Yes. Are we going to do a study about the policies and conditions that make that happen, or are we just going to cave to the auto lobby again?

Can we just go back to horses? Clearly all mechanised transport is inherently dangerous. Let the automotive experiment end.

Or maybe we should just make bigger, wider ebikes until hitting one would destroy an SUV completely. That’s worked for the car fans beautifully, perhaps we should adopt their approach.

Edit: I take safety seriously, rate my ebike gang

What a one-sided article. I am rather disappointed with the BBC.

To begin with, statistics show the prime motivator for adopting e-bikes is as an alternative to driving. Yet there is no mention of how traffic fatalities are affected by people moving away from vehicles.

The article is narrowly focused on e-bike incidents involving self-injury or injury to pedestrians. It criticizes the extra weight of an e-bike vs a conventional push bike. Let’s consider that for a moment. My weight as a rider is easily over 3x that of the e-bike. And let’s say a regular bike would weigh half as much. Then the aggregate increase in weight from me choosing an e-bike is something like 1/6th more weight. Sure, that could factor into the severity of an injury, but we’re not talking 2-ton vehicles here…

Then it mentions speed. Street legal ebikes are limited to not travel faster than regular bikes. The extra weight does add some kinetic energy. Otoh I am literally hard-pressed to go faster than the limiter on my own power and people on regular bikes pass me all the time. The only place where I have an advantage is in climbing hills. I don’t mind if they make speed zones around playgrounds and what not. I never pass a pedestrian at >20 kph myself. Most e-bikes have speedometers. Most regular bikes do not, however, so there could be some trouble with regulating that.