For one, I've seen plenty of non-motorized bikes go over 20mph in bikes lanes, particularly down hills.
> zooming by me and my infant in a stroller at speeds that are too dangerous to be on paths
To be clear: you and your infant are not sharing the path with this bike, right? It's on a bike path, you're on a pedestrian path. I don't understand what a "pedestrian bike path" is. If a car drives past the sidewalk at 25mph do you have a similar reaction? If not, why not?
And just so we don't get too many "won't somebody please think of the children!" accusations thrown around: I own a cargo e-bike and I take my kids to school on it every day, via a separated bike path. If I were required to bike on the road instead I simply wouldn't do it, it's far too dangerous. So we'd probably end up having to get a car and if, heaven forbid, I were to get in any kind of an accident a pedestrian would be considerably worse off.
EDIT: From the replies I can see many cities do have shared paths so I take that back. Seems like a very unwise choice and goes back to the original point: 90+% of of road space being dedicated to cars is the core problem, not bikers. And plenty of non-motorized bikers travel at unsafe speeds so I maintain a blanket ban on e-bikes feels like it isn't coming from anywhere logical.
A major factor is that (the vast majority of) people can't hop on a pushbike and just go 20+ mph. Non-athletes typically ride about 12 mph when they first hop on. By the time they develop the muscles and cardio to ride a sustained 20 mph, they also develop the bike-handling skills to reasonably ride that fast, as well as an awareness of when it is appropriate to ride that fast.
In contrast, anyone who hasn't ridden a bike since childhood can hop on an eBike and be going 20 mph seconds later. They often don't know how to handle a bike around other people.
> If I were required to bike on the road instead I simply wouldn't do it, it's far too dangerous. So we'd probably end up having to get a car and if, heaven forbid, I were to get in any kind of an accident a pedestrian would be considerably worse off.
A collision, not an accident. And you make it sound like something that happened to you as the driver of the car.
honestly... lol. I'm lucky enough to live near a large park often populated by the lycra-clad performance bikers and while I certainly hope they have awareness of when it's appropriate to ride fast they don't demonstrate it. They blow through pedestrian crossings, buzz past slower riders in choke points all while blowing a whistle or screaming "ON YOUR RIGHT" as if it makes everything okay. There's a strong culture of entitlement at work.
> A major factor is that (the vast majority of) people can't hop on a pushbike and just go 20+ mph.
They can, though, if they're going downhill. Largely they don't because they don't feel comfortable doing so and they apply brakes. The same applies to e-bikes. As someone who rides one all the time I certainly don't jump on it and immediately feel invulnerable or something. It took me a long time to get comfortable riding at 20mph and even now it's very rare that I do.
> A collision, not an accident. And you make it sound like something that happened to you as the driver of the car.
OK, sure. I don't even own a car, I don't see a lot of value in debating the semantics of a theoretical event I don't even own the means to create.
It's not semantics: it frames the situation in a certain way.
> According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an accident is "an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance" and a crash is "a breaking to pieces by or as if by collision." These two words have different definitions and implications and are not very similar, so why would these words be used interchangeably?
> When we call something an "accident" it implies that no one is at fault and that no one, including the driver, bears responsibility for the outcome. The term "crash," on the other hand, is more specific in terms of the action's outcome without the unpreventable implication.
* https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/crash...
> We don’t say “plane accident.” We shouldn’t say “car accident” either.
* https://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/8995151/crash-not-accident
> Before the labor movement, factory owners would say "it was an accident" when American workers were injured in unsafe conditions.
> Before the movement to combat drunk driving, intoxicated drivers would say "it was an accident" when they crashed their cars.
> Planes don’t have accidents. They crash. Cranes don’t have accidents. They collapse. And as a society, we expect answers and solutions.
> Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word "accident" today.
A narrow paved path through city or suburban parkland, built to be shared by pedestrians and casual, non-electric bike riders. It's an extremely common setup in the US and safe as long as the bike riders ride slowly (which was the cultural norm when such paths were built).
Wannabe racers with road bikes and lycra shorts make such paths dangerous for pedestrians. Fools out of control on electric bikes - even more so.
Uptown, around the 80s I think, it is shared, but it’s less crowded and it’s more New Yorkers that know what’s up rather than tourists.
That said, many, many of the bike and pedestrian paths are adjacent and are only separated by a painted lines, and signs urging pedestrians to stay out of bike lanes :/
So your assumption was hilariously backwards. If a pedestrian and a bike are in conflict it's safe to assume that it's a mixed path, and the biker is being a jerk. After all the pedestrian has the right of way on the mixed trail.
> To be clear: you and your infant are not sharing the path with this bike, right? It's on a bike path, you're on a pedestrian path. I don't understand what a "pedestrian bike path" is. If a car drives past the sidewalk at 25mph do you have a similar reaction? If not, why not?
In my experience in the US, it's not very common to have separate paths for bikers and pedestrians. In my area, they almost never occur together, and the only areas with separate paths for bikes and pedestrians are especially popular parks.
Colloquially, I understand "bike path" to mean an "asphalt sidewalk" (that may or may not parallel a road), and a "sidewalk" mean a sidewalk made out of concrete slabs that usually parallels a road. Bike paths are usually wider than sidewalks. Both are used by bikes and pedestrians, but in residential areas (at least), it's rude to ride a bike on the sidewalk unless you're a kid.
The other “paths” in NYC are split, greenway down/midtown, Flushing/Kent path, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Red Hook path. And of course the vast majority of bike lanes are on the street rather than “paths”.
Hahaha. You do not see the irony at all do you?
You and a stroller have zero business being on a bike path to begin with. The solution everyone is talking about here is Roads for Cars + Bike paths + Pedestrian-only Sidewalks. The issue of having bikes near people is the same as having cars near bikes.