e-Bikes – Let’s talk

[Judd]

@Harry Meatmotor 166116 wrote:

Well, I can only speak as someone who used to weigh 250lbs, then after almost 10 years of riding bikes regularly, am down to 155.

Daaaaaaaaamn! 10 more years and you can get down to 55 pounds. Way to go on the weight loss.

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 166105 wrote:

I’m concerned that so many here are willing to draw such a small circle that they are the inside, but so many are left outside. In this area in particular, the difference between inside your circle and outside your circle boils down to fitness: an 110 lb out of shape woman on an ebike weighs less and goes no faster than a 200 lb fit dude on a carbon bike, the only difference is how they got to the speed (as an example). When we’re talking about transportation, fitness just absolutely shouldn’t matter.

In other words, I don’t think having a trail that serves transportation needs limited to only human power is reasonable (I also don’t think it’s legal, as it would violate the ADA).

That is what seems to be behind the “ban them” argument.

Just to clarify, I meant the weight of the bike.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@Judd 166119 wrote:

Daaaaaaaaamn! 10 more years and you can get down to 55 pounds. Way to go on the weight loss.

my W/kg would be off the charts. in actuality, i’d be ded.

also, at what point does “one less car” jump the shark?

[Dewey]

@lordofthemark 166086 wrote:

Has anyone actually tried studying the impact of speed on bike vs ped collision, the way they have on car vs ped collisions? I guess the limited numbers of bike vs ped collisions and the generally poor data on them (for example estimates of speed) would make such studies difficult.

A Swedish academic compared speed & collision/injury/fatality data in Sweden for the period 1997-1999 from pedestrians, bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, cars, and trucks, and with some sophisticated math came up with a model illustrating the effect of % mean speed change on the rate of fatal accidents, see chart on page 76 of Nilsson, G. (2004). Studies of ebike usage in the Netherlands (Schepers, 2014) and Germany (Maier, 2015) recorded a mean average speed differential of 2 kmh between European pedelecs roughly equivalent to US Class 1 ebikes and pedal bicycles, which using Nilsson’s model might translate to a 30% theoretical increase in the very low number of fatal bicycle-pedestrian collisions. A recent German study (Schleinitz, 2017) captured real-time riding data over 17,000km using telemetry sensors and cameras on pedelecs and speed pedelecs on road and bicycle infrastructure confirmed a mean average speed differential of 2 kmh between pedelecs and cyclists but 9 kmh between speed pedelecs and cyclists. Another German study (Petzoldt, 2017) using similar data capture technology identified no difference in motor vehicle-bicycle conflict on roads between bicycle types and there is no data to suggest ebikes are more likely to be involved in pedestrian collisions on MUP’s. Maier’s (2015) study suggests only 5% of self-reported bicycle & ebike accidents are with pedestrians, by far the largest proportion 65% are falls that involve no other individual caused by poor road surface conditions and subsequent wheel lock up, loss of balance, nose over, or collision with an obstacle, I think Maier’s study influenced Bosch to introduce ABS to their speed pedelecs this year. Clearly there needs to be more research but I think these studies do support a California style ebike classification and a more nuanced application of the law taking into account the different balance of risks between different ebike classes.

Sources

Maier, O., Pfeiffer, M., Wehner, C., & Wrede, J. (2015). Empirical Survey on Bicycle Accidents to estimate the Potential Benefits of Braking Dynamics Assistance Systems. International Cycling Safety Conference 2015, 15-16 September 2015, Hannover, Germany

Nilsson, G. (2004) Traffic Safety Dimensions and the Power Model to Describe the Effect of Speed on Safety. Bulletin 221, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund, Sweden.

Petzoldt, T., Schleinitz, K., Heilmann, S., Gehlertb, T. (2017). Traffic conflicts and their contextual factors when riding conventional vs. electric bicycles. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 46(Part : 477-490. doi: 10.1016/j.trf.2016.06.010

Schepers, J., Fishman, E., den Hertog, P., Wolt, K. K., & Schwab, A. (2014). The safety of electrically assisted bicycles compared to classic bicycles. Accident Analysis And Prevention, 73: 174-180. doi:10.1016/j.aap.2014.09.010

Schleinitz, K., Petzoldt, T., Franke-Bartholdt, L., Krems, J., & Gehlert, T. (2017). The German Naturalistic Cycling Study – Comparing cycling speed of riders of different e-bikes and conventional bicycles. Safety Science, 92: 290-297. doi: 10.1016/j.ssci.2015.07.027

[dasgeh]

@dasgeh 166106 wrote:

The status quo is that if a woman biking on her kids on her e-cargo-bike on the MBT gets hit by a dude on a carbon bike coming the other way who pulled into her lane around a blind curve to pass a jogger, and her bike is totaled and her kids end up in the hospital, she’ll probably be on the hook for the entire bill. Are you ok with that status quo?

