Early one recent Saturday morning, Samone Boss’ repeated calls to her husband’s cellphone went unanswered.
Tyran Boss, 50, had gone out for a bike ride on his Super73 electric bike but his wife hadn’t been able to reach him.
Finally, her call was answered by an EMS technician. He was with Tyran who had been found injured on a busy stretch of Moreland Avenue near Custer. It appeared that Tyran had been struck by a car, the tech said, but no one was on the scene when they arrived.
Boss said her husband was an experienced e-bike rider who had never had an accident. Now he was being rushed to the emergency room with severe bleeding and lacerations.
“I am still trying to wrap my mind around someone hitting my husband and not staying there,” said Boss, who is working with detectives to piece together what happened. As if the accident wasn’t stressful enough, someone also stole her husband’s e-bike, she said.
Tyran spent a week in the hospital and when I talked to Boss, she said he was recovering at home. He was in pain, with stitches and no memory of what happened.
Boss offered a warning to bike riders on Moreland Avenue, calling it a dangerous place to ride. “Cars, semis are coming up and down the road at a high speed especially early in the morning,” she said. “You have people just not paying attention.”
There are a lot of issues I could harp on here, like the fact that it is illegal to leave the scene of an accident or to steal someone’s bike. But I can’t suppress a rising concern about the boom in e-bikes and how Atlanta’s car-centric culture may not be fostering a safer environment for those riders.
E-bikes are bikes with a small electric motor and battery that helps riders go further and faster — at speeds up to 30 mph depending on the class. They make daily commuting more accessible to a range of people, not just the avid rider. As e-bikes grow in popularity, there are increasing numbers of new bikers on the road.
“It is capturing existing riders and converting them to e-bikes but it is really attracting new riders and that means a lower skill level. More education and better facilities are needed to keep people safe when they are out on bikes,” said John Devine, executive director of Georgia Bikes. “If we don’t have the infrastructure to catch up to the new ridership, there are going to be significant safety challenges throughout the state.”
If something so awful could happen to an experienced rider like Boss’ husband, what happens when more new riders hit the streets?
Earlier this year, almost 9,000 residents in Atlanta applied for the city’s E-Bike Rebate Program, which provides up to $2,000 (depending on income) in instant rebates for e-bikes. After a lottery drawing, winners had to submit age, income and residency verifications to receive a voucher.
The first round of vouchers were issued in July with another round coming this month. The vouchers can be used at any of 12 participating bike shops to select a bike, receive a free helmet and some safety instruction. A number of applicants indicated the bike would be their primary mode of transportation, according to data from Atlanta Regional Commission.
But on the recent state report card from Bicycle Friendly America, Georgia failed on an important measure of evaluation and planning which includes safety, guidance on bicycle fatalities, data collection on bicycling and public engagement of people who ride bikes.
Devine said the state has made some strides in safety, including a 2021 update to the safe passing law which now requires drivers to change lanes if traffic conditions permit when passing a biker. If the driver can’t change lanes, they must reduce their speed to 10 miles below the posted speed limit, or 25 mph, whichever is greater. They must also give at least three feet of clearance when passing.
I’m willing to bet there are plenty of drivers who are unaware of this update. I regularly see them on the streets, whipping around bike riders or following behind them with little room to spare.
Speed is one of the primary determinants in the outcome of any crash, and every 5 mph speed increment reduces the chance of survival, Devine said. “It is not just that we need sidewalks and bike lanes and intersections, it is that we really need cars to be going at a reasonable speed,” he said.
That’s a hard sell in Georgia, said Jonas Ho, founder of E-board and E-Bike Atlanta. “Atlanta will never lower the speed limit to under 35 because we are a transit hub. The compromise was to add bike lanes,” said Ho, who is currently pushing an effort to regulate high velocity e-bikes on biking paths.
Devine said another area of advocacy is expanding current legislation which outlines the penalties for drivers who kill or seriously injure a bike rider. All vulnerable road users — pedestrians, wheelchair users, road crews — should be protected, Devine said, and the legislation should include some aspect of mandatory education for anyone who commits an offense.
There will always be some element of danger when you are riding a bike on the road but we can continue to support legislative changes that would help make even the busiest roadways like Moreland Avenue safer. And that could help prevent accidents like the one Tyran and Samone Boss are still struggling to understand.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
