A proactive approach to e-scooter safety
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
Over the years I've been amazed by the arguments other cyclists have used to justify running red lights. The "physics" argument mentioned in the article isn't convincing to me, because a cyclist's kinetic energy is lost relatively quickly to drag and friction anyway. Stop pedaling. How long will you coast? Probably not very long (i.e., over 100 meters) unless you're going downhill. Seems to me that cycling requires constant energy input and stop lights and signs aren't likely to contribute much to energy expenditures. (Maybe I should do the math...) Edit: I did the math here and the energy from stopping was higher than I expected: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22257938
I think the time saved from running reds is much lower than most red light running cyclists believe, because anecdotally I observed that red light running cyclists tend to go fairly slow. I can recall keeping up with or catching cyclists who run red lights despite never running them myself.
I think cyclists as a whole need to stop running red lights. Yes, there's a double standard here, as most drivers seem okay with speeding if they're doing it, but can't tolerate rule-breaking from cyclists. But we shouldn't give drivers excuses.
Edit: I will admit that I rarely come to a complete stop at a stop sign. It definitely is a considerable inconvenience to get back up to speed, but a lot of safety precautions are inconvenient.
I'm using the value of Cd * A from here (0.6 m^3): https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/aero/formulas.html
That page also indicates that the vast majority of the energy expenditures on a bike are due to drag.
The fraction of energy needed to get up to speed divided by the energy expended due to drag works out to: (mbike + mhuman) / (Lblock * rho * Cd * A) where mbike is the mass of the bike, mhuman is the mass of the human, Lblock is the length between stops, rho is the mass density of the air, Cd is the drag coefficient, and A is the projected area. I can post the derivation if anyone is interested.
Assuming an 8 kg bike, 90 kg human, 200 m between stops, and an air density of 1.2 kg/m^3, stopping adds 68% more energy.
This is dependent on the weight. If I crunch the numbers for my own weight, stopping adds about 56% more energy.
So, this is higher than I expected, but I don't think it's so much higher that it justifies running red lights.
I think this calculation is basically right, but might be a bit worse for the average commuting cyclist. Many commuting bikes are heavy and badly maintained, so rolling resistance is likely to be a larger factor. Also at the low (max ~25km/h) speed of many commuting cyclist rolling resistance is almost as significant as air resistance. [1] indicates that up to around 17km/h it is as big a factor as drag, but that is on a well maintained bike.
Anyway, 400W to avoid getting creamed by a car seems cheap to me.
Eat a Clif bar; stop at red lights.
Goddamnit.
An engineering student designed something like that, using a flywheel: https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/engineering-student-builds-...
But if you want something commercially available, you have to get an e-bike with that feature, and those models seem quite pricey.
The flywheel thing is exactly it, except I think it would be safer and lighter to use compressed air, also stores longer than a flywheel.
With something like that you'd eliminate most of the work penalty for brief stops.
That's back of the napkin. Bone apple tea!
That said, I don't run lights, and am just as baffled how some cyclists will barrel through a red light at intersections without even slowing down...
I'm cycling for a bit of outside time and exercise in my day. If I have to stop at a light, then fine, it's a bit of extra exercise and outside time.
I'm not there for the excitement of some kind of death race with stressed out drivers.
Bonus points, use a bike with internal geared hub and shift down after you stop.
I sat in a corner desk right on top of a major central business district intersection. Cars never ran the light, it's too busy and complex. Cyclists did reckless, stupid shit all of the time, running lights, cutting across the diagonal on the wrong side of the road, etc.
From my POV, drivers are more predictably dumb, and dangerous when they perceive low risk, for example, they run red lights in a low traffic neighborhood and are awful about a number of things. Cyclists are less consistent and perceive risk differently. Younger people who perceive themselves as invincible in particular.
End of the day, we should have better dedicated infrastructure for bicycles and other things.
I have never seen a cyclist in the UK run a red light at a complex intersection (often only running the 'quiet' side of a T-junction, or an empty junction with a 20MPH speed limit and no cars in sight). Also worth noting is that the roads in UK cities are much narrower, I would guess 40-60, and often have less lanes and often have a bike lane of some sort.
