The Oregon Senate passed a bill updating laws around electric bicycles on Monday. It's named for a Bend teen killed in a collision while riding an e-bike last summer.
They were riding it on a sidewalk, through a crosswalk and someone turned into them. Of course.
One caveat I’ll say is that depending on how fast they were going the laws should be that they should be with traffic, because if I’m driving and I look right I may not notice someone going 40+ mph on a sidewalk. But even then the law should be “Where do ebikes belong” officially
Someone going 40+ MPH is doing what amounts to riding a small motorcycle down a sidewalk. That’s no longer a “bicycle” thing. Imagine the howling and pearl-clutching we would be reading if someone were caught blasting, say, a Honda Grom down a sidewalk like that. Which is already illegal, for obvious reasons.
I own an ebike and I use it on the mixed use trails in my city. Mostly I have it because I often pull my kids on a trailer bike and we have hills in town.
I fear that my riding on these trails will soon be banned because people are out there driving stupidly fast on big knobby-tired motorcycles masquerading as “e-bikes.”
There are tons of Karens pushing strollers on these trails and any election now they’re going to ban my bike.
There are lot of such toys on the market. They are electric. But they don’t resemble bikes in any way.
I get the idea that they are mistaken for e-bikes when people ride them on our mixed use trails which are clearly marked for pedestrians and bikes only, not motor vehicles. People think anything electric is allowed. They are driving shit the same weight as a 125cc motorcycle in between pedestrians. And guess what? These vehicles go really fast so they are more dangerous than anything else on the trail, and they don’t mix into traffic well. The fools riding them are constantly weaving through passing everyone so they can GO FAST! WANNA GO FAST!
Gotcha. I hate that people will do whatever unsafe bullshit they can get away with. In my city recently we’ve had an epidemic of people buying small gasoline powered scooters that clearly are going over 40mph yet they barely slow down at stop signs. They also run every red light. I can’t step out my door without seeing this happen. They’re acting like they are bicycles and it’s bananas. Then there is also the “I’m going to ride my motorcycle at 50mph in the bike lane” people who I just want to slap. People are the worst.
Years ago I worked at a bike repair camp in Burning Man. We got people’s bikes working again by the hundreds. The occasional dickbag would try to bring his gas powered scooter or whatever in and we’d send them packing. I remember one guy was like “I’ll just borrow your tools and do it myself” and he got thrown out.
Just to be clear, “40+ MPH” is wildly inaccurate to the point of being a strawman argument. If the e-bike the kid was on was any sort of normal – and there’s nothing in either the article about the law or the article about the collision linked from it to indicate otherwise – then it was going no more than 20 MPH, tops.
40mph is probably a bit extreme, but “20mph, tops” is also pretty low
E bike laws, terminology, and manufacturers can be kind of a wild patchwork of nonsensical bullshit but a lot of states recognize, with some degree of regulation or restrictions, what have commonly come to be called class 3 e bikes, that can go up to 28mph, and in my shopping around I’ve seen plenty that advertise that speed or even higher.
There’s a lot of imported e bikes that play fast and loose with the regulations and their quality control, and I’m sure there’s a dedicated bunch of people tinkering with their bikes to make them go faster and remove built-in restrictions, so there’s probably a lot of people zooming around at 30+MPH
One of the many reasons you don’t ride anything on the sidewalk is that you cross driveways and crosswalks too quickly to be seen by drivers. Even a standard bike should be ridden in the road, because 15 mph is fast enough to “come out of nowhere” and be hit by a car. All bikes are road vehicles.
I always ride on the side walk if there is one. I’d rather get hit by someone backing up at 5mph than someone going down the road at 50mph. And I’m always watching driveways for cars backing up.
I’d rather get hit by someone backing up at 5mph than someone going down the road at 50mph.
It’s not about cars backing out of residential driveways; it’s about cars turning onto side streets and it happens at a lot more than 5 MPH.
Cyclists being rear-ended (at 50 MPH or otherwise) while riding in the street is much less likely to happen than them being t-boned while riding on the sidewalk. You have to factor the probability into the risk, not just the severity.
it’s about cars turning onto side streets and it happens at a lot more than 5 MPH.
I have mirrors, so I check behind me for cars turning right and I can see oncoming traffic for cars turning left.
