It may sound naïve, but I’m wondering if we can do something, you know, take some form of concrete preventative action, before a pedestrian is killed by someone riding an e-bike. I realize preventing a tragedy before it happens sounds radical. The preferred Canadian course of action, especially with transit issues, is to wait until someone is killed before doing anything. We don’t do anything about roads that put cyclists at risk until a bunch of cyclists are killed and even then, we often don’t do anything. We follow up the “not doing anything” with the time-honoured Canadian tradition of lamenting the fact that we didn’t do anything.
When I write “before a pedestrian is killed by someone riding an e-bike,” I refer to the “fat bikes” (the SUVs of the cycling world) ridden by delivery app couriers through our cities. I’ve seen e-bike riders speeding on sidewalks, going the wrong way on one-way streets and snaking and weaving recklessly through traffic.
I wish I had an e-bike courier “close-call” rewards card which would give me a free coffee for every tenth near-death e-bike delivery app experience I hear about. A friend recently described the wind brushing by his face as an e-bike shot past him on the sidewalk. “I would have been killed,” he said. “No doubt about it.”
E-bikes have many benefits. They are climate-friendly, low-cost and space-efficient thereby helping reduce congestion. They are also potentially lethal. In Ontario, e-bikes are allowed to reach a maximum assisted speed of 32 kilometres an hour with a maximum weight of 120 kilograms and an electric motor not exceeding 500 watts. Speed modifications are forbidden. Such regulations do not stop those determined to break them. Souped-up e-bikes routinely exceed this speed.
Opinion: With the right tools, our cities can tame problematic e-bikes
E-bike riders have already killed pedestrians in other countries. A woman was killed by an e-bike last year in New York City. This year The New York Times ran an article examining the situation with the headline: “Have E-Bikes Made New York City a ‘Nightmare?” Sooner or later an e-bike delivery rider in Canada is going to collide with a pedestrian and kill them. A woman in Toronto was already badly injured in October when an e-bike delivery rider hit her as she was ordering from a food truck.
We might want to ask why the e-bike delivery riders are in such a hurry. What motivates someone to ride like a maniac? The Guardian’s Peter Walker recently examined the trend in an article pegged to Birmingham’s bid to ban e-bikes from pedestrianized streets. “Because it’s the only way they can – more or less – make a living due to their highly precarious, gig economy, pay-per-job status, which hugely incentivizes rapid speed and long hours, both of which are much harder on a legal bike.”
While I have focused on the possibility of a pedestrian being killed by an e-bike, the majority of those killed in riding accidents are e-bike riders. In 2023, there were 30 bike deaths in New York City and of those 23 killed were riding e-bikes. A 2023 report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found that injuries related to “micromobility devices” such as e-bikes had increased 23 per cent annually since 2017 and increased nearly 21 per cent in 2022 from 2021. I’d refer to Canadian statistics but there aren’t any (see: not doing anything).
Driving Concerns: An e-bike rider hit my car. Will my insurance cover the damage?
It’s at this point that some will point out that cars are far more dangerous. I’m not disputing this. I am not absolving drivers. I’m not saying that e-bikes are more dangerous than automobiles. Saying we should cure diabetes doesn’t make you pro-cancer. I’m advocating for safety across the board.
What can we do? Well, for starters we can require e-bike riders to demonstrate a minimum level of skill and responsibility. Here are the requirements in Ontario for riding an e-bike that weighs 120 kilograms and goes 32 kilometres an hour.
- Be 16 or older
- Wear an approved bicycle or motorcycle helmet
- Keep your e-bike in good working order
- Follow the same rules of the road as other people cycling
Or, in layman’s terms:
- Be breathing
- Wear a helmet
No licence, no permit, no licence plate. Nothing.
It’s more difficult to get a public library card than it is to operate an e-bike, which is strange because no one has ever been struck and killed by someone reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. So as far as I’m concerned, if it has a motor, it should require a licence. You need a driver’s licence to drive a car or a motorcycle. You should require a licence to ride a motorized e-bike, or at the very least a vehicle permit. In the Chinese city of Shenzhen, e-bike related traffic accidents dropped by 30 per cent one year after the introduction of licence registration in 2020.
Or we can keep with tradition. There’s nothing more Canadian than doing nothing about something you’re going to wish you had done something about.