The New York Occasions revealed a pair of articles this weekend highlighting the rising variety of deaths of cyclists driving electrical bikes. Nevertheless, in one of the crucial spectacular feats of victim-blaming I’ve seen from the publication in a while, the NYT lays the onus on e-bikes as a substitute of on the issues killing their riders: vehicles.

The primary article lays out numerous latest tragic deaths of e-bike riders, together with that of a 15 yr previous boy in Encinitas, California.

The article even explicitly lists the largest hazard that performed a job in that crash, explaining that the boy’s bike “had a prime velocity of 20 miles per hour, however his route took him on a busy highway with a 55-mile-per-hour restrict.” And but the article appears to suggest that the e-bike’s presence was the compounding situation, as a substitute of studying into the writer’s very personal sentence to understand that the true drawback was that the highway didn’t have wherever secure for cyclists to trip. There was no protected bike lane.

By all accounts, the e-bike rider was appropriately and legally utilizing the roadway in the one approach he may. The truth is, in keeping with eye-witnesses of the automobile crash that killed the e-bike rider, he “did all the pieces proper,” together with signaling his flip. 

The article goes on to element how simply three days later one other teenage e-bike rider was pulled out from below a BMW – fortunately nonetheless alive – and brought to the identical emergency room the place the earlier boy had been pronounced lifeless. Obvious reward is lauded on Encinitas for quickly afterwards declaring “a state of emergency for e-bikes”, which is a bit like saying we may simply clear up the varsity shootings disaster if children would cease strolling into all of these rattling bullets.

The article goes on to explain a number of different latest deaths from crashes of electrical bike riders, lots of them youthful riders.

As Visiting Fellow on the Harvard Kennedy College David Zipper identified, each single e-bike crash listed within the article was a collision between a automobile and e-bike. None have been merely e-bike crashes with out the added of a automobile. “All may’ve been prevented if e-bike riders have been shielded from vehicles (or if there have been no vehicles)”, Zipper defined on Twitter. “Battle the true enemy.”

Each crash on this story entails a e-bike colliding with a motorized vehicle.

All may’ve been prevented if e-bike riders have been shielded from vehicles (or if there have been no vehicles).

Battle the true enemy.https://t.co/POH4IM68Xf

— David Zipper (@DavidZipper) July 29, 2023

In a second NYT article this weekend devoted to e-bike security, eradicating any doubts in any other case with the title What Is an E-Bike, And How Protected Are They?, the publication does an much more olympic degree of psychological gymnastics to keep away from blaming vehicles for bicycle owner accidents and deaths.

Amazingly, the article makes use of a statistic declaring how harmful vehicles are, however flips it round to suggest that as a result of research have confirmed that quicker transferring vehicles are harmful, which means e-bikes shouldn’t journey too quick, presumably to additionally cut back the hazard of those small and light-weight machines.

“By varied measures, the dangers of great harm and dying rise sharply at round 20 m.p.h., though a lot of that analysis concerned collisions between vehicles and pedestrians. For example, the chance of extreme harm to a pedestrian is 25 % when the automobile is transferring at 16 m.p.h., and it rises to 50 % at 23 m.p.h., in keeping with the AAA Basis for Visitors Security.”

It’s proper there. The reply is actually within the physique of the NYT article. Unprotected highway customers (pedestrians and cyclists) are more likely to be severely injured by vehicles because the automobile velocity will increase. And but this statistic is used to suggest that e-bikes shouldn’t be used at speeds of over 20 mph.

There’s no deeper evaluation paid to the truth that the factor killing customers of fifty lb machines going 25 mph are the 4,000 lb machines that may go 100+ mph.

Safer biking infrastructure protects everybody

The reply is kind of easy: make streets safer for everybody. To take action, protected biking lanes have to be put in. Nobody (exterior of the few violent and aggressive drivers) really needs to hit a bicycle owner with their automobile. These accidents normally occur as a result of drivers merely aren’t on the lookout for the smaller profile of cyclists once they scan intersections for vehicles. We will implore drivers to be extra cautious, or we are able to merely transfer them away from cyclists within the first place. Solely a kind of two strategies have been confirmed efficient at stopping accidents and deaths.

And that’s precisely the purpose. Automobile drivers can’t be trusted to search for cyclists, even when cyclists have the correct of approach. And thus the reply is to offer safer, separated biking lanes with bodily obstacles.

These separated biking lanes subsequent to roads have quite a few advantages. They after all create safer areas for biking, however additionally they cut back visitors for vehicles by encouraging extra individuals get out of vehicles and commute by bikes. The safer individuals really feel utilizing a motorbike, the extra of them do it. And research have proven {that a} 10% discount in automobile quantity may end up in a 40% discount in visitors congestions. Moreover, separated biking areas even make cities safer for emergency staff on calls. Protected bike lanes within the Netherlands are even utilized by firefighters and ambulances (safely) to reach at emergency scenes extra shortly. Dutch riders shortly transfer over for emergency autos borrowing the lanes.

Many cities across the US are making progress on bettering their protected biking infrastructure, however the wins are sometimes onerous fought in opposition to activist drivers who see protected biking lanes as some type of assault on vehicles. Nonetheless, every new secure biking lane is a step in the correct route. The progress is gradual, however it’s transferring ahead.

Now if solely somebody on the New York Occasions may see that…