Leroy N. Soetoro
2023-11-16 20:27:52 UTC
https://nypost.com/2023/09/24/death-toll-shows-time-to-end-e-cycles/
Early this month, after more than 10 years of operation, New Yorks Citi
Bike bicycle-share program marked a grim milestone: the first-ever death
of a pedestrian hit by a Citi Bike rider.
The cyclist wasnt riding one of the traditional blue-pedal bikes when he
allegedly hit and killed 69-year-old Priscilla Loke, but rather an
electric Citi Bike.
Lokes death is yet another reminder that battery-powered electric bikes
and their new cousins, gas-powered mopeds are not bicycles but fast-
moving motorized vehicles.
Those vehicles proliferation on New Yorks dense streets, encouraged by
supposed safe-streets advocates and city government, is reversing more
than a decades progress in making New Yorks streets more hospitable to
pedestrians and traditional pedal cyclists.
Police are still investigating the details of the Sept. 5 Lower East Side
crash that killed Loke, but two videos give us hints. Loke, after waiting
near the curb, steps into the intersection to cross the street; the man on
the electric Citi Bike plows into her. Just before the crash, its not
clear who has the light.
But a stopped car at the intersection perpendicular to Loke, and the fact
that she seems to be waiting for something to change before stepping out
to walk, is circumstantial evidence, at least, that she has the go-ahead
to cross.
At any rate, even if the cyclist had the light, safe-streets advocates,
who champion the freedom to walk and cycle safe from car and truck
crashes, have (rightly) argued for decades that the person controlling a
heavier, faster vehicle must yield to a person on foot.
Rather than yielding, this cyclist crashed into a woman who should have
been clearly visible in the fully unobstructed bike lane.
Two weeks after this fatality, an e-cyclist who witnesses said was going
in the wrong direction hit and critically injured another 69-year-old
woman near the United Nations.
In that case, the cyclist fled the scene; in the crash that killed Loke,
the cyclist stopped briefly to alert police but left the scene soon
afterward, and police are now looking for him.
What we do know is this: Since New York state and the city legalized e-
bikes in early 2020, e-bikes have made New Yorks streets meaner.
No ordinary 2-wheelers
As e-bikes and gas-powered mopeds have become ubiquitous, the number of
people killed by them has soared.
This year, Streetsblog reports, e-bike or moped riders have killed three
pedestrians. Official data are murkier, as New York City unhelpfully lumps
together pedestrian deaths caused by traditional pedal cyclists,
historically rare, and pedestrian deaths caused by e-cyclists.
Last year, the city reported, bicyclists (including e-cyclists) killed
three pedestrians; a fourth pedestrian was killed by a moped or similar
device. (These data dont include pedestrians killed by traditional
motorcyclists.)
In 2021, two pedestrians were killed by bicyclists, and a third was killed
by a moped. In 2020, no pedestrian was killed by either a cyclist or a
moped driver.
That makes 10 deaths in less than three years caused by drivers of two-
wheeled vehicles (again, not including motorcycles) a massive increase
in fatalities not caused by cars, trucks or motorcycles. Through 2020, it
had taken 13 years for 10 pedestrians to die under the wheels of
bicyclists, e-cyclists, or mopeds, fewer than one per year.
The livable-streets movement is minimizing and deflecting in response to
this uptick in danger. The movement has been focused on cars and trucks
for so long and, until recently, rightly so that it cant or wont see
the new danger coming from two wheels.
Thousands more on streets
Streetsblog, an advocacy publication that favors reducing street space for
cars and trucks in favor of everyone else, used Lokes death as an
opportunity to remind readers that despite a perception that New York
City streets are a Wild West because of rogue cyclists, a minuscule
number of fatalities and injuries are caused by bike riders. . . . 95
percent of fatalities and 99 percent of injuries are caused by the drivers
of cars and trucks.
Going from an average of fewer than one death per year to an average of
between three and four over the past three years is not minuscule.
Anyone who walks, cycles (on a regular bicycle) or drives on the streets
of New York can see that the proliferation of e-bikes in the past 2.5
years has created new dangers and anxiety.
Food-delivery apps have added tens of thousands of e-bikes to city
streets, and their couriers, under pressure to pick up and drop off their
wares quickly, disobey stop signs, red lights, and one-way signage; they
also ride on sidewalks.
Whats more, because cheap e-bike batteries have proven deadly bombs,
killing at least 23 people in fires since 2021, delivery workers have
increasingly switched to gas-powered mopeds. (The state doesnt require
licensing or registration for e-bikes.
