Yes the headline is exaggerating the evidence presented in the article - (I’m shocked /s).
I think the authors are confident that the observed crash rate seems to be higher for eBikes . . . but that’s not enough to say which is more dangerous.
I’d think rider attitudes will be one of the main things here - take a negligent or reckless eBiker and put them on an eScooter and I’m pretty sure they’ll find a way to crash it. It’s not obvious to me that they used trip average speed as a proxy for this - I think they should at least have tested if their ratios were the similar when comparing fast with fast and slow with slow - that’d have been easy enough and they probably have the sample size to do that.
They mention high-res GPS data so they could maybe have done a better “driving characteristics” thing - using acceleration and braking data as a proxy for riders who are either bad at reading the road - or are impatient. That might be where they’d need more data, as they’d probably need to establish a “normal” profile for each route - to benchmark the extremes of behaviour.
I guess that’d have taken a lot longer and the funding only goes so far.
Interesting dataset they have for sure - maybe they’ll do some more papers on it in future.
I’m from a place where car safety rules are pretty strictly enforced and e-bike and e-scooter ones are not. As someone who almost exclusively walks and uses a non-electrical bike, and rarely a (shared) moped, I see MUCH more reckless behavior from people on bikes and scooters than people in cars. That is to say, having regulations and actually enforcing them does the trick. Id love to see it with e-bikes and scooters, so more people can feel safe on sidewalks and bike paths. Ive heard a lot of people say reckless electrical riders deter them from biking and walking more.
Yes the headline is exaggerating the evidence presented in the article - (I’m shocked /s).
I think the authors are confident that the observed crash rate seems to be higher for eBikes . . . but that’s not enough to say which is more dangerous.
I’d think rider attitudes will be one of the main things here - take a negligent or reckless eBiker and put them on an eScooter and I’m pretty sure they’ll find a way to crash it. It’s not obvious to me that they used trip average speed as a proxy for this - I think they should at least have tested if their ratios were the similar when comparing fast with fast and slow with slow - that’d have been easy enough and they probably have the sample size to do that.
They mention high-res GPS data so they could maybe have done a better “driving characteristics” thing - using acceleration and braking data as a proxy for riders who are either bad at reading the road - or are impatient. That might be where they’d need more data, as they’d probably need to establish a “normal” profile for each route - to benchmark the extremes of behaviour.
I guess that’d have taken a lot longer and the funding only goes so far. Interesting dataset they have for sure - maybe they’ll do some more papers on it in future.
Which is a good reason to not have cars with those same people driving the same way
I’m from a place where car safety rules are pretty strictly enforced and e-bike and e-scooter ones are not. As someone who almost exclusively walks and uses a non-electrical bike, and rarely a (shared) moped, I see MUCH more reckless behavior from people on bikes and scooters than people in cars. That is to say, having regulations and actually enforcing them does the trick. Id love to see it with e-bikes and scooters, so more people can feel safe on sidewalks and bike paths. Ive heard a lot of people say reckless electrical riders deter them from biking and walking more.