How to Ride an E-Bike Safely
Electric bikes are seriously fun as long as you don’t get seriously injured.
Electric bikes or e-bikes are more popular than ever, with older riders driving much of the demand. Proponents have touted e-bikes as a way to make cycling more accessible to people more people in general such as the elderly and those with disabilities, to car-free households in urban environments, and to anyone who might hesitate to hop on a conventional bike.
Yet as more riders adopt this new technology, new safety concerns have cropped up. A worrying statistic out of the Netherlands in 2018 sounded some alarms: E-bike deaths in the famously bike-friendly country nearly doubled between 2016 and 2017. About 75 percent of the victims were men aged 65 and older. Peter van der Knaap, director of the Dutch Road Safety Research Foundation, told The Guardian that many incidents involved riders simply failing to properly mount or dismount their e-bikes. And a more recent study showed that those trends continued into 2019.
In 2019, dozens of riders reported injuries while riding electric Citibikes in New York City, prompting Lyft, the company that owns Citibike, to temporarily pull all of the approximately 1,000 electric bicycles from the city’s streets amid safety concerns, as the New York Times reported.
Of course, as e-bikes make up a greater share of the bicycle market, they’ll also be involved in more crashes and cyclist fatalities. But riders interested in going electric should learn how to handle this new kind of bicycle to ensure their safety. E-bikes are often much heavier than regular commuter bikes, reach higher top speeds, and make usually manageable corners and obstacles more dangerous. Here are six e-bike safety tips you should know.
Pay Even More Attention to Traffic
Every cyclist should pay attention to the flow of traffic, but it’s even more critical on an e-bike. Drivers may not expect a cyclist to reach 20 mph on the road, and that disconnect can lead to potentially dangerous scenarios.
“As electrical bicycles become increasingly popular, other road users may need to recalibrate their expectations to maintain a safe interaction with this new type of bicycle,” Chalmers University of Technology researcher Marco Dozza wrote in a study for the International Cycling Safety Conference. That means not only thinking about what you’re doing on the bike, but also how drivers perceive you.
Make Yourself Seen
Part of the issue with traffic is that drivers don’t know how to look out for bikes zipping by with an extra 200 watts of power behind them. To make sure you’re seen, Hong Quan, founder of the e-bike company Karmic Bikes, recommends outfitting your bike with lights and a bell. And it’s not only drivers—you might be too fast for pedestrians or other cyclists who won’t hear you coming without a polite warning.
[Related: The Best Bikes Lights For Every Kind of Ride]
Check Your Speed
Quan adds that the biggest mistake he sees new e-bike riders make is to go for the fastest assist setting right out of the gate. Anyone would be excited to see what their new set of wheels can do, but Quan recommends that riders take time to learn how the bike feels at lower speeds before cranking it to turbo.
[Related: 13 Reasons to Get Stoked About E-Bikes]
Brake Earlier
Because you have a lot more speed and power behind you, braking becomes all the more important. Even at the lightest assisted gear, Quan says, a Karmic e-bike will add around 50 watts to your pedal stroke. That means you’ll want to slow down well ahead of stop signs and road crossings, and far earlier than you would on a slower-moving bike. Get to know your brakes and their relative power, so you can better assess the safest time to start slowing down.
Careful While Mounting and Dismounting
For some older e-bike riders, or younger riders with mobility issues, mounts and dismounts are where many injuries happen. This is partially because of the bike’s heaviness—the extra 20-plus pounds could cause it to tip over and injure the rider. Make sure the frame you buy is one that’s comfortable to get on and off easily. For some, that may mean seeking out a step-through frame (which aren’t just for women!) or a standard frame with a more sloping top tube.
Remember, It's Still a Bike
Crashes can happen on any bike, but e-bikes are noteworthy because of the higher speeds involved. That said, Quan notes that the crashes he’s seen likely would have happened on conventional bikes as well.
In fact, a 2018 survey found that only 20 percent of e-bike riders said they had experienced any type of crash. Of those, 19 percent reported that the e-bike contributed to the crash in any unique way. So when you’re out zooming around town, make sure to keep standard bike safety in mind.
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