than the slowest bicycles. At that speed, you need a helmet, and if you fall off, it is very likely you'll do worse than skin your knees. When I was a kid we really had to work at it to make our BMX bicycles dangerous like that. What I'm saying is that there should be a class with a top speed of 10 or 15, and irresponsible children should have to hack the speed governor as nature intended.
posted by surlyben at 3:15 PM
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Sorry: I realised that I misread the comment about kick bikes. I completely agree with your original point that there are vehicles too fast for sidewalks but too slow for bike lanes. My kick scooter was like this - I rode it on the sidewalk but generally in the suburbs where walkers were fewer.
posted by jb at 3:20 PM
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One of my personal bugbears is ebikes without any fucking lights. The electricity is already there, it's in the fucking name! Just add some fucking running lights!
posted by Ferreous at 3:41 PM
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The more I learn about e-scooters and head injuries the more I want him to just use a bike, but he prefers standing on the scooter for comfort in work pants.
If he keeps it down to a fast run speed the danger is minimized (not zero). You arent going so fast that a sudden stop results in sailing head over teakettle. Crash energy is a square of velocity so slow speeds are much safer than faster speeds generally. Low speeds like that and depending on your route it's arguably no worse than walking because you are minimizing your exposure to cars while walking which is really dangerous.
posted by Mitheral at 3:56 PM
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99_: "More children died in 2025 in non-moving cars than died scooter related accidents. The majority of deaths that happen when operating a scooter or e-bike involve an automobile."
I'm sure this is true, and as a life-long non-driver, I'm pretty down on cars, but it's impossible to interpret this stat in any way without having some context in the form of child-hours spent in cars vs. child-hours spent on scooters, or something similar. Since cars are such a dominant mode of transport, they're going to be involved in the majority of fatal accidents by default.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:57 PM
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There's been a dearth of recent incidents here in Australia, some of these "bicycles" being seized have no pedals or chain, so don't even qualify as bicycles. New laws are being pushed through in NSW parliament to allow the seizure and crushing of illegally modified e-bikes as well. I'm not a big fan of the Nanny-state but have to agree that some safeguards are necessary here.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 4:07 PM
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I just like ebikes because of the time I, an athletic 50 year old, was peddling hard up a long incline and an old lady zoomed past me on her e-bike. It was a positive vision of the future.
posted by SnowRottie at 4:43 PM
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I'm sure this is true, and as a life-long non-driver, I'm pretty down on cars, but it's impossible to interpret this stat in any way without having some context in the form of child-hours spent in cars vs. child-hours spent on scooters, or something similar. Since cars are such a dominant mode of transport, they're going to be involved in the majority of fatal accidents by default.
Less than 100 children died in bicycle accidents last year. 11,000 died in motor vehicle accidents. Roughly three dozen die yearly in hot cars. Vehicle miles traveled is a popular metric, but we don't have any data for miles traveled on bikes, so if we accept that metric, we still can't tell. We do know that on a per capita basis, motor vehicles are roughly 100x more dangerous than cycling.
But some folks think VMT might be less causal than is broadly assumed. Older drivers have higher accident rates but far lower VMT numbers. It's probably also true that scooters and e-bikes have larger VMT accident rates (driving broadly has become safer over time and there is no reason to think that if we made a similar effort to integrate to these new mobility options instead of letting car people say 'make them ride on the sidewalk' and pedestrians to argue 'make them ride in the street' - anyone who says 'make them use the bike lanes' is just a narc because bike lanes statistically do not exist in this country - we would likely see commensurate reductions).
Based on the data we have, the likelihood of an elderly driver causing grievous injury to pedestrians or cyclists is far higher than the likelihood of a cyclist or scooter doing the same to an elderly pedestrian, but there hasn't been a single notable effort anywhere in this country to create a policy solution to reduce this risk.
posted by 99_ at 5:03 PM
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There needs to be more regulation around ebikes with a throttle. In most states (including mine) you don't need a license to ride one which seems crazy. Mopeds only go a little faster and they require a license.
Class 2 and class 3 should not be in bike lanes (unless they are switched to "pedal assist only" mode).
Pedal assist bikes, however, are the bomb. They make hilly commutes manageable and let the old and slow folk keep up with everyone else on bike trips. Obviously a pedal assist bike can be ridden too fast by idiots, but the same is true of regular bikes, and in both cases you have to put your effort into it first.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 5:24 PM
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> e-moto... that can go crazy fast and has a potentially unsafe battery?
This is the way.