You have to factor the probability into the risk, not just the severity
My primary concern is the severity. I feel way less safe riding in the street. All it takes is a semi-truck swerving a few feet, a drunk driver not paying attention, or someone looking at their phone at the wrong moment and it’s game over for me. The stretch of my commute that I have to share the road with cars is the worst part and if I had to do that the whole way I simply wouldn’t cycle anymore.
The real problem is a lack of bike infrastructure, but until that is resolved I’m going to ride where I feel safe and that is as far away from cars as possible. And I’m not on an ebike, just a regular one. I only go 10-15 mph.
It’s because you’re exactly in their blind spot. If they’re on the street and you’re on the sidewalk next to them. They’ll run you over at the next junction, as it has happened in this case. It’s always right turns and things to the side of cars. And you’ll be exactly there when cycling on the sidewalk.
Additionally car drivers don’t anticipate fast moving things on the sidewalk. They’ll have a quick glance at the sidewalk directly before and after the junction. Because a pedestrian can only move so far in the time until they made the turn. Then they’ll watch out for other traffic on the street, signals and so on. In the meantime you’ll emerge out of nowhere on the pavement, moving at 5x the speed of anything that’s anticipated to be there and that’s going to be a problem.
I don’t know how it’s in the US. But generally you should just cycle in plain sight directly infront of them on the road. It’s difficult to miss that.
When cycling (and driving tbh) I assume everyone’s an idiot and they’re going to hit me until proven otherwise. I don’t cross a street at full speed and assume everyone’s going to see me. I make eye contact and don’t cross unless they see me and start slowing down.
Cycling directly infront of cars seems like the optimal way to generate road rage, impede traffic, and endanger your own life.
As I said I don’t know how driving is in the US. I heard it’s really bad in some places. I know it’s the way we do it here. There is just one road and cars and bicycles need to get along and share it. It’s not always easy, you’re right with that. But the sideway isn’t an option. Pedestrians and bicycles don’t mix well and there regularly are really bad accidents. And the cyclists also get killed by cars there.
There are studies. You end up having a 10x or 20x higer chance to die when cycling on the sideway by being missed by a car driver (I forgot the exact numbers). You can try and mitigate for that by really paying attention yourself, slowing down etc. Keeping track of all the cars around you. I’m not sure if you end up at the same chance to die as if you were cycling on the street. I’d hop off my bike and walk it across the junction if i were on the sideway.
Btw. is it legal to cycle on a sideway where you live?
I’m aware of the studies, but I can’t get past the uneasy sensation when a 10-ton semi truck drives by me at 50mph.
I’m not sure if it’s technically legal to cycle on the sidewalk, but I’ve seen other people on bikes do it and I’ve rode past police officers and I’ve never been stopped or told not too.
For the better part of the past 25 years I’ve been bicycling primarily in US cities. The only time I’ve been hit by a car was when I was on the sidewalk. Long story short, I thought we had made eye contact, but I think they didn’t see me because I was moving quicker than a pedestrian would.
I’ve never really felt unsafe, except for maybe in Texas where pickups would cut way too close to me. But I learned to take a whole lane, which is my right, when there were multiple lanes.
In your defense, now I live in a dense suburb and we have a 2 lane 25mph road that is an alternate route if the highway is backedup. I bike on the sidewalk there because some people fly up and down those roads, while others do the speed limit, and I’m afraid I will be missed by people weaving around. Also the sidewalk along that section I use tends to be pretty quiet, when I ride, so I rarely have to deal with pedestrians. But I’m certainly on high alert for the roads and driveways I cross.
Seconded, but not on an ebike. And still use an abundance of caution when crossing the street (I’ll even dismount and walk if I think visibility is low). I try to minimize that by finding a bike path, but you can’t always live next to a bike path.
In NYC, maniacs ride ebikes and mopeds on both the sidewalk and the street as it benefits them. Every time I walk my dog I have to dodge the fuckers going full speed down the sidewalk. And they always glare at the pedestrians like you’re the problem.
They also have a choice to follow the rules of the sidewalk they’re hopping on. Y’all are having this cars vs bikes thing and I’m happy for you but now you’re endangering pedestrians by getting onto pedestrian infrastructure without following pedestrian rules.
