If you're a fit cyclist, riding on decent surfaces, respect the safety speed limit and don't have to ride around pedestrians staring at phone with headphones randomly walking into your path.
Even in countries with good biking infrastructure ebike accident rate is comparable to motorcycles - because for the most part they are shitty motorcycles (brakes, tires, forks/frame) with the safety advantage of being limited to very low speed (which many people circumvent).
Strapping a child seat to a motorcycle would get me arrested/child taken by social services - bit strapping one on a ebike makes me hip.
Well, sort of. If you go by count of any incident regardless of severity, sure. But stratify the results and the picture becomes very different. Motorcycles are far more likely to be seriously injured in an at-fault crash, whereas cyclists are far more likely to be seriously injured if the other party is a car and at fault.
Ebikes seem like bikes but they let you go way faster than you would with a bio bike - I don't think it's responsible treating them as such and using child seats or allowing anyone to ride them without training/helmets.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/06/02/why-helmets-arent-the...
It's not a bad idea to wear one in any case in my opinion, but it really is about the infrastructure. Here's the same author of the piece being discussed explaining why he doesn't wear a helmet much:
https://velo.outsideonline.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stop...
But it's not something I'd do, or support as a public policy.
His helmet was split in two, and it messed up his shoulder pretty badly and needed months of PT, but no neurological damage that could be detected.
This is in Silicon Valley, he had moved from the UK a year or two prior.
> Overall, the report concludes that the main culprit in all bicycle (regular and electric) injuries was the rider’s own behavior (44 percent) — a steering error, for example — while 32 percent was road conditions. And the majority of these accidents affected only the rider. Two-thirds of the 110,000 traffic victims treated in Dutch hospitals last year were cyclists, VeiligheidNL says. The survey was conducted with hospitalized riders between July 2020 and June 2021.
Even in countries with top biking infrastructure ebikes are significanly more dangerous.
Again - if I suggested I drove my kid to kindergarten on a motorcycle I'd have social services on my door. When I'm exposing them to a similar risk on an ebike that's OK ?
Ebikes are not bycicles.
The stats from the article you cite say that eBikes are 1.6 times more dangerous, whereas road bikes come in at 2.0 and mountain bikes at 3 for mountain bikes.
So in the grand scheme of things, that extra speed has a bit of a cost but less than some kinds of completely human-powered bikes, and it's nowhere near the cost the lack of infrastructure in the US that is absolutely lethal.
Look at the pedestrian death rates in the US:
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-s...
It's kind of difficult to victim blame people just going about their business walking. They're getting killed because of cars and poor infrastructure.
We are quite happy with the bike though. It has replaced a bunch of car trips for us, and among other things, I do most of the shopping for our family of four with it.
I am pretty comfortable getting around with a regular bike. I'm a fit cyclist. But the eBike is a step up:
* I can sit a person on the back of it. Even my wife if we're not going far (she's petite).
* I can carry quite a bit of groceries with it and not break a sweat.
* If it is hot outside, I use more pedal assist and get a pleasant cooling effect. In summer I'd much rather hop on my eBike than get in the hot car, as the eBike provides an instant breeze, whereas the car's AC takes some time.
* If it is cold outside, I can layer up a lot more on the eBike. If I start to warm up and feel like I might sweat some, I can use more pedal assist.
* I can cruise up hills, even on the hottest days, without showing up sweaty.
* It is, of course, faster than a regular bike. I like riding bikes and enjoy spending time on them, but sometimes you have to get somewhere quickly.
As others are saying, outside of a few issues with DIY bike assembly, the main issue with eBike safety is automobiles and especially the huge, heavy, high ones that have proliferated in the US in recent years.
We know how to do safer bike infrastructure. There are great examples in other countries that have pioneered it. Whether we want to make it safer or not is a policy choice.