In London e-bikes have basically take over delivery of small stuff. A decade or so ago they tended to use motor scooters but there are a lot less restrictions on e-bikes.
They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds.
They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it.
I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.
But people must have their Ubereats and safety costs money, so the deaths will be justified, I suppose.
Meanwhile elderly drivers regularly have incidents that kill entire families and we shrug and say nothing can be done.
I assume you heard about it, given the confidence of your assertions. So I'm just reminding you.
"In the five-year period from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020, there were 14 deaths reported to an Australian State or Territory Coroner where an electric e-micromobility device, including e-bike, e-scooter and electronic self-balancing device, contributed to the death"
"Seven of the 14 deaths were related to e-bikes); 7 deaths were in Queensland and 5 in Victoria (by jurisdiction of investigation); 6 deaths were in the age group of 35–44 years; 5 were females."
<snip>
"Last year the state recorded eight deaths related to personal mobility devices, including e-bikes and e-scooters, quadrupling the number from the previous year, with more than 3000 people presented to 26 emergency departments."
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/unaware-huge-war...
In addition, the reporting is lacking in this area.
"Often, e-bike injuries are grouped with other road users: motorcycles, bicycles and e-scooter therefore making it difficult to track its use, correlates of it and any injury or harm from it."
E-bikes offer additional risk, not alternative risk, because they're ridden on pavements.
Plus cars kill thousands of people every day, and we just sort of accept it as a natural fact of life. Why is a bike going 20kph suddenly a problem?
because the bike can and will use the sidewalk if there's not bike lane.
But the situation is here because we have a new technology (micromobility) that's struggling to find ways of adapting into the current car-centric infrastructure.
Another possibility is we recognize the benefits of this technology and redesign our infrastructure for it. And yes, it's a long, expensive process that requires changing minds (which is probably the hardest thing to do), so it will happen over years or decades.
So I'm not trying to diminish the problems, I'm just offering an alternative framing: clearly there's something behind this technology, and so we should be asking what does a world that incorporates it properly look like?
And there's the excessive reactionary regulation that makes people not comply with the rules.
If you put some reasonable speed limit and look at the other important factors like weight, you won't need to register anything that runs as fast as a child on skates, and can focus on what is really the problem.
So assuming that the safe amount of momentum we're happy with (without registration, etc) is that of a pedal bike rider, if we take into account the extra weight of an e-bike, that seems like a pretty lenient cutoff. Overly lenient in my opinion.
The established road / bike path system here runs so smoothly that changes like this cause problems. People can't seem to improvise. I've also been to Cairo a lot and had a bit of a traffic culture shock. I believe that the chaotic Cairo traffic seems to cope much better with unexpected situations.