I hate cyclists that masquerade as pedestrians. It’s less safe for them and it’s less safe for everyone. Get your ass out into traffic and learn to take up some space. Ride defensively. Get yourself a rear view mirror. Pick the most bike friendly route. For fucks sake.
One caveat I’ll say is that depending on how fast they were going the laws should be that they should be with traffic, because if I’m driving and I look right I may not notice someone going 40+ mph on a sidewalk. But even then the law should be “Where do ebikes belong” officially
40mph is twice as fast as the max (motor assist) speed of a normal class 2 e-bike, but yeah, the real problem here is lack of proper bike infrastructure.
It is trivial to kit-build an e-bike that will do this. Hell, I have one myself, constructed out of a Warp DS2 frame.
But the difference is, I also have an M endorsement and I treat my monster bicycle as a motorcycle. The law doesn’t – that’s actually impossible in my state, so my bike falls in between a registrable motor vehicle and a bicycle. It also has turn signals, a car horn, a headlight, and working brake lights. But I also don’t ride it like a dickhead, and that includes paths set aside for non-fire-breathing bicycles, sidewalks, etc.
My city has amazing bike infrastructure: mixed use trails with no cars, bike lanes on all streets, tunnels and bridges over major thoroughfares (really it’s pretty insanely good and yes it’s in the US of fucking A).
People still ride on the sidewalks like morons. They ride the wrong direction in the bike lanes.
Bike infrastructure is essential but also not totally sufficient. You need a significant enough number of people using them that there is a culture for it and tribal sharing of knowledge around it.
I once made a left turn through a gap in the crowd downtown, then out of the ongoing crowd zips out a bike the opposite way out of nowhere. He almost hit the side of my car and of course he got mad at me, even though he was on the sidewalk which is illegal in my city, and he was riding against traffic
They were riding it on a sidewalk, through a crosswalk and someone turned into them. Of course.
One caveat I’ll say is that depending on how fast they were going the laws should be that they should be with traffic, because if I’m driving and I look right I may not notice someone going 40+ mph on a sidewalk. But even then the law should be “Where do ebikes belong” officially
Someone going 40+ MPH is doing what amounts to riding a small motorcycle down a sidewalk. That’s no longer a “bicycle” thing. Imagine the howling and pearl-clutching we would be reading if someone were caught blasting, say, a Honda Grom down a sidewalk like that. Which is already illegal, for obvious reasons.
I own an ebike and I use it on the mixed use trails in my city. Mostly I have it because I often pull my kids on a trailer bike and we have hills in town.
I fear that my riding on these trails will soon be banned because people are out there driving stupidly fast on big knobby-tired motorcycles masquerading as “e-bikes.”
There are tons of Karens pushing strollers on these trails and any election now they’re going to ban my bike.
Sad, but in a lot of places unenforceable. My city can ban whatever they want, but they don’t have the manpower to wipe after they shit. :D
I hope the Karen’s leave you alone.
Unenforced is a little different than unenforceable.
Society is unfortunately still functioning where I live.
So where exactly do you get the idea that motorcycles, apparently dirt bikes even, get mistaken for ebikes…?
There are lot of such toys on the market. They are electric. But they don’t resemble bikes in any way. I get the idea that they are mistaken for e-bikes when people ride them on our mixed use trails which are clearly marked for pedestrians and bikes only, not motor vehicles. People think anything electric is allowed. They are driving shit the same weight as a 125cc motorcycle in between pedestrians. And guess what? These vehicles go really fast so they are more dangerous than anything else on the trail, and they don’t mix into traffic well. The fools riding them are constantly weaving through passing everyone so they can GO FAST! WANNA GO FAST!
Gotcha. I hate that people will do whatever unsafe bullshit they can get away with. In my city recently we’ve had an epidemic of people buying small gasoline powered scooters that clearly are going over 40mph yet they barely slow down at stop signs. They also run every red light. I can’t step out my door without seeing this happen. They’re acting like they are bicycles and it’s bananas. Then there is also the “I’m going to ride my motorcycle at 50mph in the bike lane” people who I just want to slap. People are the worst.
Years ago I worked at a bike repair camp in Burning Man. We got people’s bikes working again by the hundreds. The occasional dickbag would try to bring his gas powered scooter or whatever in and we’d send them packing. I remember one guy was like “I’ll just borrow your tools and do it myself” and he got thrown out.
