Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Electric bikes may end up setting back progress in getting people to switch to cycling as a main form of transportation.

One of the most significant deterrents to cycling has been the danger involved with being mixed in with automobiles that are easily able to injure and kill a cyclist. The biggest gains in increasing bicycle use has been by creating bike lanes for all ages and abilities that are completely separated from traffic with physical barriers. These are safe spaces for bicycle users and all people can feel comfortable riding on them, whether they're young and fit, elderly or if they're riding with their young child that is just learning.

With the advent of fast moving electric bicycles, suddenly these all ages and abilities bike lanes may not be such safe spaces any more and this could discourage people from cycling. People may not want to take their young child out cycling if there are food couriers zooming by at speeds that a normal bicycle wouldn't be capable of.

It is actually quite the contrary. Electric bikes should bring bikes back as full members of the public traffic. Yes, some people are terrified to drive amongst cars. But the so called bike paths are the actual death traps, as most of them have dangerous encounters with the car traffic where it is the most difficult to spot bicyclists, that is at crossings. A large amount of the bicycle deaths are caused by trucks turning right across the bike path, killing a bicyclist. Furthermore, at least in Germany, they are not in a shape for comfortable riding. The only ones enjoying bike paths are unexperienced and untrained bicyclists, who ride a long at little more than walking speed.

Any reasonably seasoned bicyclists easily bikes at 20-30 kph in the flats, so by far exceed the safe bike path speeds. Electric bikes give this speed to anyone, who might be older, or is commuting and does not seek the sporty challenge. This requires proper bike traffic handling by the authorities.

This is a disingenuous argument - cars are "full members of the public traffic" and are regularly involved in minor and major collisions with each other. Drivers are rarely killed or seriously injured in these collisions, whereas it's almost impossible for a cyclist to escape these collisions without an injury. "Some people are terrified" because injury and death is a very real possibility in traffic.

The primary issue with road safety is not the speed of cycling but the presence of motor vehicles. The only adequate mitigation is to make them go very slowly to reduce the energy of collision (on side streets) or eliminate them (on well-designed, segregated bike paths). The fact that Germany is not very good at segregation does not invalidate the concept - just look at the Netherlands for an example of what can be achieved.

The point is, if you drive in the normal car lane, it is pretty impossible for a driver, who is not asleep, to miss you and hit you. So while it looks scary, it is very safe, as I assume that every driver tries not to hit a bicyclist. But I have not seen a bike infrastructure inside towns which don't involve crossings. At those crossings it is very easy to hit a bicycle, even if you pay a lot of attention as a driver. So, unless it does not cross car traffic, bike paths are more dangerous than being in lane with cars.

It is unfortunately very possible for a driver to be asleep, texting or just to make a massive misjudgement. As you say, crossing situations are some of the most dangerous on a bike, but there's no reason why a properly designed bike lane junction need be more dangerous than a normal road junction. In fact, intuitively, general road junctions are more dangerous as drivers are looking for other road vehicles, rather than bikes, and can very easily miss them. If you're going to continue making this argument, I'd root it in stats - show me a place which has no cycling infrastructure yet which is safer than Copenhagen or Utrecht.

> Any reasonably seasoned bicyclists easily bikes at 20-30 kph in the flats, so by far exceed the safe bike path speeds.

This is my point though that building cycling infrastructure for "all ages and abilities" means including people (eg. children) that aren't comfortable going these at the speeds that weekend warriors on road bikes are comfortable with.

I like the idea of pedal assist in helping people tackle potentially more strenuous parts of a commute, but bike lanes need to be kept as low speed, bicycle speed, zones somehow.

There is no reason not to have a bicycle path and have cyclists using the road too - unless like in Germany, where an official bicycle path means you are not allowed to bike on a road. And even without electrical assist, a capable biker way exceeds the speeds safely possible on the bike paths. As it turns out, most cyclists prefer those speeds, when they can reach them with the electrical assist. So we need a solution which caters all desired speeds. Electrical assist (which is limited to 25 kph in Germany) just means, that more cyclists can reach the speed a normal healthy biker always had been able to reach.

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