E-bike injuries on the rise even on well protected Dutch roads | Hacker News Reader

E-bike injuries on the rise even on well protected Dutch roads

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24 pointsTomte39 comments

We got an Urban Arrow in January and have put 500 NYC miles on it since. It’s been a lifestyle changing purchase for our family of four. We ride it daily, have come to depend on it for school dropoff, grocery runs, swim practice, etc. It’s almost entirely displaced our car. It’s also clear to me that I’m at greater danger of being in a bike accident than I was in 2020 because I ride this bike every chance I get.

How do you secure it during a grocery run?

Lock up the rear wheel. Heavy chain to a post. Remove the display that controls the motor.

The youtube motorcycle channel Fort Nine makes a pretty good argument that the risks of ebikes are similar to those of motorcycles, and the riders typically have less protective gear. https://youtu.be/wM8Xli2KTzI

That makes sense if e-bike speeds are as high as those of motorcycles in urban traffic. The video narrator mentions reaching a top speed of ~60 (km/h?) on a commute, which would be similar to a motor vehicle and much faster than what you'd reach on a bicycle. Top speeds going from ~30 to ~60 would make it an entirely different game.

At least in some countries in Europe, e-bikes are limited to much lower speeds. Where I live, e-bikes must stop providing power at 25 km/h. If they don't, they're legally considered motorized vehicles and require a driver's license, are not allowed to be ridden on bicycle paths, etc.

I can imagine there may still be a higher rate of accidents on e-bikes, as the article says, but the comparison to motorcycles probably doesn't make as much sense in countries where e-bike speeds are much slower.

I did not know that. 25kph is indeed very slow as road bikes regularly go well above those speeds just being peddled. When I lived in NYC it was a mess- all kinds of custom ebikes electric mopeds and delivery drivers blasting around on the sidewalks endangering pedestrians. But the city would kill the food delivery business if it banned them.

Yeah, e-bikes seem to be a rather different deal in different countries in practice.

The way the legislation sees e-bikes here is that the motor should be for assistance and comfort, and to enable somewhat longer commutes etc., not for being able to go at speeds of motorized traffic. (You can also go faster than 25 on an e-bike, just like you could on any bike, but it has to be on human power.)

25 km/h is IMO a reasonable maximum powered speed in urban bicycle traffic. It's a speed you can reasonably reach on a traditional urban bike by just pedalling, so it's not wildly above the speeds of other bikes in the same traffic, but it's high enough to be useful in a city environment.

I can imagine that somewhat higher powered speeds would be nice to have when riding in car traffic, or on roads or paths outside of urban areas where you might ride much faster than that on road bikes. As a compromise it's fairly reasonable from my city-dwelling point of view, though.

The legislation here probably wanted to prevent exactly the kind of a mess you'd get from having what are effectively motorized vehicles running on sidewalks and other paths that are explicitly not meant for motorized vehicles.

Yes, but the vast majority of commuters ride around 20km/h or even slower, as it seems to be a lot of elderly people around my place.

Depending on the situation and speeds, I can even see situations where a motorcycle may be safer; you can accelerate out of many dangerous spots where on a an e-bike you just wouldn't have the speed to do so.

I agree with this video on so many points. The fact that most people who haven't had a ride on a bicycle since they were in middle school as well as the fact it goes at speeds most people aren't fit enough to hit for long stretches without it being a downhill are important. Speed + inexperience = danger. Add to that the urban environment of motorists and pedestrians just seeing ebikes (and bicycles in general) as toys/recreational they do not give them enough caution when seen on the road. Even in places like the NL I am pretty sure most people think that those on ebikes may be regular bicycles that can only go so fast and underestimate the speed they are traveling at. Another thing to think about is how instantly an ebike can accelerate compared to a regular bicycle. If the cyclists legs are an indicator of speed/effort the ebike hides this (throttle or assisted) and makes it harder to even gauge the possible speed of them by eye alone.

The worst I've come across is a jackass on an electric push-scooter.

I was driving down a badly lit one way street, he was coming towards me at speed. He was in the centre of the road, was dressed in black on a black scooter with only a tiny reflective square just above the front-wheel.

He avoided me a few seconds before he approached me, but I honestly would have hit him if he didn't. I only noticed his little reflective square moments before he appeared.

more research is needed to identify the underlying causes.

Could the causes be as fundamental as E-bikes are Faster and Heavier?

Personally I think the main difference is that normal bikes are self-regulated by the stamina of the rider. It takes a lot of extra effort to ride a standard bike fast and erratically, you are self-incentivised by your own exhaustion to ride smoothly and at a moderate pace.

Not the case for an e-bike where you have no reason to not just ride around everywhere at 20+ mph while barely paying attention.

You can flip that argument around, though: since e-bikes demand less effort for merely propelling the bike the rider has more leisure to maintain awareness of their surroundings. Depending, of course, on how they choose to spend it.

That, as well as elderly people who already had trouble on regular bikes (see: myself, though not quite that old having an injured leg tires me out quickly in stop-and-go traffic) now being able to go much longer distances and so they are in traffic longer than they otherwise would be due to much larger endurance.

One lady I know who is in her 80's who had all but given up cycling now has an e-bike and she makes day trips that impress me (80 km, no problem). She's already fallen once and won't take the hint that she isn't really safe on the road at any speed.

I think, when you are over 80, safety becomes much less important to yourself and much more important to others. Taking a risk as an 80 year old isn't a big deal because you are staring death in the face anyways. All of a sudden your priorities change.