It does require licensing and registration for gas-powered mopeds without
license plates, but neither the NYPD nor civilian transportation officials
are keeping unregistered vehicles driven by unlicensed operators off the
streets.)
The city theoretically limits e-bike speeds to 25 mph, the default speed
limit for all vehicles. But owners illegally modify the bikes to go
faster.
And e-bikes are heavier than traditional bikes, meaning the impact of a
crash, for a pedestrian, is greater. The new reality on the street, then,
is that pedestrians and regular cyclists must contend with heavier
vehicles traveling at high speeds.
Rider inexperience
E-bike- and moped-driver inexperience compounds the dangers associated
with these vehicles weight and speed. Electric Citi Bikes theoretically
dont exceed 18 mph (though, riding downhill, they can).
But many Citi Bike riders have no experience driving a motor vehicle or a
motorcycle and do not understand that moving 18 mph is dangerous to
themselves and to pedestrians.
A traditional light-weight pedal bicycle on a sidewalk is a nuisance; a
heavy, fast-moving e-bicycle or moped on a sidewalk is a potentially
deadly weapon.
The city did not design sidewalk sight lines for pedestrians to dodge
vehicles moving as fast as motor vehicles.
Streetsblogs insistence on focusing solely on cars and trucks is
especially misplaced given that pedestrian deaths caused by traditional
motor vehicles, though still too high compared with other global cities,
arent rising.
This year, through mid-September, 64 pedestrians have died in the city
overall, according to city transportation department data, down from 75
year-to-date last year and 86 the year before.
This years toll is on pace to match the pre-pandemic low, set in 2017. In
all of 2022, 116 pedestrians died in crashes with trucks, cars or
traditional motorcycles; in 2021, the figure was 123, and in 2020 an
aberrant year, with traffic greatly reduced amid the pandemic the figure
was 94. Even leaving out 2020, the annual average between 2021 and 2023 is
likely to be below the three-year average from 2017 to 2019 (115).
The goal, of course, should be to set a record low every year, as with
annual murders. But this trend was, and is, going in the right direction,
albeit too slowly and choppily.
Decades of street redesign, lower speed limits and camera enforcement
action against reckless car and truck drivers, all encouraged by the
livable-streets movement, have paid off.
The reckless use of motorized two-wheeled vehicles is the one new factor
contributing to the reversal of that progress.
Those vehicles have also discouraged traditional pedal cyclists,
particularly female cyclists.
The percentage of female commuting cyclists plateaued in 2018, at less
than half the rate of male cyclists, after more than a decade of growth.
A major goal of the livable-streets movement until recently was to
encourage more women to bicycle, but it has been largely silent as fast-
moving, wrong-way male e-cyclists and moped drivers who commandeer bike
lanes scare female riders off the streets.
This new discomfort isnt just female intuition: Riders on two-wheeled
devices are dying in record numbers.
This year, to date, 23 cyclists (including e-cyclists) have died, the
highest in at least a decade, and 15 additional people on devices such as
mopeds have died, a category of fatality that didnt even exist three
years ago.
Paving way for trouble
Traditionally, more cyclists on the street have meant greater safety in
numbers, as car and truck drivers grow accustomed to looking out for them,
but the high speed of motorized two-wheelers is now counteracting this
benefit.
E-bike advocates will argue that more crowded and chaotic bike lanes mean
the city should build wider bike lanes.
But it is not clear that it is good public policy to build superhighways
for gas-powered mopeds the real-world result, in todays enforcement
climate, of such an approach. And since when did high speed become the
overriding goal of people on two-wheeled vehicles, supposedly interested
in an alternative to cars?
E-bike advocates will argue that the bikes have benefits, such as allowing
older cyclists and people with weak knees to ride.
That is true but irrelevant in the real-world New York City context, where
the costs far outweigh the benefits. Theres no evidence, for example,
that the proliferation of e-bikes has lured people out of cars, thus
reducing traffic.
And with gas-powered mopeds now supplementing delivery e-bikes, the
already tenuous argument that these vehicles are environmentally friendly
has become laughable.
Nor is there evidence that e-bikes have calmed traffic, making streets
safer and more pleasant. As livable-streets advocates have long argued,
the presence of pedestrians and traditional cyclists helps to slow car and
truck traffic, making streets safer for everyone.
But car and truck drivers who must look in all directions for fast-moving
e-cyclists and moped drivers arent made calmer and more attentive.
They are made more anxious, frustrated and angry and so are the rest of
us as we attempt to walk or pedal around town.
