As electrical bicycles skyrocket in reputation and adoption charges soar, practically in every single place within the US is seeing the next variety of e-bikes used for transportation. That’s, apart from one city that banned e-bikes and e-scooters units altogether.
The Village of Key Biscayne, an island group in south Florida, has completely carried out an emergency ban on electrical bikes and e-scooters that was first carried out a number of months in the past.
Key Biscayne is named a hub of automobile alternate options, most popularly golf carts, which cruise the streets simply as generally as bigger automobiles. Electrical bikes have additionally turn out to be a preferred type of transportation on the island, at the least till they have been banned this yr after an area tragedy.
The unique emergency ban was rushed into place again in February, simply two days after the dying of admired native tutor Megan Andrews, 66.
Andrews was driving a pedal bicycle at night time when she was concerned in a deadly collision with an electrical bike rider. The twelve-year-old e-bike rider additionally concerned within the collision was on his method to soccer apply and claimed to not see Andrews, who police mentioned was driving a motorcycle with out lights and never carrying a helmet. The health worker dominated the collision unintended.
The city shortly enacted a brief ban towards all electrical bicycles and motorized scooters, which was in the end amended right into a everlasting ban on these micromobility automobiles.
Many group members laud the brand new ban after lengthy bemoaning the excessive variety of younger riders touring the roads and sidewalks on high-speed electrical bicycles.
Some locals had already petitioned town for months, encouraging stronger laws to rein in such conduct.
Alternatively, many different residents lamented the brand new ban, which has stifled native use of the nation’s fastest-growing type of different transportation.
In accordance with the Key Biscayne Unbiased, native mayoral candidate Charles Collins want to see micromobility automobiles seen as an answer for the island as a substitute of as a problem. Collins believes that e-bikes may help scale back visitors and enhance transportation, explaining that each journey a toddler takes on an e-bike saves a dad or mum’s spherical journey in a automobile.
Electrek’s Take
I don’t imply to make gentle of a tragedy, however this whole state of affairs is eerily much like Footloose. A deadly street accident in a small group leads to longer-serving elders enacting a knee-jerk response to ban a perceived menace in style amongst youthful members of the group as a substitute of addressing the basis of the difficulty. It’s textbook. Change dancing and in style music with e-bikes and e-scooters, and it doesn’t take six levels of separation to get there.
And as we discovered on the finish of the film Footloose, (spoiler alert) the central lesson is in regards to the significance of stability between custom and alter. The story culminates within the realization that whereas traditions and guidelines are vital for sustaining order and values inside a group, they need to not stifle the liberty and development of the youthful era. The story in the end conveys that open-mindedness, understanding, and compromise can result in a harmonious and vibrant group the place totally different generations can coexist and thrive.
Look, each biking dying is tragic and nobody disputes this. However I’m unsure that banning electrical bikes and e-scooters is the reply. The truth is, if we would like a fast and easy resolution to biking deaths, it will make extra sense to ban automobiles, since extra cyclists are killed by automobile drivers than e-bike riders.
However the higher reply is a compromise constructed round training and enforcement. When automobiles turned in style a century in the past, they have been fairly harmful. Drivers drove them dangerously and many individuals suffered for it. So visitors enforcement elevated together with driver’s training. That’s the reply right here. The useful new expertise of e-bikes shouldn’t be banned, it must be regulated to be able to profit from its unbelievable worth.
There are tutorial lessons for e-bike riders who haven’t acquired a driver’s license. Age limits might be created to maintain clearly too-young children off of e-bikes. Helmets and lighting might be required to assist save lives. Only a single a type of insurance policies seemingly would have modified the end result of the accident that led to the Key Biscayne e-bike ban.
I do know drivers usually complain about e-bike riders breaking visitors legal guidelines, driving via crimson lights, and so on. We have already got an answer for this: visitors police. It’s simply as unlawful to blow via a crimson gentle on a bicycle as it’s to do it in an SUV. It’s the identical visitors ticket, and it’s an costly visitors ticket. That ticket, or simply the worry of 1, makes these brake levers look like a significantly better concept. The place I dwell, sidewalk-riding can get you a hefty fantastic, and as soon as sufficient individuals knew somebody who received slammed with that ticket, sidewalk-riding charges plummeted.
So let’s all agree that outright bans aren’t the suitable reply to a device that’s in any other case so helpful and helpful. As a result of if we get all ban-happy, there are loads larger fish to fry earlier than e-bikes.
