Usually I get to view major societal shifts only from afar and normally from the comfort of my couch as I watch the evening news. Over the last couple of years one of those shifts has been hitting ( literally, as you'll see) closer to home.
Downtown Denver, which I only visit occasionally anymore, has already gone through the phenomenon of electric scooters and to a somewhat smaller degree BikeShare programs. With the scooters its to the point that regular pedestrians actually making the effort to perambulate under their own power are advised to keep their heads up lest they be run over as folks whiz by on equipment provided as part of Denver's "Micromobility Program" through two vendors - Lyft and Lime. Granted, the website for the program has wonderful 'guidelines' on how said scooters and ebikes should be used which I doubt anyone reads and fewer follow (anybody out there seeing scooters NOT exceeding "6 miles per hour"?). With a cap of 2,930 scooters allowed per company you now see scooters almost everywhere and often discarded on trails and in parks and wherever else the battery decides to give up the ghost. The website has info on how to report 'incorrectly' parked scooters and ebikes (ebikes are capped at no more than 600 per company) but as with the old adage that 'no good deed goes unpunished' it places the onus of reporting these miscreant scooters (and e-bikes) on the good-deed-doer through a tedious five step process and then completing an online form. If any of this sounds like bureaucracy, albeit well intentioned, run amuck then you'll understand why in a nutshell I live in suburbia.
As an avid cyclist I frequent bike trails, bike routes, and bike lanes as they meander across the Denver area. Ebikes have been growing in numbers over the years and can be seen anywhere a regular bike is allowed and, increasingly, even in places where 'motorized vehicles' are specifically excluded. For Denver residents you only need to think of Waterton Canyon on the south side of the metro area. In another example of bureaucracy, albeit well intentioned, run amuck, ebikes are technically not allowed on the Canyon's road with the EXCEPTION that:
"Class 1 and 2 e-bikes used as part of an ADA accommodation in Waterton Canyon are permitted on Denver Water’s portion of the path, depending on the size, weight and speed of the device, so long as it wouldn’t cause a safety risk because of crowds or trail conditions (e.g. on a busy day) and so long as the requestor can provide credible assurance that they require an accommodation (emphasis added) to access the facility."
And yes, there is a formal, and required process to gain permission:
"...those seeking ADA accommodations in Waterton Canyon can contact our Recreation team at recreation@denverwater.org. You will need to be able to provide credible assurance that you require an accommodation to access the facility before arriving."
I doubt that many, if any of the ebikes one now encounters up the canyon and even farther on the Colorado Trail have bothered to show their need for real accomodation. As the saying goes: easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.
To say that local and State governments are struggling on how to manage the growth (and yes, regulation) of scooters and ebikes is an understatement. And in Colorado its about to get much more difficult as the State has announced its ebike rebate program that will give rebates up to $1,400 toward the purchase of 1,000 ebikes every month (emphasis added) starting this month (August).
I'm admittedly ambivalent about the whole concept of ebikes. For those who are differently abled I think they are a great addition that allows greater access to the outdoors. My first introduction to an ebike was on the Mickelson Trail more than ten years ago when my wife and I were biking up a long grade on our way from Edgemont to Deadwood, South Dakota on one of the premier rails-to-trails routes in the country. Suddenly we heard "On your left!" and saw a blur go flying by. I silently cursed to myself wondering how a motorcycle got on the trail. When we caught up to the husband and wife 'blur' that had whizzed by us we were introduced to not a motorcycle but a motorized (electric) bicycle - our first ebike. The couple explained that, due to health issues, they could no longer pedal regular bikes and needed the electric assist to get them up and over the hills.
More recently, in fact just last month my wife met another ebike in a far more intimate way. As in CRASH. We were riding one of our favorite trails in the mountains ( the Mineral Belt in Leadville, Colorado) and, as seems to be our wont, were pedaling up the long climb from the parking lot to the trail's high point. There is a section where the trail crosses Land Fill Road (far prettier than the name implies) where you have to watch for vehicles before crossing the road. As we were pedaling up toward the intersection a group of cyclists came whizzing down the trail, across the intersection, and the third of the four cyclists slammed into my wife. What turned out to be an ebiker, a young lady in her sixties, had turned her head to warn her companion behind her that a car was indeed approaching the intersection and to be careful. That turn of the head was a rookie mistake that every cyclist, and apparently e-cyclist (ebiker?) has made - when you turn your head on a bicycle the handlebars tend to turn in the same direction, thus swerving the lady's ebike smack into my wife.
The impact swept both my wife and the ebiker off the side of the trail with my wife taking the brunt of the impact as they hit the rocky ground. My wife's helmet barely missed a watermelon-sized rock. As the ebiker disentangled herself and lifted her ebike up my wife lay stunned (for all we knew, unconscious) flat on her back with her mountain bike still on top of her. Two of the party of cyclists were retired Doctors (one an ER and the other a Primary Care doc) so we were able to provide quick and responsive care. Fortunately my wife was not injured to the point of needing an ambulance (though later x-rays and a visit to our own doctor revealed the full extent of injuries) so my wife and I were inclined to treat the incident as a typical bike on bike encounter. The lady who had hit my wife was very apologetic and took full responsibility saying she had not even seen my wife before crashing into her. She offered to pay for any bike repairs to my wife's bike. By this time my wife was able to stand and while scraped and bruised didn't think she had been too severely injured and thought she'd be able to get back to our car under her own power. The lady who hit my wife was unscathed as she had landed on my wife rather than on the rocky ground. So, thinking all was well, we went our separate ways.
