The Future of eBikes: How Fast is Too Fast?

[PedalUma]

Any transportation vehicle (bike, scooter, skateboard, etc.) capable of assisted speed beyond 28mph should be ridden by a trained, licensed operator, registered, and insured.

There are people doing 45 or 50 on electric unicycles in traffic! Maybe because they had their driver's licence revoked.

 

[mschwett]

You might not like it, but faster electric bikes can be safer.

You might not like it, but faster electric bikes can be safer. Here's why

There’s a popular belief that slower equals safer. The concept is not entirely without merit, but it doesn’t apply universally,...

electrek.co

lol, article from high speed ebike manufacturer about why they’re safer? really?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/magazine/e-bikes-accidents-safety-legislation-california.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/briefing/the-dangers-of-e-bikes.html

how about some actual statistics, not just intuition or speculation?

The most alarming difference was the fatality rate. “On a pedal bike, the chance of dying from an injury is about three-tenths of 1 percent,” Alfrey says. On an e-bike, the data indicated, it was 11 percent.

 

[PedalUma]

This chart can translate to crashing a bike because a human body is a human body.

A couple of blocks away a guy died when taped by a car. The driver was looking left at oncoming traffic to merge. The ped was walking down the sidewalk from the driver's right. She tapped him and he fell back on his butt and hit his head on the concrete sidewalk. Dead on the spot, cracked like a melon.

The formula T=D/S for time distance and speed shows that for most in town distances, going an unsafe speed only saves a couple of minutes at most. Going one mile at 18 mph takes 3 1/3 minutes, going 12 mph takes five-minutes. Crashing at 18 mph is like falling from a 10.8 foot ladder. Crashing at 12 mph is like falling 4.8 feet.