Just to be clear, “40+ MPH” is wildly inaccurate to the point of being a strawman argument. If the e-bike the kid was on was any sort of normal – and there’s nothing in either the article about the law or the article about the collision linked from it to indicate otherwise – then it was going no more than 20 MPH, tops.
40mph is probably a bit extreme, but “20mph, tops” is also pretty low
E bike laws, terminology, and manufacturers can be kind of a wild patchwork of nonsensical bullshit but a lot of states recognize, with some degree of regulation or restrictions, what have commonly come to be called class 3 e bikes, that can go up to 28mph, and in my shopping around I’ve seen plenty that advertise that speed or even higher.
There’s a lot of imported e bikes that play fast and loose with the regulations and their quality control, and I’m sure there’s a dedicated bunch of people tinkering with their bikes to make them go faster and remove built-in restrictions, so there’s probably a lot of people zooming around at 30+MPH
The vast majority of e-bikes (other than weird Chinese shit from ebay) are class 2.
Let’s not downplay how fast 20mph is on the sidewalk. When you’re expecting people to be moving at 4mph, 5 times that is ridiculously fast.
Additionally, according to your article, they are capped at 28mph. Which is stupid fast on a sidewalk.
That’s class 3. The vast majority of e-bikes are class 2.
One of the many reasons you don’t ride anything on the sidewalk is that you cross driveways and crosswalks too quickly to be seen by drivers. Even a standard bike should be ridden in the road, because 15 mph is fast enough to “come out of nowhere” and be hit by a car. All bikes are road vehicles.
I always ride on the side walk if there is one. I’d rather get hit by someone backing up at 5mph than someone going down the road at 50mph. And I’m always watching driveways for cars backing up.
It’s not about cars backing out of residential driveways; it’s about cars turning onto side streets and it happens at a lot more than 5 MPH.
Cyclists being rear-ended (at 50 MPH or otherwise) while riding in the street is much less likely to happen than them being t-boned while riding on the sidewalk. You have to factor the probability into the risk, not just the severity.
I have mirrors, so I check behind me for cars turning right and I can see oncoming traffic for cars turning left.
My primary concern is the severity. I feel way less safe riding in the street. All it takes is a semi-truck swerving a few feet, a drunk driver not paying attention, or someone looking at their phone at the wrong moment and it’s game over for me. The stretch of my commute that I have to share the road with cars is the worst part and if I had to do that the whole way I simply wouldn’t cycle anymore.
The real problem is a lack of bike infrastructure, but until that is resolved I’m going to ride where I feel safe and that is as far away from cars as possible. And I’m not on an ebike, just a regular one. I only go 10-15 mph.
You are less safe for this. You think otherwise, but you’re wrong. Sidewalk. Side. Walk.
Pavement. Pave. Ment. Ment for paves
I LOLed
Less safe how?
It’s because you’re exactly in their blind spot. If they’re on the street and you’re on the sidewalk next to them. They’ll run you over at the next junction, as it has happened in this case. It’s always right turns and things to the side of cars. And you’ll be exactly there when cycling on the sidewalk.
Additionally car drivers don’t anticipate fast moving things on the sidewalk. They’ll have a quick glance at the sidewalk directly before and after the junction. Because a pedestrian can only move so far in the time until they made the turn. Then they’ll watch out for other traffic on the street, signals and so on. In the meantime you’ll emerge out of nowhere on the pavement, moving at 5x the speed of anything that’s anticipated to be there and that’s going to be a problem.
I don’t know how it’s in the US. But generally you should just cycle in plain sight directly infront of them on the road. It’s difficult to miss that.
When cycling (and driving tbh) I assume everyone’s an idiot and they’re going to hit me until proven otherwise. I don’t cross a street at full speed and assume everyone’s going to see me. I make eye contact and don’t cross unless they see me and start slowing down.
Cycling directly infront of cars seems like the optimal way to generate road rage, impede traffic, and endanger your own life.
As I said I don’t know how driving is in the US. I heard it’s really bad in some places. I know it’s the way we do it here. There is just one road and cars and bicycles need to get along and share it. It’s not always easy, you’re right with that. But the sideway isn’t an option. Pedestrians and bicycles don’t mix well and there regularly are really bad accidents. And the cyclists also get killed by cars there.
