Had a car killed my wife or unborn child, there would have been a legal trail and insurance.
Had the e-bike killed my wife or unborn child, there was neither. I doubt I could ever find the killer of the unborn child if the baby died later due to injuries-- there's neither license nor registration on an e-bike.
Pushing powered transportation into the unregulated, uninsured space is madness.
Having been a juror on a civil trial against the MTA, I assure you that the New York public is perfectly willing to hold people accountable for injury.
Drunk driving was reduced over my lifetime [1] by calling attention to it (e.g. MADD), shaming the practice, lowering BAC thresholds, and increasing enforcement.
Similar approaches could be done for pedestrian injury by vehicles. Sure, it takes more time (and does not scam $9 from my pocket in the meantime) but public behavior can be changed.
[1] https://www.responsibility.org/alcohol-statistics/drunk-driv...
The punishment: His driving license was revoked: https://www.berlin.de/generalstaatsanwaltschaft/presse/press...
Germany has a reputation as strict and bureaucratic, and yet, it's apparently still legal to murder people with your car.
You'd have to be an utter asshole (like a kid totaling three cars in a year, all going 70-100+ mph on urban streets), or the world's dumbest criminal (motorcyclist out on parole running a red, killing a pedestrian, fleeing the scene, and ditching the motorcycle in a field) for killing someone with a car to be more than a 'whoopsie daisies, at least nobody important got hurt'.
In my town, just last year, a cop running down a young woman when she had right of way in a crosswalk, while doing 74 mph in a 25 mph zone at night, with no sirens, got a $5,000 fine for it.
That's how much the life of a grad student is worth.
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Look, I'm all for traffic enforcement, but anyone who thinks that bikes are the big problem on the road is nuts.
Reckless behaviour in traffic should be prevented, and
The same reckless behaviour is more dangerous when performed in a car. (People rarely actually get killed by an e-bike. It happens all the time with cars.)
That’s ridiculous. How many e-bikes do you think caused fatal accidents last year in the US?? Are you legitimately scared of this happening?