Let it be known that I do not want to attack you personally. But the notion of electric bikes being death traps is something I can’t take seriously. I could go outside right now and film the street for an hour and watch 50% of bikes going by being electric, not to mention that you’d be hard pressed to find anyone wearing a helmet or protective gear.
Electric bikes here are generally limited to 25kmh (15mph) and the electric motor will stop the moment you go over that speed. Besides, most people generally don’t reach that speed because the largest users of electric bikes here are the over 50.
In my personal experience the problem isn’t so much the vehicle as the infrastructure being made for it. For context I live in the Netherlands in a smaller city (far from Amsterdam).
That’s great. You can also go back in time 30 or 40 years and see almost nobody wearing seat belts in cars. And if everyone is stupid, that means it is safe!
25 MPH without any form of cabin/canopy is REALLY fast (especially for a stop-go environment like a city which is all that anyone actually cares about in these discussions). Quick google puts random cycling oriented websites saying road bikes average out 13-17 mph. So we are looking at almost double the speed of where people already SHOULD be wearing helmets because one good fall means they need a hose to wipe your brains off the pavement. It doesn’t happen super often, but that is more because… cars do a good job of taking out cyclists anyway.
And whether you and your 50 year old buddies personally care: This impacts adoption. Because renting out electric scooters is already a giant mess and if people hadn’t universally decided they hate those, there would be a lot more dead tech bros on the streets (… which, for legal reasons, would be bad). Which is the issue. Because people who live in an area already have cars or know how to use public transportation or are hardcore cyclists with heads made out of reinforced titanium. People on a holiday or work trip either don’t even consider it to be an option or… question the stupidity of the people flying past at 25 MPH without helmets.
If there were an actual culture of safety and a way to get a helmet that wasn’t already cracked and dented: We would see a lot more electric bicycle rentals and people probably would care about those. As it stands, they are a niche item that is often associated with “he was taken from us so early…”
![[meme] Why do people only seem to mean cars when they talk about electric and/or autonomous vehicles?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8b4f07d2-ffe9-468c-a7da-0e970998b67f.png){kind=link}
Let it be known that I do not want to attack you personally. But the notion of electric bikes being death traps is something I can’t take seriously. I could go outside right now and film the street for an hour and watch 50% of bikes going by being electric, not to mention that you’d be hard pressed to find anyone wearing a helmet or protective gear.
Electric bikes here are generally limited to 25kmh (15mph) and the electric motor will stop the moment you go over that speed. Besides, most people generally don’t reach that speed because the largest users of electric bikes here are the over 50.
In my personal experience the problem isn’t so much the vehicle as the infrastructure being made for it. For context I live in the Netherlands in a smaller city (far from Amsterdam).
That’s great. You can also go back in time 30 or 40 years and see almost nobody wearing seat belts in cars. And if everyone is stupid, that means it is safe!
25 MPH without any form of cabin/canopy is REALLY fast (especially for a stop-go environment like a city which is all that anyone actually cares about in these discussions). Quick google puts random cycling oriented websites saying road bikes average out 13-17 mph. So we are looking at almost double the speed of where people already SHOULD be wearing helmets because one good fall means they need a hose to wipe your brains off the pavement. It doesn’t happen super often, but that is more because… cars do a good job of taking out cyclists anyway.
And whether you and your 50 year old buddies personally care: This impacts adoption. Because renting out electric scooters is already a giant mess and if people hadn’t universally decided they hate those, there would be a lot more dead tech bros on the streets (… which, for legal reasons, would be bad). Which is the issue. Because people who live in an area already have cars or know how to use public transportation or are hardcore cyclists with heads made out of reinforced titanium. People on a holiday or work trip either don’t even consider it to be an option or… question the stupidity of the people flying past at 25 MPH without helmets.
If there were an actual culture of safety and a way to get a helmet that wasn’t already cracked and dented: We would see a lot more electric bicycle rentals and people probably would care about those. As it stands, they are a niche item that is often associated with “he was taken from us so early…”
25mph != 25kmh