E-cycles Are Faster, Heavier and More Deadly: As Death Toll Shows, It’s Time to End Them
Early this month, after more than 10 years of operation, New York’s Citi Bike bicycle-share program marked a grim milestone: the first-ever death of a pedestrian hit by a Citi Bike rider.
The cyclist wasn’t riding one of the traditional blue-pedal bikes when he allegedly hit and killed 69-year-old Priscilla Loke, but rather an electric Citi Bike.
Loke’s death is yet another reminder that battery-powered electric bikes — and their new cousins, gas-powered mopeds — are not bicycles but fast-moving motorized vehicles.
Those vehicles’ proliferation on New York’s dense streets, encouraged by supposed safe-streets advocates and city government, is reversing more than a decade’s progress in making New York’s streets more hospitable to pedestrians and traditional pedal cyclists.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. This piece is adapted from City Journal online.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
