Fair question:
Are dedicated bike lanes near pedestrian friendly paths a safe transportation environment? I feel that bikes and electric scooters are more dangerous than cars.
Are dedicated bike lanes near pedestrian friendly paths a safe transportation environment? I feel that bikes and electric scooters are more dangerous than cars.
How do you get this idea? In a collision with a pedestrian, the person on the scooter/bike will come to harm more likely than the pedestrian. But such collisions do not happen too often, and when they do, they don't go as bad as car crashes. I live in a German City (Darmstadt) where next to the big roads as well as in the city centre bikes and pedestrians share a lot of place, and it is not a big problem that people keep getting hurt because of this. Most accidents in these places are because bikers had accidents due to bad roads, hidden stairs, car drivers, bad bike lanes, etc. If you ask me, making a city nore bike friendly, also close to pedestrian areas, decreases the chances of bikers getting hurt.
A car has better ability to brake suddenly then scooters and bikes where the rider can get thrown forward. I can hear a car coming. In the city they don't drive fast where as bikes ignore lots of rules and travel very quickly.
Ask yourself this: is a motorbike hitting a pedestrian more dangerous or a car hitting a pedestrian, where are both are driving at city speeds with lots of braking in short distances.
Cars are more massive than bikes and scooters and kill almost everyone they hit at a minimum of 40mph. Bikes max out at 20mph with the exception for a racing cyclist. Also by weight they are far smaller.
Car produced noise, micro plastics, and exhaust also have detrimental effects on the environment we live in.
The list goes on an on. Bikes and scooters whizzing by pedestrians is annoying, but probably not the huge danger that is compared to a car.
- other people driving cars
- cyclists
- pedestrians
- themselves
Why do you feel that bikes and scooters are more dangerous than cars?
It does happen, but it's very very rare.
https://etrr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12544-021-00...
Near accidents and collisions between pedestrians and cyclists
An online survey was directed to inhabitants of Finnish cities ... The main results show that near accidents are far more common... Only 16 survey respondents had been involved in a collision during the 3-year period, whereas roughly a third had experienced at least one near accident.
There are also places on these paths/trails where they have separated a secondary path that is pedestrian only. The shared path in these places also have an enforced 10mph speed limit for the bikes. Much less spandex types on this section except for those trying to get to the other paths.
Electric scooters pretty much no longer exist in my town because A) the companies sucked at operations and B) humans sucked at being decent