Further to my previous articles on e-bikes here and here, today there is an amusing article by Peter Cheney of The Globe and Mail detailing his experience riding an e-bike in the central/downtown Toronto area for a week.
As I have previously written, I think that e-bikes are a dangerous contraption given that there is no insurance that you can / have to buy in order to ride.
This makes them dangerous because you can fly along at 32 km/hr (or 60 km/hr potentially, as Mr. Cheney personally experienced with a fellow e-biker whizzing by him effortlessly), yet there’s no guarantee that you have the physical capabilities to be riding that fast.
Put another way, if you’re fit enough to hit speeds of 30 or 35km/hr on a bicycle, then presumably you’re very fit and have been riding for a while – i.e. presumably your reflexes match your level of physical fitness. Or you’re going down a very steep hill (and it will all be over very quickly).
But that’s the point – if you ride stupidly on a bicycle and whiz down a hill going much too fast for your own good, well, at least you’re making a deliberate decision to put yourself in danger for that particular moment.
But with an e-bike with, as Mr. Cheney notes, you likely have a group of riders who are most focused on saving money, but aren’t necessarily fit or capable of managing an underpowered and completely silent machine which chips along at 32 km/hr:
My fellow e-bike customers are a motley crew: there’s a young U of T student with a backpack, a vastly overweight woman in a Cowichan sweater and a guy who looks like he was just released from a detox facility. Already, I can see three key e-bike demographics: seekers of low-cost transportation, would-be cyclists who don’t have the required lung capacity and car drivers who have lost their licences to the breathalyzer.
3 Things to Remember Before Riding an E-Bike
1. Apparently you don’t get respect from drivers or bicyclists. I have read a number of articles that describe being in a ‘no-person’s land’ when you ride an e-bike. Plus Mr. Cheney humorously describes that there seems to be missing any sort of camaraderie among e-bike riders.
2. What you save in cost equals the disproportionate risk you are taking. If you are extremely fit and have good reflexes then….why aren’t you cycling instead of riding an e-bike? But I digress.
Owning an e-bike does not require you take any training. Compared to a motorcycle, which requires training and a test to attain your license, this is the wild west.
If you’re looking to save money, then ride a bicycle and get fit.
If you’re worried about showing up at work in a sweat, then get a cheap membership to a gym that will allow you to shower – probably still cheaper than buying an e-bike.
If you are in Toronto, then probably you’re riding your e-bike around the downtown core. Then you have streetcar tracks to navigate.
About streetcar tracks: a good friend of mine, a former collegiate athlete with much faster reflexes than the average person, was commuting to work on his bike when he was pushed off course by a cab and into streetcar tracks, which stopped him cold. Up and over he went and he managed, probably because of his reflexes and fitness level, to break his fall with his hand/arm. He jammed up his wrist /arm / shoulder pretty badly, but otherwise he was fine.
If you’re riding an e-bike in Toronto outside of the downtown core, then I wish you well. Go along any major road – Eglinton, York Mills, Sheppard, Finch, Steeles, Bathurst, Dufferin, Bayview, Leslie, Don Mills, etc – that has “60 km/hr” as the speed limit and you’ll find commuting vehicles regularly hitting 75 km/hr when they find a small patch of clear road in front of them. Cyclists are a less frequent sight on these roads and, at least, I generally see cars pulling out and giving as much space as possible to the hardworking cyclist as they pass. These are not the best roads for e-bikes to commute on.
3. If you are hurt, there may be no insurance coverage for you. If you are hit by a car, then you’ll have car insurance coverage. But what if you’re hurt by losing control going over a pothole? Or as Mr. Cheney describes, by being unfamiliar with the weight of the e-bike and the existence of faux pedals on the side which impeded your ability to make sharp turns? In that case, you will have no insurance policy to help you or to claim against.
Why Do You Dislike E-Bikes So, Greg?
My concern about e-bikes is that they put people daily into the most dangerous of situations – commuting during morning and afternoon rush hour. The very purpose of an e-bike is for transportation; they are not a recreational vehicle. You don’t buy an e-bike for a leisurely stroll in High Park or through the Bruce Trail. E-bikes are used to commute to/from work and to run errands.
Given their abilities, e-bikes are likely to be used mostly in the downtown or central Toronto core, where traffic is always present. You’re fighting for space among delivery trucks, commuting cars, motorcycles, mopeds and cyclists – and remember that almost no one particularly respects you.
In the absence of any barriers to using an e-bike – Mr. Cheney rented his bike and was riding within 10 minutes – there is no guarantee that the rider actually knows how to handle an e-bike going 32 km/hr.
At least on a bicycle, the inexperienced rider would briefly attain 32 km/hr and then drop down to a slower pace, due to simple fatigue. Presumably this slower pace would be safer for the inexperienced bicyclist to handle.
Greg Chang
Toronto Personal Injury and Insurance Lawyer
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