How many ten year olds on Surrons to make e-bikes as dangerous as cars?
Posted by BenisBoopis@reddit | ebikes | View on Reddit | 21 comments
Apologies, this is a little batshit.
Saw some dumb takes mixed with some fair enough concerns so I decided to try to estimate how many children on e-bike(shaped object)s it would take to make those children as much of a threat to public health as grown ass adults in cars. Needless to say, data is limited and I’m not bothering going through everything with a fine tooth comb to verify sources or anything. Just doing a rough estimate for funsies.
First, cars
These fine folks claim there are roughly 300 million cars in the US.
https://hedgescompany.com/automotive-market-research-statistics/auto-mailing-lists-and-marketing/
From Wikipedia, there are roughly 40,000 car-related fatalities per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
That means .00013 deaths per car.
Now bikes
This questionable link claims 1.1 million e-bikes were sold in the US in 2022. Likely, more were sold the next year and some broke and some go unridden yadda ya, so let’s call it 2 million in 2026 because I can’t find anything better or more recent. Sound fair? Idk.
https://gitnux.org/ebike-statistics/
Over here, they’re claiming just under 80 e-bike deaths in 2023.
https://www.consumershield.com/articles/ebike-escooter-accidents
Line go up so let’s say 100 in 2026.
With the previously decided 2 million e-bikes in the US that’s .00005 deaths per e-bike.
But pause. That same link says 37% of these fatalities are traffic related. If you are smoking a cigarette when you get shot in the head, did cigarettes kill you? Of course not.
Let’s be real though, some of us are riding like jackasses. We’ll very charitably split responsibility 50/50.
So 100 deaths minus the \~18.5% caused by cars brings us to \~82.
That’s .000041 deaths per e-bike.
This link claims 35% of ebike injuries youth-related. Despite that link having sources for their other claims, none was given for that one. It also doesn’t say if that global or US or what. Whatever let’s just pretend it’s correct. I’m also going to assume that means any child ridder that died or killed someone.
Thirty five percent of those 82 deaths is about 29 deaths per year caused by youth on e-bikes.
Twenty nine deaths per year over 2,000,000 e-bikes is .0000145 child involved deaths per ebike.
That means if there were 300 million e-bikes instead of cars we’d have:
12,300 annual deaths
4,305 involving child riders
In order to reach 40,000 annual deaths we’d need 975,609,756 e-bikes in the US. Thats 2.85 e-bikes for every individual in the US.
In order to reach 40,000 child related ebike deaths in the US we’d need over 2.7 billion e-bikes in the US. Thats 8 e-bikes for every man, woman, child, non-binary person, crowning infant, hospice patient, double amputee, reclusive monk, and grandpa joe from Charlie and the chocolate factory.
Anyway, as previously stated, I was not digging too deep here. I’m skimming these links. Math isn’t my strong suit. Please correct me if I fucked up somewhere. If anyone feels like digging in further to find more accurate numbers I’d be very curious to hear what you find. Just not curious enough to do the research myself, lol.
Also, I hope this doesn’t come off as diminishing or belittling the risks here. Please ride safe, wear a helmet, turn on your lights, use your signals, and do your best to keep the young people in your life safe.
gr8tfurme@reddit
Sorry, but this is an apples-to-oranges comparison that doesn't mean anything. The gold standards are deaths over total vehicle miles, or deaths over total driving/riding time.
Bikes are riskier than cars in both those stats. It varies by study, but the former is anywhere from 5x to 13x. The latter is more favorable to bikes because it takes into account the comparatively longer time required to travel a given distance on a bike, but I still haven't seen any study that found bikes had a lower fatal accident risk than cars.
If you think about it for a few seconds, it makes sense. We've gotten very good at designing cars in a way that makes crashes with other cars survivable. We've also gotten very bad at making cars safe for bikes and pedestrians to be around.
BenisBoopis@reddit (OP)
Yeah, admittedly, did not consider the mileage factor, that changes the numbers significantly. Though I do think it’s worth considering the context of bike deaths. Around 37% are traffic related and whether they’re the fault of the rider or the driver, they’re really the fault of shitty roads. Also just kinda thought about this but how many of these deaths are mountain biking or something? What percentage of ebike usage is rough trails and how would cars compare if a similar percentage were doing that type of riding? Very well may be better idk but now I’m kinda curious about that.
gr8tfurme@reddit
Considering the largest single bucket in bike fatalities is cars and road biking/commuting makes up the majority of the mileage, I'd be really surprised if mountain biking was riskier. I'd bet most single track is actually safer from a fatality perspective, because there's no cars and usually when you eat shit on a mtb you end up maimed at worst, not dead.
ch3k520@reddit
I was just at sea otter classic and surron had a booth with versions of these bikes made for small children.
TopRepulsive4766@reddit
Thanks for the info. The more info available, the more educated decisions people can make.
And yeah, just yesterday I encountered four boys (I'm just assuming they were boys. Helmets prevented me from seeing their faces) on Surrons as I was riding my ebike. They were over 10 I'm fairly certain. And they were not misbehaving or doing any objectional riding. No problems.