@lordofthemark 166108 wrote:

1. Personally I would like to see Virginia change to a comparative negligence standard from contributory negligence. That would not only largely resolve the issue above, but would address a wider range of injustices that won’t be solved by changing the NPS rule on the MVT (what happens on the MBT is up to DC and I have no position on it)

Note that my example was in DC. Because a woman on an ebike where ebikes are banned would be breaking the law, she would be liable under comparative negligence. So while I agree Virginia should change the contributory negligence, it would not at all resolve the issue.

@mstone 166111 wrote:

Exactly that. I don’t think “severity of injury in collision with bike at 30MPH vs severity of injury in collision with bike at walking speed” is something that even needs serious study. The basic physics involved are so straightforward that to question the relationship between speed and outcomes is ridiculous. (Even calling for a study of something that fundamental smacks of classic NIMBY delaying tactics more than serious inquiry.) Now, there aren’t enough instances to make any kind of valid local study of comparative outcomes, and that will remain true as long as the number of fast bikes on the trails continues to be limited. When that will change is after the trails have reached/passed their capacity, at which time it will be difficult or impossible to put the genie back in the bottle and ban large numbers of people already on the trails. We’re pretty close to capacity on the more popular trails during peak hours now, and unless bags of money fall from somewhere I don’t see how we get useful mode separation on the current infrastructure. We already know that best practices (from places that do trails well) indicate that the trails we have now are doing it wrong. We’ve gotten away with having cyclists and pedestrians and dogs and chickens and whatever all mixed up on the trails mainly because the utilization is so low–but we know that the current designs are suboptimal, and there is no way that adding large numbers of faster users can make the situation better. We don’t need to study our trails to death, because other places have already shown that outcomes are improved when you separate fast & slow trail users.

The question is whether ebikes will lead to much more serious injuries than regular bikes. That deserves study, in my opinion, as it’s a function of both how often collisions happen and the injury resulting from collisions. While it may be obvious that the latter would be worse, it’s reasonable to think that collisions will go down as more “normal people” ride bikes.

As far as being close to capacity on trails – which are you talking about? The only I can think of is the MVT, and honestly, that’s not close to capacity. People can easily avg the speed limit (15mph) over a trip even during rush hour.

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 166160 wrote:

Note that my example was in DC. Because a woman on an ebike where ebikes are banned would be breaking the law, she would be liable under comparative negligence. So while I agree Virginia should change the contributory negligence, it would not at all resolve the issue.

Maybe I don’t understand comparative negligence well enough (IANAL) but I thought that under it, the woman on the bike would be liable only to the extent her behavior contributed to the damage. So if it could be shown that her riding an ebike (instead of a regular bike) contributed 20% of the fault, while the Fred doing the bad pass contributed 80%, she could still collect 80%. If she were riding under 15MPH, I suspect it would be difficult to establish that she was mostly at fault.

[Judd]

@lordofthemark 166162 wrote:

Maybe I don’t understand comparative negligence well enough (IANAL) but I thought that under it, the woman on the bike would be liable only to the extent her behavior contributed to the damage. So if it could be shown that her riding an ebike (instead of a regular bike) contributed 20% of the fault, while the Fred doing the bad pass contributed 80%, she could still collect 80%. If she were riding under 15MPH, I suspect it would be difficult to establish that she was mostly at fault.

This is my understanding as well, but it appears to vary by jurisdiction. In Illinois a jury is not allowed to award damages unless it determines that one party is at least 51% at fault.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@dasgeh 166160 wrote:

it’s reasonable to think that collisions will go down as more “normal people” ride bikes.

You keep saying these things along the lines of “more people on trails = safer,” when you really mean “more people riding bikes = easier to point at larger or smaller numbers in non-representative European data about a foreign population with different norms, rules, and laws, to suit a specific local advocacy issue”. You should be more honest about the statistics.

We get that you’re a vocal cycling-as-transportation advocate. And you need numbers to throw at Arlington to “prove” a position during BAC meetings. But reading/regurgitating a handful of surveys about why people don’t like riding bikes up steep hills doesn’t change the physics of collisions or accidental crashes.

And who are “normal people” riding bikes? What’s the demographic composition of the class/strata of “normal people” riding bikes? Or are normal people simply “not Freds that ride carbon bikes”? Is it simply “skinny people” that ride bikes that you don’t like? Or is it just men that ride too fast?

[Brendan von Buckingham]

Man, things got intensely theoretical since I’ve been away from this thread.

I just came back to say I saw my first e-bike in a couple of weeks yesterday. Woman was walking it up Carillon Hill by Iwo and I asked how she was doing. (I know, chauvinist monster). She grumbled back that her battery was dead and she couldn’t get up the hill. Hunh.

[huskerdont]

@Harry Meatmotor 166177 wrote:

You keep saying these things along the lines of “more people on trails = safer,” .

..
And who are “normal people” riding bikes? What’s the demographic composition of the class/strata of “normal people” riding bikes? Or are normal people simply “not Freds that ride carbon bikes”? Is it simply “skinny people” that ride bikes that you don’t like? Or is it just men that ride too fast?