In the US (California) I have seen all the crazy stuff. People running red through traffic, people doing a U-Turn, people going the wrong way, people crossing to go the wrong way, people blowing through a red light whilst on their phone.
However for cars, the UK has more stop lights that are for cars giving way to pedestrians, i.e. there is no junction. I have sometimes seen cars run a red on these when they don't notice/care. However in the US the red lights are at junctions, and are therefore more dangerous for cars (getting T-boned) I have however seen more people run these still.
In my experience, the vast majority of the time cyclists run red lights, they check both directions before going and there are not conflicts. The examples shown in the article are fairly rare.
Plus, the danger from a cyclist running a red light is mostly to the cyclist, while the danger to a driver speeding is to everyone nearby on the road.
Add on top of that the fact that there are many more drivers on the road than cyclists. The net effect is that speeding is a much bigger safety problem in total than cyclists running red lights.
(Note that I'm not endorsing running red lights.)
It's also dangerous to pedestrians. I see cyclists run red lights with pedestrians in the crosswalk almost every day, and many of them seem to assume that people will stop walking and yield to them. If somebody doesn't notice the cyclist then this can easily lead to a collision.
I've never seen an accident arise from running a red light.
Which isn't to say that I think running a red light is "safe" but I think the context in which one runs a red light is probably a bigger factor than blanket denunciations imply.
In America, running a red light usually means something like "while driving a 4,000 pound car at 40 miles per hour [6.4 million mv^2], the driver blows through the red light due to complete unawareness of the signal."
Whereas where I live it is more like "a guy on a scooter (360 pounds net), slows down (somewhat), sees a gap in the traffic and zips through at 15-18mph." [116,000 mv^2; the car is 55x worse]
If you don't think it was that close, consider that the wide angle lens on my helmet camera makes the incident appear farther away than it actually was. Out of all the incidents I've had in the past year, this was one of the worst in terms of potential for serious injury. If I was a foot or two closer, there would have been a collision.
The main thing I learned from this incident was to not focus too much on people turning from my right. That's where my attention was approaching the intersection. I need to also consider the possibility that someone will run the light.
I don't know how bad it would have been if he hit you. A broken bone and a lot of scraped off skin. For some people that's a risk worth taking. Does that mean falling behind in work, insane medical bills and stress on the family? I don't know if cycling is worth it for everybody. It's not my place to say any of those guesses about what it means to you in real life. I'm curious what the stressors are for cyclists. Being in a car crash at least gives you the peace of mind that in a reasonable accident the car will take all the damage and you can walk away and get a rental.
With that mentality, one can see why so many cyclists disregard safety around intersections and stop signs - mentally, the feeling of doing an unsafe thing doesn't suck as much as the feeling of "losing" (even if it's just an emotion not grounded in any logic or reason). Regardless of whether it's logical or not, there's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop
To solve this problem, just get off the seat when you stop.
Cyclists who speed towards or through an intersection when they can't see what might come into conflict with their path are as stupid as drivers who run reds.
My understanding is that taking the lane at an intersection is often recommended, and some cities create special "bike box" infrastructure to encourage cyclists to do that, though few do.
I wouldn't recommend blocking the crosswalk, but my experience getting in a long line of cars is good.
I can understand the spirit of the law but in practice cyclists interpret this as "it's ok to red lights if I don't see any oncoming traffic". This turns out to be extremely dangerous because a situation can change in seconds especially when high velocity metal objects are concerned. Blindspots are always a problem.
This issue has salience with me because a cyclist who ran a red light at the intersection near my house got hit by a car that was following the rules of the road. There was a dramatic video on Youtube of the cyclist getting hit and flying off his bike. I don't know if he survived.
As both a cyclist and a driver, I can't emphasize enough: cyclists need to follow the rules of the road. It is not ok to run red lights.
[1] https://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/publications/pdf_publicat...