Reprinted with permission from City Journal
--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.
Early this month, after more than 10 years of operation, New Yorks Citi
Bike bicycle-share program marked a grim milestone: the first-ever death
of a pedestrian hit by a Citi Bike rider.
The cyclist wasnt riding one of the traditional blue-pedal bikes when he
allegedly hit and killed 69-year-old Priscilla Loke, but rather an
electric Citi Bike.
Lokes death is yet another reminder that battery-powered electric bikes
and their new cousins, gas-powered mopeds are not bicycles but fast-
moving motorized vehicles.
Those vehicles proliferation on New Yorks dense streets, encouraged by
supposed safe-streets advocates and city government, is reversing more
than a decades progress in making New Yorks streets more hospitable to
pedestrians and traditional pedal cyclists.
Police are still investigating the details of the Sept. 5 Lower East Side
crash that killed Loke, but two videos give us hints. Loke, after waiting
near the curb, steps into the intersection to cross the street; the man on
the electric Citi Bike plows into her. Just before the crash, its not
clear who has the light.
But a stopped car at the intersection perpendicular to Loke, and the fact
that she seems to be waiting for something to change before stepping out
to walk, is circumstantial evidence, at least, that she has the go-ahead
to cross.
At any rate, even if the cyclist had the light, safe-streets advocates,
who champion the freedom to walk and cycle safe from car and truck
crashes, have (rightly) argued for decades that the person controlling a
heavier, faster vehicle must yield to a person on foot.
Rather than yielding, this cyclist crashed into a woman who should have
been clearly visible in the fully unobstructed bike lane.
Two weeks after this fatality, an e-cyclist who witnesses said was going
in the wrong direction hit and critically injured another 69-year-old
woman near the United Nations.
In that case, the cyclist fled the scene; in the crash that killed Loke,
the cyclist stopped briefly to alert police but left the scene soon
afterward, and police are now looking for him.
What we do know is this: Since New York state and the city legalized e-
bikes in early 2020, e-bikes have made New Yorks streets meaner.
No ordinary 2-wheelers
As e-bikes and gas-powered mopeds have become ubiquitous, the number of
people killed by them has soared.
This year, Streetsblog reports, e-bike or moped riders have killed three
pedestrians. Official data are murkier, as New York City unhelpfully lumps
together pedestrian deaths caused by traditional pedal cyclists,
historically rare, and pedestrian deaths caused by e-cyclists.
Last year, the city reported, bicyclists (including e-cyclists) killed
three pedestrians; a fourth pedestrian was killed by a moped or similar
device. (These data dont include pedestrians killed by traditional
motorcyclists.)
In 2021, two pedestrians were killed by bicyclists, and a third was killed
by a moped. In 2020, no pedestrian was killed by either a cyclist or a
moped driver.
That makes 10 deaths in less than three years caused by drivers of two-
wheeled vehicles (again, not including motorcycles) a massive increase
in fatalities not caused by cars, trucks or motorcycles. Through 2020, it
had taken 13 years for 10 pedestrians to die under the wheels of
bicyclists, e-cyclists, or mopeds, fewer than one per year.
The livable-streets movement is minimizing and deflecting in response to
this uptick in danger. The movement has been focused on cars and trucks
for so long and, until recently, rightly so that it cant or wont see
the new danger coming from two wheels.
Thousands more on streets
Streetsblog, an advocacy publication that favors reducing street space for
cars and trucks in favor of everyone else, used Lokes death as an
opportunity to remind readers that despite a perception that New York
City streets are a Wild West because of rogue cyclists, a minuscule
number of fatalities and injuries are caused by bike riders. . . . 95
percent of fatalities and 99 percent of injuries are caused by the drivers
of cars and trucks.
Going from an average of fewer than one death per year to an average of
between three and four over the past three years is not minuscule.
Anyone who walks, cycles (on a regular bicycle) or drives on the streets
of New York can see that the proliferation of e-bikes in the past 2.5
years has created new dangers and anxiety.
Food-delivery apps have added tens of thousands of e-bikes to city
streets, and their couriers, under pressure to pick up and drop off their
wares quickly, disobey stop signs, red lights, and one-way signage; they
also ride on sidewalks.
Whats more, because cheap e-bike batteries have proven deadly bombs,
killing at least 23 people in fires since 2021, delivery workers have
increasingly switched to gas-powered mopeds. (The state doesnt require
licensing or registration for e-bikes.