I think there are two sides to the safely issue when more “normal people” ride bikes. Sure, more cyclists means drivers are used to seeing them on the road and look out for them more, but more cyclists also makes the trails more crowded and therefore less safe. Another factor is that new riders seem to ride less safely than experienced riders. Just like you need to learn how to ride a bike, you need experience in order to judge when it’s safe to pass or how much room to give a pedestrian or other cyclist. When you have a motor assist helping you go faster than your experience warrants, it’s asking for trouble.

[dasgeh]

@huskerdont 166182 wrote:

I think there are two sides to the safely issue when more “normal people” ride bikes. Sure, more cyclists means drivers are used to seeing them on the road and look out for them more, but more cyclists also makes the trails more crowded and therefore less safe. Another factor is that new riders seem to ride less safely than experienced riders. Just like you need to learn how to ride a bike, you need experience in order to judge when it’s safe to pass or how much room to give a pedestrian or other cyclist. When you have a motor assist helping you go faster than your experience warrants, it’s asking for trouble.

I actually don’t think this is what will happen. It could turn out that more crowded trails means that overall people will ride slower and not make stupid passes, just expecting no one to be there. So more crowded may actually be safer.

Similarly, people who don’t ride bikes because they don’t think it’s safe are more cautious overall, and thus are more likely to ride cautiously. The “you need experience to know how much room you need to make a pass” works two ways — you may ride slower than you need to because you’re scared of falling, or you may ride faster than you should because you overjudge your ability. I think the majority of the “I don’t ride now because I don’t think it’s safe” crowd fall into the former category.

But I see that the world could follow your logic, too. And that is why we have to data and experience in the real world, rather than the conjectures of people — we just don’t know how real people will end up using things, and given that these aren’t the kinds of things that will kill lots of people if it ends up turning out more like what huskerdont expects than what I expect, I think we should try it.

[dasgeh]

@lordofthemark 166162 wrote:

Maybe I don’t understand comparative negligence well enough (IANAL) but I thought that under it, the woman on the bike would be liable only to the extent her behavior contributed to the damage. So if it could be shown that her riding an ebike (instead of a regular bike) contributed 20% of the fault, while the Fred doing the bad pass contributed 80%, she could still collect 80%. If she were riding under 15MPH, I suspect it would be difficult to establish that she was mostly at fault.

Because what she is doing is illegal, and what the other person is doing is not, she would be liable. That’s why getting police to write tickets in collisions is so important.

[dasgeh]

@Harry Meatmotor 166177 wrote:

You keep saying these things along the lines of “more people on trails = safer,” when you really mean “more people riding bikes = easier to point at larger or smaller numbers in non-representative European data about a foreign population with different norms, rules, and laws, to suit a specific local advocacy issue”. You should be more honest about the statistics.

We get that you’re a vocal cycling-as-transportation advocate. And you need numbers to throw at Arlington to “prove” a position during BAC meetings. But reading/regurgitating a handful of surveys about why people don’t like riding bikes up steep hills doesn’t change the physics of collisions or accidental crashes.

And who are “normal people” riding bikes? What’s the demographic composition of the class/strata of “normal people” riding bikes? Or are normal people simply “not Freds that ride carbon bikes”? Is it simply “skinny people” that ride bikes that you don’t like? Or is it just men that ride too fast?

We talk in a lot of short hand here, but I honestly have no idea what you mean in that first paragraph.

As to “normal people” — I think it’s reasonable to believe that the set of people who ride bikes now is less risk adverse than the set of people who do not, given that cycling is seen as “dangerous”. I was using “normal people” as a short hand for “people that are willing to ride bikes but don’t do it now because they see it as too dangerous”. Does that help?

ETA: Also, why would you say that I don’t like “skinny people that ride bikes”? That’s ridiculous. I like EVERYONE who rides a bike and want everyone to be able to enjoy it and get the benefits. Even the skinny fit people.

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 166204 wrote:

Because what she is doing is illegal, and what the other person is doing is not, she would be liable. That’s why getting police to write tickets in collisions is so important.

Failing to yield to oncoming traffic is not illegal? Would striping a no passing line where the pass is blind address that? Shouldn’t we have that anyway, if people are getting away without liability for blind passes (because even if a human powered biker or ped hit by someone doing a blind pass is doing nothing illegal, they still would need to show the passer is legally at fault to get anything right?) ?

[Dewey]

@lordofthemark 166206 wrote:

Failing to yield to oncoming traffic is not illegal?

I thought the argument was in a contributory negligence jurisdiction like DC the behavior of the other party might be ignored and the ebike rider automatically be considered at fault, isn’t that the reasoning why WABA lobbied to change the contributory negligence law in DC for bicycle-motor vehicle collisions? WABA could (should!?) argue for the relevant piece of DC code to be amended to add an exception for motorized bicycles so that pedal bicycles and ebike cyclists are treated equitably under the law when lawfully riding on DC streets.

[Author]

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