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Comment by FatalLogic | Hacker News Reader

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

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