Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A Tuesday crash involving an e-scooter user has led to questions and concerns about e-scooter safety. But one e-bike advocate says he's been frustrated with the onus of safety on e-scooter users.
GoBike Buffalo's Kevin Heffernan says any tension or pressure that's being given to e-bikes or e-scooters needs to equally be applied to oversized trucks and SUVs.
"When someone is on an electric mobility device that is a bike or a scooter, the worst thing they're doing is putting their own lives in their hands. But we have trucks and SUVs that are speeding down residential streets while they're on their phones, and they're the ones who are actually killing other people, and they have a greater propensity to injure and kill other people when they are not following vehicle and traffic laws," said Heffernan in an interview with WBEN.
GoBike Buffalo is part of the New York Safe Streets Coalition.
"Our goals are to get every single road user to follow vehicle traffic laws that include cyclists, include the e-cyclist, and it includes drivers. So I don't understand why so much attention is going to e-bikes and e-scooters and drivers who are actually injuring and killing other people are getting a pass," Heffernan noted.
Heffernan says Buffalo is in a 41-year high of pedestrian death rates, but there seems to be a focus on the rare person on an e-scooter who injures himself.
He says pickup truck and SUV designs have changed over the years.
"You can stand a nine-year-old child up in front of that hood, and the driver won't be able to see them," Heffernan said. "For so many of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, we saw sedans that if you hit someone, you were causing a knee or a hip injury, and that person would sort of be pushed aside. But now that all of our SUVs and our pickup trucks have these very high and flat front ends, those injuries are now head and neck injuries, and the person is not pushed aside. They are pushed under the vehicle, leading to much more deaths."
He adds a mother in Georgia ran over her own child and killed him because she couldn't see him in front of the hood, because of the height of her own SUV.
Heffernan is also unhappy with, what he calls, a lack of enforcement of traffic rules by police.
"Drivers are speeding down residential streets, we're seeing those residents beg their towns and cities to make changes to their roadways, to slow down traffic automatically, to address that lack of enforcement, and the towns and cities are pushing back, saying, 'These drivers will be pretty mad if we slow them down.' We've got our priorities mixed up right now, when we're demonizing people who are on a bicycle or a scooter and we're giving a free pass to those who are driving these vehicles that can much more easily injure and kill the people around them," Heffernan fumed.
A Niagara Falls man was hospitalized after police say his e-scooter entered into the path of a car at Maple and Bailey on Tuesday.
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