Require UL listed bikes (UL 2849) & batteries (UL 2271) and bikes like the Talaria, Segway and Surron will become less attractive. Get house insurance companies to write it into their policies & remind homeowners & landlords about it. The San Francisco fire code requires it. So do Harvard's dorms. NYC also requires UL-listed bikes & batteries.
The UL standard isn't perfect. It adds some cost that doesn't enhance safety & it doesn't say anything about the quality/construction of the cells. Most fires happen while charging & the UL standard helps there, but really shitty cells that develop internal shorts can self-runaway on their own.
The rolling out of the UL-listed-required rules also made a lot of batteries effectively e-waste and has no room for DIY-ers which is a shame, but in NYC's case, the number of big & sometimes fatal fires was getting ridiculous.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 7:08 PM
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It used to be that bikes had license plates, even before cars. If you look at antique bikes on auction they'll probably mention it. As cars became dominant, that bike registration thing was dropped.
One place tried to re-implement it but that program was short-lived. As it turns out, people who paid the municipality for registration expected something in return. Somewhere to ride or even some kind of police action when they reported their bicycles stolen. After many angry cyclists bringing this up in town halls the mayor decided to do... nothing. Just drop the registration scheme so the city wouldn't have to do any of that but at least the cyclists would stop complaining.
I keep thinking about that whenever anyone mentions micromobility registration.
posted by squelch at 7:37 PM
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These things are endemic where I live, it's not flat so having an e-bike just makes sense. People complain ALOT about teenagers being dicks on them but I have only ever encountered very polite and considerate teens. So I have no complaints! I want one myself (bus service exists but it seems like they just run the route whenever they feel like it and the timing for transfers means I'm usually waiting the full 10+ minutes to get my next bus)
posted by LizBoBiz at 7:40 PM
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I'd second the comment about teenagers being unfairly stereotyped. If I had to pick the group which worries me the most out in public it's a toss up between "gig" drivers who are watching a "lose your tip" countdown timer and impatient affluent middle-aged people who will run someone over in the crosswalk if they think it'll help them get to work 30 seconds faster. The teenagers never bother me, and if they were making bad choices I'd still prefer they do it driving a scooter than their parents' Suburban.
posted by adamsc at 7:58 PM
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Speed limits were non-negotiable. Sidewalks were for people, bike lanes for bikes and roads for motor vehicles. Everything had its place.
LMAO. I'm not sure I can take much else the article says seriously with that as a premise. I mean, just... seriously?
I live in an area that is admittedly not known regionally for its high quality driving (for reasons that range from legitimate to obviously racist), but the roads in the US are, broadly, one guy with a flamethrower guitar away from a Mad Max tie-in. People treat speeding as some sort of unenumerated Constitutional right, driver training is a joke, typical vehicles are basically designed to kill, the legal system routinely lets drivers get away with murder, the physical infrastructure is literally falling apart, and the whole thing is fueled by cheap gasoline and rage.
Have I seen scooter riders behaving badly? Sure. But I'll take a hit from someone on a scooter over a Nissan Armada any day of the week. Let's be clear where the real source of danger on the roads comes from. The person on the scooter has a hell of a lot more skin in the game—quite literally; and skin grafts are not fun—than any car driver, ever. Should they be weaving around pedestrians on the sidewalk/pavement? Obviously, no. But I'd bet anything we wouldn't have 90% of the bad pedestrian/scooter or pedestrian/cyclist interactions that we have, if the vast majority of the roadway wasn't de facto reserved for multi-ton vehicles that seem to bring out the literal worst in human behavior.
Pitting pedestrians against cyclists and cyclists against scooter riders only serves to entrench the car-dependent status quo, making "everything that isn't a car" fight for scraps among the potholes, drainage grates, and fermenting roadkill of the far-right shoulder.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:37 PM
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Team e-scooter here from Perth, Australia where e-rideables have been legal (therefore enforceable) for a couple of years now. The majority of the gripes are relating to people using these devices irresponsibly— even illegally. Speed is meant to be capped at 25km/h. 10km/h on footpaths. People are meant to wear helmets. It's meant to be one person per scooter. Age 16 years and older. Riders are meant to be sober. We've had a few tragic incidents make the news, and almost every one relates to people doing the irresponsible and illegal thing. But we have laws, they can be enforced! People have actually been sent to prison! The amount of harm still pales in comparison to the injuries and deaths that happen on the road, and no one is calling for cars to be banned. Cars have too much utility.
