If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, what do you call a cyclist who’s been hit by an e-bike rider? I’ve been mulling the question since I was struck broadside by an e-Citi Bike rider in Brooklyn Bridge Park earlier this summer.
I was turning left toward Pier 3 — no one in the oncoming cycle lane and pedestrian path or my peripheral vision — when I was T-boned and knocked to the ground. I saw nothing. He must have pulled out from behind and accelerated to pass.
The back of my head — helmeted fortunately — hit the pavement.
“You were riding too fast,” I yelled (from the ground).
“No, I wasn’t. I’m an experienced rider. I didn’t know you were going to turn.”
After a few rounds of this, he allowed, “Maybe I shouldn’t have been thinking about how I was going to be late picking up my kid…” and “Maybe I should have said, ‘Passing on your left.’”
My neighbor, a neurosurgeon, checked me for a head injury. I had a cut and bruises and felt dizzy all day. Nothing worse. But, psychologically and cycle-logically, I’m still struggling with it.
In December, trailed by a driver on a street with no bike lane, I pulled over, hit a manhole cover and broke my collarbone. I wrote an op-ed for Streetsblog about becoming Exhibit A in my own protected bike lane campaign. Strangers expressed solidarity. I felt strengthened by this movement of thoughtful advocates for safe streets.
This time, I’m depressed by the ferocious opposition from fellow cycling activists to the premise of limiting e-bike speeds to 15 mph. What are we fighting for, people? The right to ride like a jerk, even if it freaks people out and makes enemies of friends?
As an older woman on a light road bike, I ride defensively. I never assume cars will stop or that the pedestrian or cyclist ahead is aware of me. Look three times for e-bikes coming out of nowhere. Yet I got T-boned, on the Brooklyn Greenway, one of the safest places in town.
He hit me from behind!
I agree with Transportation Alternatives that Mayor Adams’s 15 mph limit is half-baked — no enforcement mechanism or guidelines. NYPD’s new policy of issuing criminal citations to cyclists and traffic tickets to motorists for the same infractions is a discriminatory ploy that plays into two forms of madness: President Trump's immigration crackdown (this city is more or less dead without immigrants) and the notion that electric bike riders are causing all the carnage out there (they are not). I understand the prevailing logic that city policy should target car drivers first because drivers cause virtually all of the traffic deaths and injuries.
But we all see the roads the way we want to see them: Non-cyclists perceive cyclists as just as dangerous as cars, transportation activists tend to see all riders as allies — two wheels good, four wheels bad. Here’s what I see: I’m taking my life in my hands every time I ride alongside cars on a street without a protected bike lane. But I used to feel relief when I was in a protected lane like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Williamsburg Greenway. Now, I feel jolt after jolt of anxiety as e-cyclists barrel toward me in my lane to pass, slipping in at the last minute like aggressive drivers. Out of my way, lady.
It happens over and over. I reach my destination, heart pounding, angry.
Many of those riders are on e-Citi Bikes, not precarious workers exploited by an algorithm. More than 68 percent of Citi Bike customers are younger men, a demographic associated with high risk tolerance and aggressiveness, in many realms of life — including behind the wheel of a vehicle.
I admit to being dismissive of e-bike complaints before. After being decked by the rider of a 60-pound e-Citi Bike, I can say unequivocally, yes, it’s different when it happens to you. So to my fellow Safe Streets activists, I want to say that if we let the most aggressive riders set behavior norms and dominate perceptions, we’re giving anti-bike reactionaries ammunition to blast us back to the bad old days with all the bad faith they can muster. More Bedford Avenues, anyone?
I’ll never be a safe streets neo-con — making implausible claims à la NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s mother ("I’ve had four friends run over by bikes in the last six weeks”). But, much as I hate to admit it, since being hit by an e-bike, I think twice every time I get on my bike. Sure, that’s PTSD. Maybe age a bit. Also present reality. I’ve been riding since I was 7-years old. More often than not, I arrive thinking this is my last ride. It breaks my heart. When someone tells me they’re afraid of cyclists, I make myself listen. These things do happen.
There I've said it. I still consider myself a committed ally and supporter of safe and livable streets, and fervently hope others in the movement will agree. But e-bikes are too young to be sacrosanct. They’re fast, cheap, efficient — but they bring their own ugliness. We have to be able to say it out loud. Then we can figure out a rational solution. We’re good at that.
The other day, I told a thirty-something male e-Citi Biker weaving across lanes in Red Hook, I wanted to pass, and he called me a “fucking psycho.” (I promise I asked nicely. Wonder why women don’t cycle much?)
Frankly, the argument that e-bikers need to ride 18 mph or more to keep up with cars sounds a lot like that ol' craving to crank 'er up that machines bring out in humans rather than some provable safety ratio.
It’s not about the wind in your hair. It’s about anticipating that the lady with a baby carriage talking on her stupid phone will walk into the bike lane. It's about not speeding the wrong way down a one-way street — startling pedestrians, drivers and other cyclists — to get to the Citi Bike dock because you’re too lazy to circle the block or just get off the bike and walk.
It’s about seeing other people. And for that, you have to slow down.
