Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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It's a little sad that we need to actually say this, but:
Don't be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
Respectful debate is totally OK, criticizing a product is fine, but being verbally abusive will not be tolerated.
Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.
I bought a new helmet for my downhill biking. It's almost lighter than some road bike helmets and has great air flow. Wear a helmet, people. Your noggin is precious and cars and trucks are aiming for us.
Good on you man.
MIPS or bust!
I can't understand why people refuse to wear helmets when riding.
I had a professor in university who got in an accident while not wearing a helmet. He went over the handlebars and landed on his head. It happened years before I met him, but he would regularly get crippling migraines as a consequence, and he would plead with his students to never ride without wearing a helmet.
A friend's dad fell off his bike hardly moving and had severe brain damage and was a shadow of his former self. Then died young. It doesn't take much at all. I will never not wear a helmet on a bike.
95% of delivery riders in the UK don't wear helmets. Ask them
I fell on my bike onto the pavement going 12mph. That's it. Not very fast whatsoever compared to some cyclists.
I ended up busting 4 ribs in half and fractured my scapula (shoulder blade). I was wearing my helmet w/front visor thank God because it's amazing how quickly your head smacks that concrete. I went face first too and the visor + helmet completely spared me any head trauma.
Never felt pain like that in my life. The agony of getting loaded onto a gurney with that many busted bones isn't something I wish to repeat.
Head injuries are no joke, when I ride my ebike I use a helmet with a chin bar too because I can barely afford an ebike that isn't bottom of the barrel so I know I can't afford to get my teeth replaced.
During that same period, the number of recorded e-bike riders seeking medical attention for head trauma increased nearly 50-fold to just shy of 8,000 visits in 2022.
So.... Number of ebike riders rose by 50x since 2017. Makes sense, but doesn't mean it's more dangerous or anything to do with helmets
Are you really calling source on the fact that:
Biking without a helmet is dangerous.
Biking at 30 mph without a helmet is more dangerous.
?
Wearing a helmet increases your risk of injury: https://road.cc/content/news/268605-wearing-cycle-helmet-may-increase-risk-injury-says-new-research
Paradoxically, wearing a helemt makes people feel safer doing more dangerous things, so it increases the actual risk. However, the existence of cars without sufficient infrastructure makes biking significantly more dangerous, reguarless of everything anything the bike rider is doing. So in countries with functional bike infrastructure, like the Netherlands, people don't wear helmets because it's safer not to. In dysfunctional countries, like the US, people have to wear helmets.
Faster biking without a helmet is obviously dangerous, I don't know if this is also related to cars. In the Netherlands, eBikes with acceleators are considered motorcycles and require helmets but eBikes that are just pedal assist are considered regular bikes and people generally use the assist to go farther not faster.
People who wear helmets bike more and therefore have a greater risk of getting hit by a car.
Dutchies wear no helmets because we're stubborn that way. There's more injuries compared to our neighbor Denmark where more than half of people wear helmets.
With the advent of eBikes there's been a huge upsurge in cycling related injury, certainly among the elderly. However the mental ownership of bikes makes us as unwilling to wear a helmet as stereotypical southern us state males were unwilling to adapt the seatbelt.
Inverse survivorship bias 'i never needed one' prevails. Only one in ten wears a helmet and if you bring up this topic in conversation it gets really uncomfortable soon...
I would call you a sweet summer child, but I've stood in your shoes exactly. A while ago I had a serious bike accident because I slipped from the wet pedals and landed head first on the concrete. Doc in the ER told me I was able to walk it off because I was wearing a helmet (which now had a serious crack).
I posted online about it and while a lot of people are logged the story with their own various tales, it was also the day I learned about the very vocal minority of bike riders who completely detest helmets. many of them go so far as to say that helmets are actively dangerous.
Their arguments are mostly variations on
There's biking and there's biking.
In the Netherlands, for example, people wear helmets if they're doing bike sports like road racing or BMX.
But if they're just cruising down the street on their granny bike to get groceries, they don't bother because that's fairly safe.
It's rather like the need for a seatbelt on the highway, vs the need for a seatbelt on a 25 mph neighborhood street.
That’s changing. Electric bikes are involved in many more accidents now, and it’s advised to wear a helmet if you’re young or older (I’ve lived here 25 years now and you can see the changes).
Many more accidents than what?
More accidents than traditional bikes per passenger mile, or passenger hour?
More accidents on ebikes than 5 years ago on account of more people buying them?
It would be interesting to know whether the increase in head trauma stems from single accidents being inherently more dangerous on e-bikes and that being the increase, or if e-bikes make biking more accessible bringing out less experienced bikers on the road where they are subsequently struck by cars.
It's not possible to see the study without a subscription, so it's hard to tell.