Access to e-scooters has allowed my partner and I to become a one-car family, saving on fuel, registration and running costs. It takes me 15 minutes to get to work and no parking costs. One less car on the road every day. I'm outside, in fresh air, as another user of cycling infrastructure which justifies the finding and maintenance of these arteries.
posted by roshy at 1:42 AM
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I think anyone who lives in an area where teens are making stupid decisions regularly on e-scooters and e-bikes enters their curmudgeon era pretty fast. I used to live at the top of a tall hill so a lot of teens commuted home from school on e-bikes. This should be such a positive thing for our neighborhood and I'm sure it was great for the teens but I felt like every single day I encountered one teenager going 40 the wrong way without a helmet, standing on the pedals and popping a wheelie while looking behind him to see if his friend was watching. I was just dead sure I was eventually going to witness a death.
My neighbor was commuting to work on an e-scooter and hit a rock and went right over the handlebars. He was thankfully wearing a helmet to he "only" got scraped all to hell on the road. And had to replace his helmet, which was destroyed.
I want to believe there's a way we can regulate the devices and the drivers so that people aren't taking their lives in their hands or being a menace to themselves and the other people on the road. But boy are we ever not there right now and where I live at least, it doesn't feel like anyone's even trying.
posted by potrzebie at 1:48 AM
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There's been a dearth of recent incidents here in Australia
I think you mean the opposite of a dearth.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:31 AM
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To the "cars are the real enemy" commenters: things can be less bad and still be pretty bad.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:25 AM
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"Public streets have always been contested, as drivers and cyclists and pedestrians jockey for their allotment of our crowded, finite road space. But until e-machines arrived, we could usually take a few basics for granted. Speed limits were non-negotiable. Sidewalks were for people, bike lanes for bikes and roads for motor vehicles. Everything had its place."
LMAO. The cars in my city have definitely not gotten the memo that speed limits are non-negotiable.
Also, sweet summer child, bike lanes US-style have never been for bikes. They've been for getting doored. As in you're biking along in the door zone, some driver opens their door, and then you go to the emergency room or worse.
To me, the issue is culture and also the non-drivers fighting over scraps.
Culture: Culture determines how we ride, not the bike itself. I find aggressive speed cyclists to be just as fast, rude, and stressful/dangerous to interact with as the more negligent e-bikers. I have a converted touring bike with electric assist that allows me to comfortably navigate hills in my very steep city. I'm also disabled but listen ya'll, you shouldn't have to be disabled to benefit from an e-bike, okay? I've also noticed that with my e-bike, I actually slow down MORE. I go down hills much slower because I want to be cautious and I don't need to use the momentum for getting up the next one. I stop easily for other vehicles and pedestrians because there's less of a muscle tax for getting rolling again. Etc. The e-bike is a tool that helps me have good bike manners / bike culture, but I also had those manners and culture when I was riding my non-electric for years prior.
Fighting over scraps: It's like the billionaires pitting the poors against each other. Keep the peds and transit users and cyclists and micromobility folks fighting and maybe they'll be too busy to notice the cars (and their insistence on street parking) are taking 99% of the pie / causing 99% of the hazards. Why do we have so little space in our cities for HUMANS, anyway?
posted by cnidaria at 11:18 AM
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As another Amsterdam resident who dislikes fatbikes for their speed, their poorly aimed motorcycle headlamps, the noise their stupid knobby tires make on the bricks, and the sheer amount of space that they take in the bike rack, I still have to always remind myself that it is still better for the jongens than if they were all in SUVs. They are going to be banned in Vondelpark and Enschede has already banned them from the city center, although most of the laws go after specific aesthetic features rather than deeper issues. For instance I've started seeing "almost fat bikes" with 71mm tires (since the bans specify 72mm as the limit), but that still have the stupid motorcycle styling and useless pedals.
SaltySalticid -- here in the Netherlands the national bike share, OV-Fiets, is run by the train company and they have locations at most of the large (and some tiny) train stations. It's around four euros per day to rent a bike, compared to eight euros for a train ticket for your own bike, so the motivation is to take the train somewhere and pick up a rental from the station instead of clogging the limited number of bike place on each carriage. They are not good bikes (they are heavy single speed omafiets with uncomfortable seats) but they are cheap and you're typically not riding them very far or fast.
posted by autopilot at 12:31 PM
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To the "cars are the real enemy" commenters: things can be less bad and still be pretty bad.