However, when we see old folks, a lot of us rightfully want to protect them. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to be treated like a Ming Vase when you just want to live life as much as possible in the few years left to you.

When you're 80 taking a fall could mean spending the rest of your life bedridden in a hospital instead of peacefully at your home. You could last for several years in this state.

Also, perhaps the bicycle is keeping them strong enough to not take that fall at home. It may be our first instinct to prevent an old person from engaging in a risky activity, however this is often a great way to kill them slowly. Sitting peacefully in an easy chair is a slow, painful, and boring death for many and often results in the falls you mention. Meanwhile, others are running marathons and swimming the english channel.

When you are 20, taking a fall could result in the same lifelong injuries. We have to be careful not to wrap our elderly in cotton batting simply because they are old. Otherwise we rob them of the chance to live as they wish for no good reason.

I'm not trying to argue against old people riding bicycles or for anyone to take away their agency without cause, just pushing back on the idea that the only risk old people might face is premature death so what me worry.

An 80 year old has much higher odds of becoming bedridden from any given fall than an average 20 year old.

Wouldn't para 1 be refuted by "adjusted for... kilometers cycled"?

It would be if the first kilometers count the same as the last, but people really do get tired in spite of electric assist and when they do they are further from home than they probably should be.

They aren't really much faster as the majority are restricted to 25kmh in Europe.

My guess is people are just cycling further than they otherwise would. The motor/battery on an e-bike acts as a massive range extender.

They are definitely faster. I get passed by many old people on their e-bikes. I would not be surprised that speed + reaction time of older people is the main cause of the extra accidents.

I think they are faster on average, although a fit cyclist can go even faster.

I cycle faster than average for Copenhagen, but it takes some effort. I'm not going to bother when I can see the lights ahead are red, or if there are too many people ahead (I may well be unable to overtake safely), or I'm going to turn soon.

Some (only some!) of the e-bikes that pass me don't take this into account. It's very easy to get to 25km/h, and I think it's easy to end up paying less attention to the street as a result. (I have done this myself, when I borrowed one for a couple of weeks.)

I agree, It's not hard to reach 25km/h and beyond on a normal bike, but to do so you have to elevate your heart rate and enter a state of increased alertness.

I think the key problem with e-bikes isn't the speed, but that you're able to reach dangerous speeds while barely paying attention to your surroundings.

That is one of the possibilities they mentioned in the Dutch news.

But also, for instance, in could be that e-bikes are used for different trips.

However, normal bike accidents are also up. So another direction they mentioned is that there are just more cyclists on the road. The problem is they don’t know much about how bikes are being used & where & by whom.

So they really cannot say much on why there is an increase

Another factor is simply the novelty of it, people that have an e-bike need to get used to their new bike and with the dutch anti-helmet culture they don't adjust because to them it is 'just a bike' which they probably have been on since right after they learned how to walk.

This will take some time, I suspect that at some point we will see a helmet mandatory for e-bikes, which I would definitely be a big supporter of.

My worry is that making helmets mandatory will reduce the number of bike journeys as it adds friction.

That's a fair point and likely to be a factor in this, but then there are still the 'regular' bikes for the people that do not want to wear a helmet.

I cycle a very large amount ever year and the number of accidents and near accidents is much larger than on the same number of km by car. This is kind of frustrating because I really enjoy biking and try to do as much of my mileage by bike as possible but the safety of it makes me wonder if I'm not playing some kind of lottery with 'very bad prizes'.

Having to keep charging a bicycle seems like far more friction to me than having to spend 15 seconds putting on a helmet

I charge my ebike once every couple weeks. Granted I ride my non ebike most of the time, but with a daily commute of 4 miles, I can ride for 8 days straight without needing to plug it in. Not a big deterrent at all.

Helmet sits in the basket or hangs off the bars, takes ten second to put on so also not a deterrent.

The real deterrent is thinking “goddamn it’s 27 degrees out and my gloves are getting frayed my fingers are going to be cold”.

Ducth impressions of safety always make me giggle. I'm only alive today due to a helmet I was wearing when a car decided to turn in front of me. Yet, gems like this exist

> “If you are hit by a car on your bike, there is no helmet that will protect you.”

From here: https://dutchreview.com/culture/cycling/5-reasons-why-the-du...

If this statement was really true, then no one would ever take a trip on a bicycle on a public road. We would have bicycle fatalities almost everyday.

To be fair though: cycling in NL without a helmet is probably safer than cycling with a helmet in many other countries. Even so there are plenty of accidents.

What would make that 'fair'?

It's an idiom.

While saying "to be fair" may be an idiom, it is also in this case a strawman. Your comment proposes something as an alternative but provides no evidence to indicate there is any actual debate to be had.

I could mention that bicycling on Antarctica is much safer than in the Netherlands. Thus, the Netherlands should seek to emulate Antarctic policy regarding bicycling. None of that is a real argument.

The strawman is yours.

It would also be interesting to see stats normalized to accidents per mile (or km or or whatever). I wouldn't be surprised if the average ebike gets a lot more use than the average city bike

I think the fundamental issue with ebikes in urban traffic is that they're some of the most unpredictable vehicles on the road. Here in Cambridge MA some people on these electric vehicles storm through gridlocked traffic like it's a slalom course.

Unlike normal bicycles, these things can have considerable acceleration, so my typical habit to keep tabs on cyclist traffic out the corner of my eye before turning sometimes deceives me. It's very disruptive to have vehicles passing on the right at much higher speeds than the rest of traffic. It only takes one inattentive driver to splat them.

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