I'd not be surprised to see the latter being the case though, cars are the biggest predator when it comes to bicyclists.
ebikes ride about 10mph faster than on a bicycle.
higher speeds is the issue. combined with the inexpereince and lack of physical skill and health of ebike riders. recipe for injuries.
that and most ebike riders are much older. you don't see 22yo college grads on them, you see middle aged adults and retirees, because they cost $2000+ not $200.
Are you claiming this on intuition or on some actual statistics?
Also, on account of your use of mph, is this relevant only for the U.S? In the EU, e-bikes are pedelec only and capped at 25 km/h, which I don't think is 16 km/h more than the average bicyclist puts out.
Yeah, speed is a killer. A doubling in speed represents a quadrupling of kinetic energy. So, while a 100 kg man-bike moving at 10mph (~16 kph) has (0.51004.444...^2) (0.5mV^2 for kinetic energy, m is mass in kg, V is velocity in m/s) 987 joules of energy, a 100 kg man-bike at 20 mph (0.51008.888...^2) has almost 4000 joules of energy.
Yeah everyone wearing a helmet looks fucking dumb. You know what's more dumb, brain damage. Literally.
Wear helmets people, they're super cool. What's not cool? Hitting your head on concrete, lights out, no waking up.
"Head trauma cases are through the roof" is a weird way to put it. It didn't get that much more dangerous to use an E-bike but usage is through the roof.
Overall increased bike usage makes bikes safer for the average user so it wouldn't surprise me if the "head injury per non-professional rider" would be going down.
I recently got an e-bikes. It goes up to 20mph and honestly scares the shit out of me sometimes. I have a normal bike helmet but am looking into something a bit beefier, between a bike and motorcycle helmet
I don't think people understand: At 20mph that's athlete sprinting speed. Imagine going all out "impending asthma attack and you don't even have asthma" full sprint down a hill then tripping on a curb
If you think your head and its contents are important, wear a properly adjusted helmet. Every time.
Wonder how many of those injuries are on rentals? Veo rental e-bikes are very prevalent around these parts. Have never seen anyone riding them with a helmet. If you own an e-bike and don't wear one, that's on you. But rental ones don't even have a way to provide you with one.
OTOH, most rental e-scooters have a helmet carrier box on the back. It unlocks when you go to pick one up with the app.
It's probably door dash, uber eats, etc. - our city is quite swarming with "gig economy" riders who have standardised on relatively high speed electric bikes.
The combination of time pressure and the variety of places where they need to ride (busy pedestrianised city centre areas, park paths, roads with cars) probably doesn't help the safety.
They are also out riding way more hours each day than someone commuting or on rental bikes.
Paramedics treat pedal bicycle accidents the same as a car crash. An electric bike can go much faster and cause more damage.
Helmets and gloves.
Yeah because there's all these rental e-scooters and bikes in densely populated urban areas, but they don't come with a helmet.
Even the people I see on these e-bikes look like alcoholics that lost their license. And they drive opposing traffic. I talked to one guy, who was drunk at 2pm, and told him he should ride WITH traffic, and he said no, because then he can't see the cars coming.
I mean...
Perhaps I'm just ignorant but what's the difference between an electric bike and a motorcycle? Is it just the speed or is it still a different class of vehicle?
There are two major types of e-bikes: pedelec, and scooter style.
Scooter style rides more like a severely underpowered motorcycle. Different jurisdictions have differing laws on what the maximum speed and power output of such a bike can be; in most places the maximum speed is 32km/h (25mph) with a maximum power output of typically either 350W or 500W. These bikes have pedals, but they’re intended to be ridden off power, with pedalling only needed in the case where you need extra power to get up a hill. These bike typically have bad ergonomics for pedalling all the time, and without pedalling may just grind to a halt on a moderate to steep incline.
The other style is pedelec, and these bikes typically look much more like a standard bicycle. These bikes typically have much smaller batteries than their scooter-style brethren, as instead of being powered mostly from the battery these bikes are powered primarily from pedalling, with the battery and motor only existing to provide extra boost when going uphill.
At least here in Canada, they are considered a different class of vehicle as their power and maximum powered speed would make them dangerous to ride in a situation where you’re in otherwise mixed traffic. Pedelecs are best considered normal bicycles; scooter style is typically way too underpowered to be ridden as you would a motorcycle.
(Note however that at least here in British Columbia, if you remove the pedals from an e-bike it is treated as if it were a motorcycle: the bike will suddenly require licensing and insurance, even though it’s still exactly the same power output as it was with the pedals installed. So don’t take your pedals off, even if you live somewhere almost completely flat where you never need to use them. And again — laws on e-bikes differ by jurisdiction, so check your local laws and bylaws as appropriate).
HTH!
Motorcycles are more likely to get a ticket when they blast down a sidewalk at top speed.