Ultimately, it’s not the technology that injures people, it’s the person operating it. An increase in numbers cycling means an increase in idiots cycling. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done about this, to be honest. I’m not sure that legislation is the answer. It’s not like traffic laws have eradicated car accidents or dangerous driving. Perhaps we should be at least grateful that idiots only have the power of an e-bike at their disposal and not a car.
As an aside, why is there so much clamour for speed limiters in e-bikes, but not in cars? I can’t think of a good reason why car speeds aren’t mechanically capped.
I can’t think of a good reason why car speeds aren’t mechanically capped.
There are countries that limit the top speed of cars. Japanese motorcycles used to be limited (still are?). Unfortunately, these limits are many times faster than would be needed to obliterate a pedestrian. I think cars should include some kind of dynamic governor that limits speed in certain areas. City governments could put out maps of the city center which is capped at 30km/h for example. The car’s gps would know it’s in that region and reduce the cars acceleration in that region. This would drastically cut down pedestrian deaths but there’s no political will behind directly intruding on people driving. Plus it would get messy with edge cases. What happens if a highway goes through downtown and my car thinks I’m a block over for a second while I’m going highway speeds?
Well, I agree with you about the dynamic governor. And I think that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Not only could it potentially reduce fatal accidents, but it also discourages people from driving in urban areas. The case you mentioned with the highway, well, I think a highway has no business being anywhere near where people have to be. Besides, the I’m sure the tech exists when it comes to guiding missiles or some other military atrocity, why can’t we use tech to actually protect people for a change?
The lack of will is disappointing, but not surprising at all.
I agree that highways have no business being close to city centers. However, the edge case I described could cause a pileup. That sort of disregard would be gross negligence of something that’s supposed to improve safety. The first time that happened, there would be such intense backlash and rollback that the idea would be shelved forever.
Sure, that’s something that would need to be tested before it was enforced. But it’s not beyond our capabilities; we’ve made more complex things happen for much more frivolous reasons.
As a person that uses a bike to do part of my commute, I can confirm that there’s a good portion of bikers (and e-scooter drivers) who think traffic laws are not mean for them. I’ve been yelled at by other bikers because I stopped at a red light (doing so, I was blocking other bikers from passing with the red light).
However, the problem is not the lack of laws, rather the lack of will from the authorities to enforce them to these assholes.
If it helps, I’ve seen these people drive cars and they don’t behave any better. A few people I know only ride bikes because they got their licenses revoked. Some people really only see others as an obstacle to their goals, not as other human beings.
100% agree. It is not legal to run red lights, there is already a simple road traffic law for this.
It can be pretty bad to watch the amount of cyclists running reds at some junctions, of course drivers run them as well.
Thankfully it’s not illegal to cross the road when you want as a pedestrian in the UK, however. I think some leniency when it comes to cycling is generally a good thing but yeah, it’s illegal to run a red light, knock someone over and then cycle away so, on to the CCTV I guess.