There are quite a few places in my city, where I have no idea what the legal way to get from one side of a large road to the other. Sure you can always act like either a car or a pedestrian, but that is either dangerous or slow. For example, I find it quite unfair, that many left turns require me to either ride between cars or stop twice.
Some bike paths just look like the planners reserved space at the roadsides and simply skipped coming up with a solution at the intersection. And that is frankly disappointing.
I don't see a problem with bikes running red lights. It's not that much different from crossing any other intersection where cross traffic isn't stopping. Generally I avoid traffic signals on my commute, but there is one place on my commute where I almost always run the signal. In this particular intersection, it's less dangerous crossing by myself against the signal than crossing with the signal next to a bunch of cars trying to pass me.
The fundamental problem is in most places traffic controls are designed around the needs (and safety) of people in cars. Bikes and pedestrians are usually an afterthought.
All that being said: DO YOU GUYS ACTUALLY WANT TO DIE? I’ve never seen any group of people ignore traffic laws and common sense more than cyclists. They consistently ignore signals and four way stops and ride on two lane highways with high speed limits, no shoulders, and blind curves.
Yes the roads need to be shared (and personally I think cars should be banned before things like bicycles and scooters) but dang people need to behave.
Straight up running red lights or stop signs does seem like it is overrepresented by cyclists, but I really don't they they're overrepresented for generic 'breaking the law'.
Cyclists and to a lesser extent scooters throw a wrench into things because we as a society haven't yet had time to reach a consensus on what the norms for these classes of traffic are and how they should behave so people fall back to the law.
This is why people get all "but the law" when cyclists run reds but don't care when cars roll stops or speed (under appropriate circumstances). We've established that the latter is ok but haven't yet reached a consensus on if the former is to be expected as part of normal traffic flow.
many states have a "dead red"[1] law for when lights are not operational. which permits the cyclist to proceed with caution after stopping.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light#%22Dead_Red%22_l...
cyclists are more likely to run red lights than scooter riders
(edit: bad metric conversion)
The same can absolutely happen on a bike, but in my experience you need to be going much faster (or be much heavier) than on a scooter for the reason I mentioned above.
That said... the biggest danger is always collisions with cars, which is the same danger you face on a bike, and the danger the article concentrates on. I almost got hit on my bike by a car turning right across the bike lane just yesterday, and the outcome was a matter of luck, not a matter of what vehicle I was on. The article mentions the "Three E’s of Traffic Safety: engineering, enforcement, and education" and I think we need more of all three. The driver who almost hit me (I caught up to him and spoke to him) was an older man who looked to be from out of town and probably had no idea he needed to check his blind spot when turning right, because that simply wasn't a thing until the advent of bike lanes, not when he was learning to drive and maybe still not in the town or city where he lives.
EDIT: You're also right about braking. The wheels skid easier than bike wheels, and it's harder to keep your weight back and down so the braking force gets transferred to your body.
On any single-track vehicle (bicycle, motorcycle, scooter), if the front wheel quits spinning, the overwhelming odds are that the vehicle will be lying on its side very soon.
Very skilled and very experience riders can overcome this, but don't rely on it. I've seen professional racers lock a front wheel and keep going. I've done it once myself on a motorcycle (don't care to ever have to it again, because there was a lot of luck involved). Bicycle, different story for me. I've locked the front racing, and on slick pavement. Pretty sure I went down each time. I haven't lock the front on any of my scooters, and I'd rather keep it that way.
Which is why ABS is so great on motorcycles: squeeze that lever with all your might, and let the computer sort it out.
That experience (and I suppose being a lawyer who constantly thinks about liability) makes me hope all these companies fail. 1) I don't like the "littering" of scooters all over city sidewalks/bike paths (that is dangerous in and of itself and should be illegal); and 2) renting these things without helmets I think goes well beyond negligence.
These scooter companies, at least in my city, will collect and dump their scooters on the busiest sidewalks and bike paths (blocking the entire walkway and path) for the sole purpose of free advertising to large groups of runners/bikers.
Its not about "space being wasted" in fact it is the opposite, it is not just obnoxious and illegal in many cases, it is dangerous. I have seen multiple runners and bikers collide with these things. I can't just start dumping ATM machines, vending machines or billboards on public walkways/bike paths, why should these scooter companies get to do that?
