u/amosbatto

I have been alarmed by the number of new laws being proposed to crack down on the use of e-bikes. Some of the new laws make sense, like SB 1167 in California, which is supported by People For Bikes and is aimed at regulating overpowered e-motos that are being marketed as e-bikes.

Many of these new laws, however, are based on a current public panic about e-bikes, which frankly doesn't make sense given how few fatalities there are each year. I attribute this panic to youth riding e-motos irresponsibly and posting videos of their bad behavior on social media.

I dug through the NHTSA data to look at the number of "motorized bicycle" and manual bicycle fatalities in the United States. Motorized bicycles include both electric bicycles and ICE motor bicycles, and unfortunately NHTSA doesn't separate out e-bikes nor distinguish between e-bikes and e-motos.

The number of motorized bicycle traffic fatalities in the U.S. rose from 32 fatalities (or 0.08% of traffic fatalities) in 2020 to 97 fatalities (or 0.24% of traffic fatalities) in 2023, and then decreased slightly to 92 fatalities (or 0.23% of traffic fatalities) in 2024. In comparison, manual bicycle fatalities rose from 948 fatalities (or 2.43% of traffic fatalities) in 2020 to 1069 fatalities (or 2.61% of traffic fatalities) in 2023, and then reduced to 1011 fatalities (or 2.58% of traffic fatalities) in 2024.

There is very little evidence of teenagers being harmed by e-bikes at high rates. I only found 2 fatalities in 2024 of motorized bicycle users between the ages of 10 and 17 in the US, out of a total of 92 fatalities.

As I pointed out in my previous report, I couldn't find empirical evidence that e-bikes are more dangerous than manual bicycles in the United States. The number of e-bike fatalities per million units sold in the U.S. has historically been lower than the number of manual bicycle fatalities per million units sold. However, in 2023, there were 76.8 e-bike fatalities per million units sold (according to CPSC), compared to 55.1 manual bicycles fatalities per million units sold (according to NHTSA). We will have to wait for more data in the future to see if 2023 is an anomolous year with low e-bike sales and a high number of fatalities, or the start of a trend.

The problem is that we can't really compare the two types of bicycles with the current data, because the Consumer Product Safety Commission counts all deaths, including in homes and on private property, and it includes fires and pedestrians struck by e-bikes. In contrast, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is only counting traffic deaths and just the deaths of the bicycle riders themselves (and not the pedestrians they strike).

At any rate, if anyone wants to yell at the governments of their states to not pass harsh laws restricting the use of e-bikes, please do look at the data about traffic fatalities for motorized bicycles and manual bicycles for the U.S and each state (plus Washington DC) that I posted on my blog.

Unfortunately, I don't have privileges on this subreddit to post a link to my blog article with the data, but you can find it by doing an Internet search for my blog. As always, I welcome public feedback on the article.