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Comment by rickydroll | Hacker News Reader

re: ebikes

https://grist.org/technology/as-e-bikes-grow-in-popularity-s...

FTA: It also estimated that there were nearly 25,000 emergency room visits for e-bike injuries more broadly in 2022. The two-wheelers also have been involved in a spate of high-profile fatalities in recent years, especially in the Big Apple.

-- in my opinion, ebike accidents are following the same pattern as motorcycle accidents pre-hurt report. make sense. From a road handling perspective, both vehicles are functionally identical. Singletrack, small contact patch, counter steering, navigation, situational awareness, and braking skills. It's long past time requiring a ebike driver's license showing that one has taken a skills focused training course like the MSF program.

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That report is impressively vague about the cause and characteristic of these non-fatal injuries. The CPSC is obviously looking at this from a product safety lens, but that isn't necessarily the true picture from a holistic perspective. At least they're quite clear when it comes to the fatalities:

>Collisions with motor vehicles were the leading cause of death associated with e-bikes

>Motor vehicle accidents were the leading cause of death associated with e-scooters

So is the potentially unsafe product we should be concerned about e-bikes and scooters? Or is it actually motor vehicles?

The product we should be concerned with is the ebike operator In the quote below, the issues of loss of control, single bicycle accidents etc. all parallel the data found in the Hurt report on motorcycle accidents. Motorcycle riders were able to drop their accident and injury rate by better training of the rider.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9100098/ >Current research mainly analyzes injury-monitoring data. Studies have shown that 27.6% of fatal bicycle accidents in the Netherlands involved EB in 2017 [10]; in Israel, a total of 3686 hospitalized cases were related to EB during 2014–2019 and 84.92% oral and maxillofacial injuries were attributed to EB [11]; and in the United States, there were 130,000 ERTI cases from 2000 to 2017, accounting for 5.3% of the total number of injuries in the emergency department. Among them, 17% of EB caused serious injuries such as traumatic brain injury and internal hemorrhage [12]; in Switzerland, the incidence of ERTI is 17%, and the main causes of injuries are road skidding, riding too fast, and being unable to maintain balance [13]. Langford used GPS technology to analyze the safety behaviors of EB cyclists in a complex traffic environment. The results showed that violations of traffic lights and driving on motorways are high-frequency dangerous riding behaviors [14]. Haustein et al. conducted a questionnaire survey on EB users in Denmark, and the results showed that the riding attitude of cyclists has a significant impact on heavy ERTIs [15]. After analyzing the accident data recorded by the Swiss police in 2011 and 2012, Weber et al. found that ERTI was dominated by Single-Bicycle Crashes (SBCs) [16].

The fastest certified off-the-shelf e-bike goes to 28 mph and usually max out at 20mph, which is far below the usual speed of motorcycles. Of those 25,000 ER visits, very few are fatal, and of 1,260 bicyclist deaths in 2020, 806 were from collisions with vehicles. It seems cars are the problem, and this can easily be addressed by adding protected bike lanes and dedicated bike paths. By providing safe cycling routes, other countries such as the Netherlands have been able to see a large-scale transition from auto transportation to cycling with very few accidents, ebike or not.

Compare these numbers with motor vehicles (especially how pedestrian deaths by motor vehicle are skyrocketing), and it's clear that our priorities should be placed on safe pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, not by regulating ebike usage.

https://apnews.com/article/traffic-deaths-distracted-driving...

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

To point, it doesn't matter how fast you going. If you follow the bike, you have a higher G Force just from the vertical drop. Your head and body don't decelerate that fast sliding forward. You will get the same amount of road rash if you fall off and e-bike or a motorcycle one at the same speed.

Some hard data on the bike accidents and the kind of injuries that occur. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9100098/ then read the Hurt report

The number 1 best way to reduce accidents between different kinds of vehicles is training people to drive consistently and predictably. Personally I think someone should not get a license to drive until they've shown have mastered driving three types of vehicles (singletrack, dual track light weight, dual track-heavyweight).

What are you talking about? Your response ignores the most basic facts about physics (kinetic energy = (1/2)mv^2) and vehicular safety (speeding kills). And what do you mean by 3 types of vehicles? Did you have ChatGPT generate your response or something?

https://nacto.org/publication/city-limits/the-need/speed-kil...

From a naïve perspective, you are right. However, the physics of falling off a moving vehicle is more complicated. You have the downward G forces under gravity which do not change with forward motion. The deceleration going forward is a function of how how much your skin/clothing adds friction. The curbstone/light posts scenarios do happen but ERs are not filled with those cases. It's the road rash cases.

Three types of vehicles are singletrack like motorcycle, bicycle. Two wheels oriented on on the same line in the direction of travel. uses countersteering., Dual track, four wheels relatively light mass such as cars or small pickup trucks. Dual track heavyweight which may not be something are familiar with if you didn't grow up with trucks. It's a truck with two wheels in the front and four or eight wheels in the back. Usually require CDL to drive. All of these vehicles handled differently under the same road and weather conditions.

If you train and build skills outside of your normal day-to-day usage, you'll build a cope with the unusual more easily and in this case, be a better driver.

As for your speed kills simplification, it's momentum that kills. How fast you decelerate. Speed kills is for people who aren't knowledgeable of physics and how it applies to their day-to-day life.

You're never going to believe how many emergency room visits are caused by cars (including virtually all of the "e-bike injuries").

research backed data says otherwise. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9100098/

Considering that the linked study doesn't even bother defining e-bike, and the study setting is China, I am unwilling to imbue the report with the meaning that you intend.

Increased injury severity and hospitalization rates following crashes with e-bikes versus conventional bicycles: an observational cohort study from a regional level II trauma center in Switzerland

https://pssjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13037...

Electric bicycles (e-bikes) are an increasingly common pediatric public health problem

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10372360/

Must-Know E Bike Accident Statistics [Latest Report]

https://blog.gitnux.com/e-bike-accident-statistics/

look at solo bike accident rates. you will see this kinds of accident reports increase until we change how we train how people ride.

for a bit of history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_findings_in_the_Hurt_R...

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