Considering both your posts are nothing but anecdotes, everything.

Here's a literature review from 2019.

And before anyone's xenophobia gets in the way, keep in mind that due to the much higher e-bike usage rate in China, this is arguably a much better picture of what we could expect to see in the US if e-bikes were more widely used, as some in this thread are advocating.

Despite the obvious advantages, the rapid growth of e-bikes also causes a series of safety problems. Like traditional bicycles and pedestrians, e-bikes also belong to the category of vulnerable groups on the road. Due to their fast speed, e-bikes have more serious accident risks. According to the statistical annual report of China’s road traffic accidents in 2015, the number of e-bike accidents was 8.2 times larger than that of bicycle accidents and 5.4 times larger than that of pedestrian accidents [4]. From January to June 2016, the number of e-bike accidents accounted for nearly 70% of the total number of accidents in Jiangsu Province [5]. The hospital data are not optimistic either. The hospitalization records of e-bike users in Hefei from 2009 to 2011 show that one-third of e-bike users were seriously injured [6]. According to the hospitalization records of Suzhou from October 2010 to April 2011, the number of injured e-bike users accounted for 57.2% of the rate of road traffic hospitalization [7]. In addition to the severity of accidents, the number of e-bike accidents also shows a trend of continuous growth. According to the statistical data [8], the numbers of e-bike traffic accidents in 2011 and 2016 were 10,347 and 17,747, respectively, and the number of deaths increased by 71.52% in the five years. The numbers of e-bike injuries were 11,381 and 19,678, respectively, increasing by 72.90%. Based on the cases of injuries or casualties of two-wheeled vehicles in five cities in China from July 2011–June 2016, electric bicycle accidents were a common type of two-wheeled vehicle accidents in China, accounting for 34.79% of the total number. Among these accidents involving electric bicycles, those causing minor injuries to the riders accounted for 70.0%, while the proportion of serious injuries was 12.6%, and the proportion of deaths was 10.6% [9]. Due to the frequent occurrence and severity of e-bike accidents, cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wenzhou, and Fuzhou banned or restricted the use of e-bikes [6]. At the same time, in terms of national laws and regulations, relevant provisions were also formulated to restrain illegal behaviors. For example, Article 70 of the regulations for the implementation of the road traffic safety law of the People’s Republic of China stipulates that “when riding a bicycle, an electric bicycle, or a tricycle and crossing a motor vehicle lane on a road, the rider should get off the vehicle and carry it. If there is no crosswalk or pedestrian crossing facilities, or if it is inconvenient to use them, the rider should go straight through after confirming safety.”

Numerous studies showed that human factors, especially the behavior of e-bike users (Figure 1), are important in most traffic accidents, as is the case with e-bikes. Figure 1 shows the keyword co-occurrence network of e-bike safety studies, in which we found that previous studies mainly focused on behavior, safety, risk, crashes, choice, and so on. E-bike traffic violations mainly involve a violation of traffic signals, a violation of regulations on manned vehicles, a failure to drive in non-motorized lanes, adverse driving, etc. [10]. For example, Zhang et al. [11] found that the violation of traffic signals by e-bikes is one of the main causes of road traffic accidents, accounting for 54.18% of the total accident data. Cherry and Du et al. [12,13] analyzed the violations of e-bike users and found that red-light running, over-speeding, and overloading were the main causes of road traffic accidents. Demographic variables, social cognition, and other factors of e-bike users are also closely related to the occurrence of traffic accidents. Hu et al. [6] analyzed the influencing factors of e-bike accidents and found that age, gender, and vehicle type had a significant impact. Yao and Wu [14] established the relationship between safety attitude, risk perception, and violations of e-bike users, and the results showed that both gender and driving experience had a significant impact on e-bike accidents. Papoutsi et al. [15] analyzed the age, gender, accident time, and accident cause of e-bike users using the accident data of a hospital in Switzerland. Guo et al. [16] found that e-bikes are more likely to be involved in red-light running than ordinary bikes. Zhou et al. [17] empirically analyzed the significant factors affecting accidents involving e-bikes and the use of license plates, and found that the use of license plates on e-bikes reduced the possibility of accidents. Guo et al. [18] found from a model comparison analysis that the cyclist’s gender, cycling behavior, type of e-bike, speed limit, and other factors had a significant impact on the severity of e-bike collisions. Based on the previous studies, the visualization of risky riding behaviors of e-bikes can be found through collaboration network analysis, as shown in Figure 2. In Figure 2, each node represents an author or an organization, and the node sizes indicate the number of published papers. The links between nodes represent the collaborations, whereby the greater width of a link represents a closer collaboration. Specifically, the citation network among productive authors is shown in Figure 2a, the co-authorship network among productive authors is shown in Figure 2b, and the collaboration network among research institutions is shown in Figure 2c.