The NYTimes is once again trashing the most promising mobility innovation of the 21st century
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
E-bikes are great, the issue is the morons using them.
This is how I feel about cars, except for the "cars are great" part.
except for the “cars are great” part.
Yeah... Excluding moron drivers you have:
I'm probably still forgetting something important...
How’s that different than anything else that someone operates?
People are the problem, you say?
Exactly. As I think I've said it before, there are a lot of numbskulls who think the PEVs work just like manual powered ones. But, with the increased speed, faster acceleration, and the general less work it takes to use one can make them take stupid risks that normally they wouldn't otherwise.
For instance, they may be cruising down a road at 30mph. Coming to an intersection, they see the light is red, but since they aren't in a car, they think it shouldn't apply to them as they think that's only for cars. What they didn't realize is there is a tanker truck coming down the cross-street. The truck isn't able to stop in time to avoid the guy on a e-bike who just darted out. The truck driver still tries to futilly veer away while slamming on the brakes causing the truck to jack knife and rollover. Smashing and killing the driver of a car that driving along next to it along with spilling whatever was in the tanks.
The end of it now is the e-bike rider and the driver in the car are dead, quite possibly the truck driver too. There is also a toxic spill that requires everyone in the immediate area to evacuate to a safe area until it is cleaned up. The roadway is closed for multiple hours, causing major delays and loss of business/service to the shops in the area. (hopefully no medical facilities) All this because the idiot on the e-bike didn't bother to stop like they should have.
While there are some laws and rules in regards to PEVs, they are generally far and away from being complete or enacted/enforced in all areas. This in my opinion needs to be made a priority to achieve at least some semblance of safety and responsibility of all parties.
there really is an issue though. it's an unregulated mess and for every ebiker who is a clean energy micro mobility advocate there's half a dozen people who buy them because they don't have a license for whatever reason or are trying to skirt as many road laws as possible.
So what? If someone loses their license they still have the right to be able to pay their bills. Public transport isn't always an option, and Uber/Lift are as expensive as cabs now; how else do you expect an unlicensed person to get to work?
That ratio seems a bit high. I bet most ebikers do it for economic reasons.
no you are wrong. according to scientists and smart people who graduated college, I'm correct here.
it’s an unregulated mess
Posting this while I let AI drive my Cybertruck into a lake.
Thanks mate! You're the real MVP!
Don't read the comments unless you want to be depressed and angry.
ITT: old people that have had one bad experience with bikes and ebikes, but know they can't ban bikes anymore so they go after ebikes. Probably knowing several or more people who have either been injured or killed in car accidents.
Pedestrians, bikes, and ebikes are all on the same side: making sidewalks and bikelanes bigger and safer for a more walkable city without cars. Especially in car centric american cities where no normal person will ride a normal bike up steep hills or extraordinarily long commutes where ebikes excel. Or towing gear and groceries.
The problem in New York is that the e-bike riders are not replacing car riders. They're just pedestrians who want to go faster.
This isn't a win.
When we start seeing e-bikes go through the tunnel as a replacement for cars, that would be a win.
From the article it sounds like a lot of the complaints are any delivery gig workers, not pedestrians. The gig workers are incentivized to go fast and bike recklessly in a way that pedestrians aren't
Some of the proposals the safety conscious people are suggesting, though, feel a bit harsh to me. I don't want to have to get a licence for a bike that assists me when going up hill. On the other hand, if people are treating these like electric motorcycles then vehicle lisencing makes more sense to me
As for the article, I felt like it was balanced in a way the headline is not
Sounds like a law so gig workers are paid by the hour would solve more.
Are car drivers not just pedestrians that want to go faster? Each pedestrian that wants to go faster and chooses an E-Bike instead of a car is a win to me.
You know what they mean though. This isn't someone who was a car who is now an ebike. This is someone who was feet or four or two wheels who is now doing 25mph on the sidewalk with no insurance. Once again, infrastructure is stuck catching up with technology, and that's normal, but we are in the middle of it now.
I don’t see the problem. People can go faster without polluting. That’s a good thing. You can get a lot more people on the road safely this way.
NYT takes money from companies to run smear campaigns and manipulate public opinion. I have no evidence but I have no doubts either.
It's an open secret they take money from oil companies to write sponsored articles that look like independent opinion pieces.
The Telegraph here has done the same for Ebikes and Escooters. But mostly cyclists. Its been weeks of these articles. They're not alone either, the Mail, Express and Sun have done the same. Its to create the illusion of your Government tackling a problem that doesnt really exist, as ours announced they'd be "bringing in new measures" recently only to launch a General Election a couple of days after.
They're too damned popular. And too damned affordable. And way too much newspaper/tv ad revenue comes from automobiles. Someone's got to put a thumb on the scale and get people back into SUVs.
It's certaily e-bikes that make nyc a nightmare
Just consider all the people annoyed by ebikes. Clearly cars are much more sane and rational. I mean what is a few thousand lives compared to some good old fashioned outrage.
The NYTimes continuing its long and storied tradition of panicking its readership over the prospect of seeing a young or poor person.
Dude, we’re just now getting infrastructure for bicycling, and that’s been like 300 years.
When there's no more petrol cars, this is what most people's "electric vehicles" will look like.
Ebikes would've been great in like 2018 before governments started regulating them to make them not as good. I don't even know what's going on these days in ebikes politics but I dismissed them as something I'll never buy when they started putting remote speed limiters in them. I'll just peddle myself on a cheapo bike.
This is pure pedantry, but the e-bike was actually invented sometime between 1895 and 1987 (depending on the source).
They definitely weren't popular until the 21st century, but the idea's been around a long time (just like electric cars).
The largest shareholder of the NYT is Carlos Slim, who happens to also own an oil company.
This is the way.
All of the major newspapers and media outlets are owned by the billionaire class, and it's been that way for over a decade.
It's time to stop clutching your pearls every time your media company of choice does something in service to the billionaire class and stop giving them your clicks.
If every media outlet is owned by billionaires, and I should stop visiting each one that does something in service to that class, am I just ultimately left newsless?
The proper thing to do is to call out this BS and let the NYT know that this is bullshit. Don’t hide from it, fight it.
Calling out dumb ideas isn't pearl clutching. It's a core part of our political system.
Mf is born in 1940. He will be dead soon, why the fuck he needs more money?