Where I live we really haven't had problems with ebike riders. I see they often go a little fast. And occasionally I see them stunting a little in parking areas. But in traffic and on the bike and pedestrian paths, they are decently behaved.
Technically, the Surrons (and similar ebikes) are illegal in public here. But no one has ever paid any attention to the kids riding them. I think as long as they maintain their current behaviour, no one will seriously object.
WilliamBontrager@reddit
So you're saying that we'd be safer overall if we gave every 10 year old a surron and backed it up with data...nice lol. I would say that of those 100 deaths, virtually none were anyone other than the rider, wheras around half of the deaths caused by vehicles were others not in the vehicle causing the crash.
BenisBoopis@reddit (OP)
Very much not the point I was trying to make and I wouldn’t really call any of this data. More of a how many licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop thing. I thought to do this because I saw someone on twitter whining about e-bikes and wanting to go full Jersey using wreckless youth as justification. People can argue all day about the best way to regulate these things but imo it makes no sense to make that a priority over regulating cars and building better infrastructure. Thats not saying give every ten year old a 1500W peak electric bike for adults, 35mph top speed 48V 20Ah battery ebike, certified mountain e-bike for hill climbing, 20" fat tire all-terrain, full suspension. It’s saying why put political capital into banning throttles rather than putting speed limiters on cars?
WilliamBontrager@reddit
I was half kidding to make a point regarding the context of safety being discussed. And as for the why? The obvious political outrage that would be caused by limiting cars would result in most politicians being unelected.
NewsreelWatcher@reddit
I think most adults can intuit that a child does not have the judgment to be responsible for operating an e-moto. I would classify anything that exceeds 1 kW as an e-moto. A child operating anything like that on a public road should result in a criminal charge for the adult who supplied the e-moto. I would even go further that anyone under the age of majority should not be operating a US class e-bike (750 W or 1 hp) on public roads. These devices in the hands of children detract from the need to build modern streets that are safe enough for children to walk or cycle on their own.
Inciteful_Analysis@reddit
Neither math nor logic are your strong suits.
You can't compare installed base of vehicles to annual sales of ebikes. 2.2M ebikes imported into US in 2025 alone. That puts the installed base in the neighborhood of 6M.
Looking at deaths per installed unit is also meaningless. The average annual distance traveled in a motorized vehicle far exceeds that of an e-bike. Rough estimate is 15000 miles for a car. Versus maybe 1000 miles for an ebike.
This idea that not everyone who dies on an ebike is at fault would also apply to motorists. It is inconsistent and makes no sense to unilaterally adjust the deaths downward for just ebikes.
What you should be comparing is average number of deaths per million miles traveled for ebikes vs cars. And I think the numbers will be far closer than what the raw fatality numbers suggest.
It is true that those riding on bicycles/ebikes primarily pose a risk to themselves.
Separate-Command1993@reddit
Nobody is riding a million miles on their ebike. The average range what, 20 miles? The average range of a car is like 300 miles. 1 million ebike miles would be thousands of e-bikes where it could be 5 cars.
Inciteful_Analysis@reddit
Please tell me you are trolling.
Do you know how stats are calculated by NHTSA and IIHS? They tally up all miles traveled by all passengers. This is referred to as millions of passenger miles. They then divide the total number of traffic fatalities by this number to get the deaths per million passenger miles.
Separate-Command1993@reddit
Well damn no I didn’t know that’s what per million passenger miles meant, my bad. I’m having a hard time seeing how you can compare the two though being as there are so many fewer e-bikes a they’re driven far less.
JawnDoh@reddit
That’s how you make the comparison, by using deaths per million miles it doesn’t matter (as much) what the total miles are since you’re averaging it out.
When you have very small sample sizes though it could cause issues, or if you cherry pick some of the sources. (Not a statistician/mathematician but can halfway remember my stats class)
BenisBoopis@reddit (OP)
That stung but you’re not wrong 😭. The only numbers I could find on units were sales and imports but I figured imports would include bikes sitting in a warehouse. That was an incredibly rough estimate on my part. Admittedly, I didn’t really consider mileage. But I’m not sure I agree with the other point, or maybe I’m misunderstanding. In a bike accident the fault can be on a cyclist or a motorist but in a car accident it is always a motorist, no?
Inciteful_Analysis@reddit
A motorist can be in an accident with a cyclist or on account of a cyclist where the cyclist is at fault. In very rare circumstances it could lead to the death of the motorist if they swerve into a tree, ditch, or oncoming traffic to evade the cyclist.
BenisBoopis@reddit (OP)
Huh, fair enough, didn’t think of that. Though seems like a niche case that a motorist would try to avoid a cyclist /j
hawaiianmoustache@reddit
Tell me you don’t understand statistics without telling me you dont understand statistics.
BenisBoopis@reddit (OP)
I thought I was pretty open about that actually.
Inciteful_Analysis@reddit
I give you props for being open to new information.
Laserdollarz@reddit
Death rate will increase once people need to ride two ebikes at once