They’re roughly twice the diameter of most scooters and feel more like a folding bike. At least as of December 2019, it’s only available through their rental service, not for purchase.
Just as with bikes the main problem is cars. Road networks designed as car sewers make life miserable for any non-car in close proximity. The single most important way to fix that is to lower the speed of the cars. Practically speaking you can only do that if you have a network of both streets (low speed shared use) and roads (high speed exclusive use), such that cars can get to a road and then go fast, rather than going slow everywhere.
But in North America what we have is worse, we’ve designed everything to be a “stroad,” where houses, shops, schools, everything, are directly attached to high speed car sewers and nothing else. That’s the most dangerous configuration you can make. The cars need and want to go fast, but they never know when someone is going to pop out of a driveway or into a crosswalk or there will be a bike in the road etc.
The number of scooters isn’t really creating anything new, it’s just highlighting the problems of Stroads by putting a lot more people into the life experience of a cyclist.
Ya think?
It's insane to mix car traffic and people.
It was deliberately normalized by a systematic campaign of propaganda. (This is true, it really happened: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM ) We went from "speed demons" to "jay walkers". Fast-forward several decades and more Americans have died from cars than from wars. (The rest of the world also has horrific death rates from cars but more time of war.)
> These clips make the civil engineer in me cringe.
As well they should. We're looking at a system that is, inadvertently but fundamentally, designed to kill people.
> One potential solution is to add a bike box to increase visibility of cyclists and scooterists.
And that's the Stockholm Syndrome, if you will, causing cognitive dissonance leading to blatantly illogical statements from otherwise sane and intelligent people.
Anthropologists point out that every society succeeds at getting it's children to act like it's adults. Part of this is the normalization of whatever weird stuff your society/culture has going on. I'm reminded of what the New Guinea man said the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made them out of meat."
Putting car and non-car traffic on the same road is our cannibalism. "Once you see it..."
It is not. Non-car traffic just needs to be prioritized properly, that is being more important than car traffic. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woonerf
There is definitely a different perception here regards to safety because of it I think.
However, people are absolutely awful at parking these things. They're almost more dangerous stationary; because people just leave them in the middle of the walkway or cycle path sometimes.
I swear you see people running into you even though the corner was 5m large.. they just mishandled the inertia and it wasn't an emergency turn. They had plenty of time they were just confused about the physics of it. Contrary to a bike, it's a tad harder to lean into the curve
That's slow, but means they are fine for pedestrian traffic.
Obviously this experience has nothing to do with E-scooters, but it does point out how easy it is for a minor accident to mess up your life.
This is why I drive. All arguments aside about how cities "should" be, I don't live in one where I can magically waive a wand and make things exactly like I want them. And a permanent brain injury (or a major hand/arm injury!) would be really bad for my career.
So I also don't actively practice contact-martial-arts anymore.
Makes sense that scooters would be roughly similar to bicycles though.
Then there are idiot riders going on and off the footpath essentially playing chicken with pedestrians - I had one this morning going the wrong way on the road scoot onto the footpath immediately in front of me while I was crossing the road, pushing me back into traffic.
So it’s a combo of the companies littering the l scooters everywhere, and the riders being idiots and having no consequences for said idiocy.
Since you're so mad that a public scooter for rent takes up 3 square feet of public space, you must be absolutely furious that a private car can take up 300 square feet.
* Scooter is more safe than a bicycle (for a rider). In case of collision it's trivial to step off from the scooter - moving your body from the bicycle takes much more time.
* Bicycle is more maneuverable - bigger front wheel gives much more control.
* You need less of your attention to drive a scooter, so you have more "CPU time" to monitor the road situation.
* Making stops is significantly easier on scooter, so you have less temptation to quickly cross the road in a second before the red light.
* Speed should be limited on scooters and it should be "sealed" somehow to prevent "jailbreaking" - after a few days you'll stop "feeling" max speed on e-scooter and you'll want it to go faster, even if you are already faster than any bicycle. It's really dangerous for pedestrians.
