[addicted]

> Anecdotally (London not NYC) I feel like I am "endangered" by e-bikes much more often than cars

Speaking of NYC, not London, there are several reasons I see for this. 1. NYC has used bike lanes as pedestrian safety infrastructure, siting the bike lanes right against sidewalks, providing a buffer from cars. NYC DOT has done a lot of research every time a new bike lane has been added, and every time they did that pedestrian deaths and severe injuries dropped. However, the flip side is that you're gonna have e-bikes much closer to you than cars.

2. Street infrastructure, including red light timing, etc. is entirely based on cars and not bikes. The bike lights, for example, switch directly from green to red, providing no "yellow" period to stop. This actually makes sense because bikes are significantly safer, but it leads to different behavior than cars, which some pedestrians feel is "unfair". What would actually be fair would be to design the infrastructure suitable for bikers as well.

3. Pedestrians simply have different expectations of cars/ebikes. You will reliably see tourists not even look for bikes while crossing the bike path and stand in the middle of the bike path or walk in the bike path in a way they never would with a car lane.

4. Bikes are just given much poorer infrastructure. In NYC, you have narrow bike lanes, several of which are interrupted with slick and dangerous sewer gratings, and with no space to pass, with car parking right next to them leading to people constantly hopping through the bike lane from their cars to the sidewalk without looking, constantly creating a danger of opening their doors without looking causing bikes to be "doored", etc.

There's way too much "feels" in this discussion. It's about time someone provided some actual data that bikes, and even e-bikes, have even slightly increased risks to pedestrians, when all the actual data suggests otherwise, and it's about time we recognize that at least in places like NYC, the "danger" caused by bikes/e-bikes, is literally because the city has made bikers a buffer to protect pedestrians from the actual dangers on the road, the 1-2 ton cars traveling at incredible speeds through dense urban areas.

[john-h-k]

Important to note I absolutely do NOT notice the same dangers from bikes as e-bikes. Like yeah some bikes run reds and there are bad cyclists (just as with drivers, etc), but specifically e-bikes frequently cause issue. I have had to dodge n>2 e-bikes riding down the pavement in the last ~2 weeks, and ~0 bikes (for as long as I can really remember). It is very specifically e-bike usage, and they rate at which they move is just not comparable to normal cyclists.

> There's way too much "feels" in this discussion

I agree that hard numbers are useful, but dismissing feeling entirely isn't useful. Feeling safe is an important quality for a city.

[tstrimple]

Bicycles to e-bikes is similar to the change from longbows to crossbows. It dramatically lowers the skill and practice required to do previously exceptional things. This necessarily introduces a lot more people who have never had to develop the discipline learned through repeated practice. A cyclist who can sustain a 20mph cruise has worked up to that over years and has tons of experience interacting with vehicles and pedestrians. An e-bike user who cruises at 20mph could have purchased his very first bike that same day.

[lolinder]

I'm not buying this. Bikers in bike lanes are not where I've felt threatened by bikes in NYC: they're in a dedicated lane and it's easy for me to check, cross, and get out of their way. Where I feel threatened by bikes is on narrow city streets with no bike lanes.

On narrow one-way roads with street parking, cars tend to go quite slowly and look out carefully for pedestrians coming out from between cars. At a stop sign you can check left and right, cross, and expect that cars will see you and stop even if they were for some reason planning on running the sign. It's even possible to safely jaywalk in most cases because the cars are going slowly enough that you can see them, judge their speeds, and cross before they reach you.

E-bikes as a rule do not behave that way on narrow roads. They will drive much faster than is safe (presumably because the road feels less narrow to them relatively) and end up outrunning their visibility and yours. I've never come close to being hit by a car in Brooklyn, but there have been numerous close calls with bikes, and they've all been on narrow roads with street parking where I was attempting to cross at a stop sign which the bike ran.