What's the difference between being hit by a regular bicycle and an ebike you ask? Lets start with weight. The average weight of a standard modern road bike is about 18-20 pounds. Interestingly, for racing bikes the UCI, which governs professional bike racing, requires racing bikes must be a minimum of at least 14.99 pounds which means bike manufacturers actually have to engineer extra weight into their designs as they could produce bikes lighter than this. According to one manufacturer's site the average weight of an e-bike is on average somewhere between 52 to 55 pounds. The difference primarily comes from the weight of the battery and electric motor as well as a beefier, and heavier, frame to accommodate the extra weight. Hearken back to your High School physics class: Momentum equals Mass (weight) times Velocity.
Then there's the motorized aspect. The ebike rider not only has the momentum produced by their own power but also assisted through the electric motor. There are three primary classes of e-bikes (Class 1, 2, and 3) with class 3 ebikes capable of reaching 28 mph before the electric motor stops providing assistance. Its no wonder the couple in the Black Hills were able to fly by us going uphill.
There's also what I call the novice component to riding an ebike. Granted, some experienced cyclists make the switch from a traditional bike to an ebike but I'd hazard a guess that a fair number of current and future ebike owners are folks who wouldn't be caught dead riding a regular bicycle. Because of this unfamiliarity with cycling they don't necessarily have the learned skills to safely handle a 50 pound bike cruising at 20 plus miles an hour. Even though I ride several thousand miles every year on everything from road to gravel to mountain bikes it would give me pause before I hopped on an ebike and set out merrily on one of my local trails. The lady who hit my wife was honest enough to acknowledge that her ebike was brand new and she was on only her second ride with it.
My wife's visit to her own doctor uncovered no broken bones although he suspected major internal bruising to the ribs and sternum (the ebike's handlebars directly impacted my wife's sternum). My wife's right ankle was also severely bruised and though extremely sore she could bear weight on it. Bike riding, at least for a couple of weeks, would be out as my wife could not comfortably hold her own handlebars due to the pain in her chest.
Now, all of this is not an argument against ebikes. It is however a cautionary tale about what the future is likely to hold for all users of multiuse trails and paths and roadways. And it unfortunately raises the question of regulation. My wife's doctor, who has seen a dramatic increase in the number of ebike-related injuries he's treating asked her if we had filed a police accident report. When she said no, he chided her and reminded her that she had been involved in a motor vehicle accident. Would she have reported being hit by a car? A Motorcycle? "Of course" she replied. What was the difference in this instance he queried? Upon further reflection, she had no answer. Quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Kenny Fischer, co-founder of Denver-based FattE-Bikes, tells people its "...not a heavy bike. its a light electric vehicle."
Folks may wrongly assume that bicycles and e-bikes are two sides of the same coin when it comes to safety. Not so according to statistics slowly starting to reveal the contrast. A June 2023 article in Fortune magazine highlighted some of the newest data. While the U.S.'s NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board highlights the “lack of complete, consistent and reliable data” that likely leads to vast underestimations of the actual statistics, their report noted that “fatalities associated with e-bike ridership have also increased exponentially.” And in other countries that have a longer and deeper history with power-assisted bikes better data is emerging. In the bicycling-crazy Netherlands a Dutch study found that e-bike riders were 1.6 times more likely to wind up in the emergency department than riders of regular bikes. What does that mean for the U.S.? Consider that in 2021 608,000 electric cars and trucks were sold in the U.S. By comparison, more than 880,000 e-bikes were purchased. In Europe that year more than 5 million were sold. In the North American market e-bike sales in 2023 are expected to near 1.76 billion dollars; by 2028 that number is forecast to top $4 billion. .
So one way or another ebikes are in my, and your future. My wife may never own an ebike but she's already literally felt their impact. There's a local law firm who advertises itself as 'the cyclist's advocate'. I suspect they have no idea how much future business they may see not just defending cyclists who have been hit by vehicles but also going after ebikers who have caused injuries and damage to those around them.
Will there come a day:
- when ebikes outnumber 'regular' cyclists?
- when people recognize that e-bikes are not the same as traditional bikes and should not be treated as if they were
- when ebikes are allowed everywhere, even where non-motorized vehicles are currently prohibited?
- when 'drivers ed' classes are required for ebikers just as they are for motorcyclists and other motorists?
- when ebikes need to be registered as the motor vehicles they are?
- when ebikers (like other motorized vehicle users) are required to provide proof of insurance when involved in an accident?
- when a police report should be filed anytime an ebike is involved in an accident? (if we had to do it again, this would have happened)
- when ebikes continue to become more powerful further blurring the line between ebike, moped, and motorcycle? (Even Harley Davidson is now offering an electric motorcycle...)
- when I feel like a chump for sweating and grinding my way up a steep incline under the blazing sun while the person to my left cruises by with no real effort at all? Wait... that day is already here....