Maybe I'm unreasonably optimistic but not only do I see these riders as one less car, but I also see them as one more vehicle that needs infrastructure that isn't a sidewalk or road. If there are enough delivery drivers, commuters, or kids going to school on these things then hey, that's a larger group of people making a case for building more bike lanes (or whatever they'll be called because it'll be more than bikes using them) and actually maintaining them.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:05 PM
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E-bike rider sentenced for killing grandfather, 91 (BBC)
Manslaughter. 15 moths suspended.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:42 PM
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As another Amsterdam resident who dislikes fatbikes for their speed
Not all fatbikes are e-bikes. Some are traditional human powered bicycles, and they are used for riding on sand and snow and the like. I had a friend who had one, and he was the kind of guy who usually had the cool thing just before they blew up into a trend. At the time I figured he was wrong about this one. The weight! The rolling resistance! There was no way they would become the cool new thing.
Then I started to see fatbikes everywhere! It took me years to realize I was actually seeing e-bikes.
posted by surlyben at 6:08 PM
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"E-bikes are a thorny issue for trails and parks," Matthew Haughey, A Whole Lotta Nothing, 16 April 2026
posted by ob1quixote at 8:24 AM
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As a purely mechanical cyclist I find e-bikes to be a mixed bag. More bikes on the street can't help but be a good thing, but I get frustrated with how many of the folks out there cycling kind of suck at it.
Here in DC the bad behavior isn't so much from commuters with their kid-carrier cargo bikes, although I'm always surprised by how many of them run stop signs or take calls while cycling. As a group they seem fine and I think these are trips that would otherwise be car trips, so it's probably an environmental win.
Mostly I see the risky / dangerous stuff coming from the bikeshare bikes and delivery bikes. The former is usually teenagers, usually doing dumb teenager shit at speed, or tourists who don't seem to realize that American health care sucks and DMV drivers are all out to kill you. The delivery drivers are marginalized people scrambling to make a buck who are generally just pretty cavalier about things like safety and traffic laws.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:26 AM
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I think you mean the opposite of a dearth
Yeah, you should just call a spate a spate.
That said, the regularity with which English words and idioms literally flip their meanings by 360° cannot be understated, so I could care less.
posted by flabdablet at 12:27 PM
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One thing that really muddies the waters here is that many acoustic bike riders really dislike e-bikes based on some kind of general principle. Like it's "cheating" on a bike or something. Likewise, sometimes folks in cars have a weird distain for bike riders (because they have to yield for them sometimes I guess?) that goes double for e-bikes. Sometimes this extends to messing with the bike rider, swerving to pass by real close at high speed as they pass and other dangerous bullshit.
Where I ride out in the 'burbs, it's not really a problem. There are lots of nice wide multi-use trails with lots of space for people to pass each other and people are generally nice. I get a lot more smiles and curiosity than frowns from other cyclists. The only place it's an issue is on the single-track mountain bike trails where jerks are riding those "dirt bikes with pedals so it's technically a bicycle" type e-bikes/e-motos and all that speed and power can really tear up the trails. I've seen folks from the organization that organizes and maintains the trails (MORC) rolling their class 2 e-bikes on the trails so I have faith that rules about e-bikes will remain sensible.
That said, an e-moto on trails actually designed for them seems like it would a stupidly good time.
posted by VTX at 6:42 AM
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autopilot, are the clunky bikes kept in good reliable repair? It's the combination of heavy and jammed that really breaks a heart.
(Well, or headwinds...)
posted by clew at 10:07 AM
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Yesterday I walked about about 7 miles along a lovely and very smooth paved pedestrian/bike pathway in north Seattle, and in light of this thread I decided to try to gauge how many fast ebike riders there were out there.
Out of 30+ ebike riders who passed me, I'd say there were 5 who were going over 40 mph, and only one of those was wearing a helmet. I haven't ridden my bike for years because of vision issues, but after decades of riding everywhere in Seattle, my cruising speed on the flat was ~35 mph (according to several drivers who rolled down their windows to inform the person in street clothes on a very disreputable looking bike of this fact) and these ebike riders were going significantly faster than I ever did except down hills.
posted by jamjam at 1:26 PM
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Out of 30+ ebike riders who passed me, I'd say there were 5 who were going over 40 mph, and only one of those was wearing a helmet.
You seem to be in the US. Here, ebikes are supposed to top out at 28mph, for a Class 3 bike. If they're going faster than that, they're already breaking the law.
posted by JHarris at 10:13 PM
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(I guess if you can pedal faster than that you might go higher, but the fastest I ever went on mine is 30.)
posted by JHarris at 10:14 PM
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my cruising speed on the flat was ~35 mph
Do you mean kph? Even that would be extremely fast, but in mph terms that's better than Tour de France riders, who average in the mid-to-high 20s on flat terrain.
posted by mark k at 8:31 AM
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They said mph. I thought that was very unlikely at the time, but it was very flattering so I wasn't as skeptical as I ought to have been, apparently.
posted by jamjam at 10:00 AM
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