As school lets out and parents arrive to pick up their kids, e-bikes are everywhere, a common fixture in daily life in China. Credit: Christopher Cherry, University of Tennessee

If you were to just read the title of a recent article in the WSJ, you might think that E-Bikes are the most dangerous thing since car-roof-surfing: "E-Yikes! Electric Bikes Terrorize the Streets of China".  Upon further investigation, what we find is an article that is begging for the use of a good calculator: Using government figures from China, the hub of the electric bicycle world, they show that in 2007, 2,469 electric-bike users were killed; in 2001, that figure was just 34.  However, a decade ago there was estimated to be just 50,000 E-Bikes in China.  Today that estimate is 120 million, but in an article dated in November 2007, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, it was reported that there were an estimated 40 million E-Bike users in China.  So 34 is .068% of 50,000 and 2,469 is .0062% of 40 million (note the extra zero).  .0062 is just 9% of .068; this equates to over a 90% reduction in the fatality rate even though the number of e-bikes increased 80,000%; and it's not like the Chinese let their bikes sit around and collect dust, like I used to do before installing an electric bike kit on it.  Wow, now that is quite an improvement!  In addition, the fact that there are estimated to be some 120 million electric bikes in use in China now, the latest government fatality figures still only account for 3 percent of China's annual 90,000 traffic deaths.  Pedestrian deaths were over 21,000 and motorbike deaths over 18,000. Cycle fatalities, at 7,500, were significantly greater than e-bike fatalities, while deaths on public transport were a relatively low 1,200.

Electric bicycling is very safe and, if China is the example, the more of them there are, the safer it gets!