There are studies. You end up having a 10x or 20x higer chance to die when cycling on the sideway by being missed by a car driver (I forgot the exact numbers). You can try and mitigate for that by really paying attention yourself, slowing down etc. Keeping track of all the cars around you. I’m not sure if you end up at the same chance to die as if you were cycling on the street. I’d hop off my bike and walk it across the junction if i were on the sideway.
Btw. is it legal to cycle on a sideway where you live?
I’m aware of the studies, but I can’t get past the uneasy sensation when a 10-ton semi truck drives by me at 50mph.
I’m not sure if it’s technically legal to cycle on the sidewalk, but I’ve seen other people on bikes do it and I’ve rode past police officers and I’ve never been stopped or told not too.
For the better part of the past 25 years I’ve been bicycling primarily in US cities. The only time I’ve been hit by a car was when I was on the sidewalk. Long story short, I thought we had made eye contact, but I think they didn’t see me because I was moving quicker than a pedestrian would.
I’ve never really felt unsafe, except for maybe in Texas where pickups would cut way too close to me. But I learned to take a whole lane, which is my right, when there were multiple lanes.
In your defense, now I live in a dense suburb and we have a 2 lane 25mph road that is an alternate route if the highway is backedup. I bike on the sidewalk there because some people fly up and down those roads, while others do the speed limit, and I’m afraid I will be missed by people weaving around. Also the sidewalk along that section I use tends to be pretty quiet, when I ride, so I rarely have to deal with pedestrians. But I’m certainly on high alert for the roads and driveways I cross.
Seconded, but not on an ebike. And still use an abundance of caution when crossing the street (I’ll even dismount and walk if I think visibility is low). I try to minimize that by finding a bike path, but you can’t always live next to a bike path.
In NYC, maniacs ride ebikes and mopeds on both the sidewalk and the street as it benefits them. Every time I walk my dog I have to dodge the fuckers going full speed down the sidewalk. And they always glare at the pedestrians like you’re the problem.
In other words, cyclists denied appropriate infrastructure are forced to use infrastructure for other transportation modes inappropriately.
But sure, blame the “maniacs” for having no other choice.
There are bike lanes, people are just assholes. Usually they hop on the sidewalk because they don’t want to wait at a red light.
They also have a choice to follow the rules of the sidewalk they’re hopping on. Y’all are having this cars vs bikes thing and I’m happy for you but now you’re endangering pedestrians by getting onto pedestrian infrastructure without following pedestrian rules.
Clearly you’ve never been to NYC… There’s bike lanes everywhere.
I hate cyclists that masquerade as pedestrians. It’s less safe for them and it’s less safe for everyone. Get your ass out into traffic and learn to take up some space. Ride defensively. Get yourself a rear view mirror. Pick the most bike friendly route. For fucks sake.
40mph is twice as fast as the max (motor assist) speed of a normal class 2 e-bike, but yeah, the real problem here is lack of proper bike infrastructure.
It is trivial to kit-build an e-bike that will do this. Hell, I have one myself, constructed out of a Warp DS2 frame.
But the difference is, I also have an M endorsement and I treat my monster bicycle as a motorcycle. The law doesn’t – that’s actually impossible in my state, so my bike falls in between a registrable motor vehicle and a bicycle. It also has turn signals, a car horn, a headlight, and working brake lights. But I also don’t ride it like a dickhead, and that includes paths set aside for non-fire-breathing bicycles, sidewalks, etc.
My city has amazing bike infrastructure: mixed use trails with no cars, bike lanes on all streets, tunnels and bridges over major thoroughfares (really it’s pretty insanely good and yes it’s in the US of fucking A).
People still ride on the sidewalks like morons. They ride the wrong direction in the bike lanes.
Bike infrastructure is essential but also not totally sufficient. You need a significant enough number of people using them that there is a culture for it and tribal sharing of knowledge around it.
I once made a left turn through a gap in the crowd downtown, then out of the ongoing crowd zips out a bike the opposite way out of nowhere. He almost hit the side of my car and of course he got mad at me, even though he was on the sidewalk which is illegal in my city, and he was riding against traffic