It does require licensing and registration for gas-powered mopeds without
license plates, but neither the NYPD nor civilian transportation officials
are keeping unregistered vehicles driven by unlicensed operators off the
streets.)
The city theoretically limits e-bike speeds to 25 mph, the default speed
limit for all vehicles. But owners illegally modify the bikes to go
faster.
And e-bikes are heavier than traditional bikes, meaning the impact of a
crash, for a pedestrian, is greater. The new reality on the street, then,
is that pedestrians and regular cyclists must contend with heavier
vehicles traveling at high speeds.
Rider inexperience
E-bike- and moped-driver inexperience compounds the dangers associated
with these vehicles weight and speed. Electric Citi Bikes theoretically
dont exceed 18 mph (though, riding downhill, they can).
But many Citi Bike riders have no experience driving a motor vehicle or a
motorcycle and do not understand that moving 18 mph is dangerous to
themselves and to pedestrians.
A traditional light-weight pedal bicycle on a sidewalk is a nuisance; a
heavy, fast-moving e-bicycle or moped on a sidewalk is a potentially
deadly weapon.
The city did not design sidewalk sight lines for pedestrians to dodge
vehicles moving as fast as motor vehicles.
Streetsblogs insistence on focusing solely on cars and trucks is
especially misplaced given that pedestrian deaths caused by traditional
motor vehicles, though still too high compared with other global cities,
arent rising.
This year, through mid-September, 64 pedestrians have died in the city
overall, according to city transportation department data, down from 75
year-to-date last year and 86 the year before.
This years toll is on pace to match the pre-pandemic low, set in 2017. In
all of 2022, 116 pedestrians died in crashes with trucks, cars or
traditional motorcycles; in 2021, the figure was 123, and in 2020 an
aberrant year, with traffic greatly reduced amid the pandemic the figure
was 94. Even leaving out 2020, the annual average between 2021 and 2023 is
likely to be below the three-year average from 2017 to 2019 (115).
The goal, of course, should be to set a record low every year, as with
annual murders. But this trend was, and is, going in the right direction,
albeit too slowly and choppily.
Decades of street redesign, lower speed limits and camera enforcement
action against reckless car and truck drivers, all encouraged by the
livable-streets movement, have paid off.
The reckless use of motorized two-wheeled vehicles is the one new factor
contributing to the reversal of that progress.
Those vehicles have also discouraged traditional pedal cyclists,
particularly female cyclists.
The percentage of female commuting cyclists plateaued in 2018, at less
than half the rate of male cyclists, after more than a decade of growth.
A major goal of the livable-streets movement until recently was to
encourage more women to bicycle, but it has been largely silent as fast-
moving, wrong-way male e-cyclists and moped drivers who commandeer bike
lanes scare female riders off the streets.
This new discomfort isnt just female intuition: Riders on two-wheeled
devices are dying in record numbers.
This year, to date, 23 cyclists (including e-cyclists) have died, the
highest in at least a decade, and 15 additional people on devices such as
mopeds have died, a category of fatality that didnt even exist three
years ago.
Paving way for trouble
Traditionally, more cyclists on the street have meant greater safety in
numbers, as car and truck drivers grow accustomed to looking out for them,
but the high speed of motorized two-wheelers is now counteracting this
benefit.
E-bike advocates will argue that more crowded and chaotic bike lanes mean
the city should build wider bike lanes.
But it is not clear that it is good public policy to build superhighways
for gas-powered mopeds the real-world result, in todays enforcement
climate, of such an approach. And since when did high speed become the
overriding goal of people on two-wheeled vehicles, supposedly interested
in an alternative to cars?
E-bike advocates will argue that the bikes have benefits, such as allowing
older cyclists and people with weak knees to ride.
That is true but irrelevant in the real-world New York City context, where
the costs far outweigh the benefits. Theres no evidence, for example,
that the proliferation of e-bikes has lured people out of cars, thus
reducing traffic.
And with gas-powered mopeds now supplementing delivery e-bikes, the
already tenuous argument that these vehicles are environmentally friendly
has become laughable.
Nor is there evidence that e-bikes have calmed traffic, making streets
safer and more pleasant. As livable-streets advocates have long argued,
the presence of pedestrians and traditional cyclists helps to slow car and
truck traffic, making streets safer for everyone.
But car and truck drivers who must look in all directions for fast-moving
e-cyclists and moped drivers arent made calmer and more attentive.
They are made more anxious, frustrated and angry and so are the rest of
us as we attempt to walk or pedal around town.
Reprinted with permission from City Journal
--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.