My regular bicycle dawn ride on the Inwood park, Manhattan bicycle path pits me against mopeds, e bikes, and the increasingly more frequent unlicensed motorcycles. Add joggers who insist on wearing ear buds that block out any sounds, and you have an active combat zone.To add insult to injury, the paths themselves are peppered with barricaded sinkholes un repaired for five years now.
Helmet ?
Absolutely!
As a semi-regular (formerly daily) user of that particular bike path, I’ve been wondering when this was going to happen. I’m selfishly glad that I wasn’t on the bridge when it did.
Even before e-bikes exploded onto the scene, there were times of day when that bike path was distinctly scary with nothing but bikes on it. The prime time for a pile-up would probably be around 5PM, when you have two continuous lines of bikes going in opposite directions with about three feet of separation between them, and the homeward-bound Brooklynites are going fast on the downslope. Now add the one inevitable guy (19 times out of 20 it’s a guy) who comes down the middle at speed because things aren’t moving fast enough for his tastes. Then let someone drift just a little out of line and, well, you do the math.
With electric CitiBikes and ebikes of all shapes and sizes, plus the occasional scofflaws on electric motorcycles and gasoline-powered vehicles (I see you people, and you’re not fooling anyone) and the mean speed on that path has definitely increased. Not surprising that the laws of physics eventually came to collect their toll.
Incidentally, the person worst hurt in Thursday’s crash was a delivery rider. I don’t actually feel the hate for delivery riders that a lot of my fellow New Yorkers do. In my experience, if you’re prepared to overlook some riding on the sidewalk in the final section of their journey, they’re mostly fairly considerate road users. Yes, they move a bit faster than pedal cyclists, but they’re working stiffs who just want to get the job done without getting in a wreck (because their employer isn’t going to pay their hospital bills) or doing anything to attract the attention of the NYPD (because they’re mostly Asian or Hispanic, and the cops will take any excuse to fuck with them). It’s not in their interests to be reckless or dangerous. There are exceptions, but by and large delivery riders don’t scare me the same way some other two-wheeled road users do. And certainly not the way car drivers do. When I die on the street, chances are it won’t be because I crossed spokes with a delivery guy on an ebike; it’ll be because I got my internal organs crushed by a hit from a shiny black land-barge with Jersey plates whose driver was busy texting while he turned right on red.
this is one item that casey made on those dangers…
All that to say that he wouldn’t actually report the parking scofflaws, even if he’d be paid for it?
I still don’t like the delivery riders on full on light motorcycles, I have many fewer problems with deliveristas on true ebikes. F = ma and all, and the mopeds are heavy.
What I do not understand is why one of these below needs a licence and one does not. Both should.
Similar discussion, here.
Even before legalization, delivery riders on throttle-powered 25 mph e-bikes were ubiquitous in NYC. A law that didn’t legalize them would have been a completely futile exercise.
They couldn’t have been legalised with a driver’s licence requirement? 
The energy source should make no difference to legalities - just the speed/power limits/capabilities.
One problem is that in many people’s eyes, small e-vehicles are neither fish nor fowl. They have the same approximate footprint as their non motorized counterparts, but go faster quicker, and require a somewhat different set of handling skills. You might think it doesn’t matter if you’re on an e-bike or pedal bike, but casually whipping through pedestrians or along a bike lane at 35 mph is not the same experience as being under your own power.
Though I’ve come out defensive in these threads, I will admit a pet peeve with the larger mooeds, and that’s when they don’t “pick a lane a stick to it.” They have a tendency to alternate willy-nilly between acting like a car and acting like a bike as it suits them without consideration. I’m on an e-scooter in the bike lane, ans try my damndest to be courteous and some of these swerving jerkos do give the rrst of us a bad name. I also agree with @angusm, the delivery riders can be a bit harried, but are not the true bad actors when it comes to mopeds rudeness.
My 2c is that Denver’s traffic code/rules for bikes allow riding on sidewalks within a city block of where one started to ride, or one’s destination, so long as one diligently yields to pedestrians and (if you had a speed gun on you) keep speed to 6 mph or below. Also allows you to ride contraflow if on a one-way street. This is eminently reasonable. Also kind of what I practice within NYC so long as the sidewalk is not typically busy, e.g., by my building.
New York State has classes for E-Bikes in terms of registration and insurance. Basically if the top speed is under 25 MPH, it is classified like a pedal bike. Over that and its considered a “limited class motorcycle” requiring insurance and registration.
Insurance only covers injuries and damage to others. Riders are basically screwed, due to inherent actuarial risk of riding a 2 wheeled motor vehicle.
Its a big deal for auto insurance companies. Part of my job has included how accident claims in NYC handle e-bikes. The laws are vague and largely untested in courts, but basically work against injury claims of riders.
Cops were confiscating them and mod shops operated a black market. Legalizing them benefitted owners.
Yeah, I saw that posted above, but wasn’t yet aware of it. So enforcement is really the only issue. Too bad the largest police force on the planet can’t spare anyone to actually protect pedestrians and cyclists.
As an occasional cyclist (used to be daily when I worked in central Oxford) I bloody hate e-scooters. I understand the attraction of a new mode of local transport faster than walking and less effort than cycling. The issue for me is that the UK hasn’t in 100 years solved the problem of having cars, pedestrians and bikes alongside each other, so adding another transport into that volatile mix seems wantonly dangerous.
They are being squeezed to the point that some of them play chicken with cars at red lights, just to save the time and make a few more deliveries per day.
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