* By the previous reason, e-scooters should be restricted to bike lanes only.
* You have higher chances to sweat when walking, than when riding e-scooter. For some travelers it's important :)
Overall, e-scooter is a great tool to deliver you from A to B, but bicycle gives much more satisfaction from the process of riding itself.
Weird, I feel the opposite. You can't really just step off a scooter when its at any decent speed (I accidentally tried when the brakes failed on one… would not recommend.) Scooters feel way less stable, and have really weak braking compared to bicycles.
Brakes on my scooter are pretty decent, I can quickly stop even when riding fast (tried it a lot of times). Some scooters have 2 breaks - for the front and back wheel. Mine have just back wheel breaks.
As a person who rides a bike as much as I can, I'd be much happier sharing a bike lane with a bunch of scooters than a street with cars.
I suspect there will also be cultural elements to each region they're deployed in that will have a significant impact on injuries (New Jersey drivers/scootees are wildly more aggressive than Minnesotan drivers/scootees).
Once again this is all anecdotal but trying to infer anything from one city is likely going to be just as flawed for any meaningful conclusion.
Well, DC-based data is quite relevant to DC. You're providing reasons to do similar work in other areas, not reasons to dismiss this work.
The situation is far better than it was at first, but my experience as a pedestrian around them is still pretty negative. Some of the Moscone Center (which I walk past daily) conference-goers seem to treat them as a sort of entertainment thing and can be entitled pricks (it is always men) to deal with - I must admit I've become a bit of a grumpy local at the worst of them. I personally really don't care if ever choose to come back to my city - if you're too incompetent, drunk or whatever your problem is to avoid running in to stationary pedestrians, get off the damn thing.
But I realize the problem is not nearly so bad elsewhere.
Findings include that injuries did rise, but most didn't warrant a hospital visit. There were no deaths during the study period.
Another interesting finding is that scooters strongly prefer riding on cycling infrastructure, especially neighborhood greenways and protected bike lanes, and are unlikely to ride on the sidewalk when those are present. As the degree of protection increases, however, more people ride on the sidewalk.
Ever wondered why bicycles have large wheels?
Scooters are easy to ride, but hard to ride competently. If you know how to ride a bike, you're unlikely to fall off unless you hit something. Not so on a scooter. I hit a manhole cover on the way to work one morning, and ended up standing next to my scooter with a broken helmet in my hand, while not being 100% sure how to get to work (I'm fine now). I fall of bicycles only when I a patch of black ice, or something solid.
I can load my bicycle up with front and rear panniers, a trunk, and carry enough to do some shopping. Scooter: whatever fits in the backpack.
Scooter: hands on the handlebars at all times. If you get good, you can carefully choose the smooth spots in the road to take a quick second and scratch your nose. Bicycle: go ahead, take another sip of that coffee from your handlebar coffee cup holder while you cruise down the trail. Hell, take both hands off the bars to zip the jacket up.
I love my Boosted Rev, it's well made and a hoot to ride. But it's a recreational vehicle. It's the impractical Lotus Elise that has room for two people and a messenger bag, but what fun to drive. For real transportation work, the bike comes out.
You're dead right about ability to handle bumps. With my scooter, I will watch the road in front of me very carefully to scan for rough areas; there's a fair bit more of cognitive load. And this is even with air tires. I might disagree with on what's the future; there's two things that make them so amazing:
- Their ability to coexist with pedestrians. I'm very easily to weave in and out of traffic on sidewalks and maintain my safety and that of those around me. It's a lighter foot print with much lower clearance.
- Portability. I can fold it up, take in an uber, take it in a train (without doing the excuse me dance in and out). Bikes, electronic ones especially, aren't there yet.
Ebikes are a car replacement for the suburbs, e-scooters are a walking replacement for the city. They go about the same speed and use the same right of way, but their utility is pretty different.
Velocity means less time in the intersection. But it also means less time to observe their approach, less time to react and less likelihood to even know you are going to have to react.
They are dangerous if not throttled down and geofenced from walkway.