From a research article about electric kickboards. Communicating information is difficult.

The number one most popular article on Nazology as of September 30, 2025.
It's an article with a rather provocative title. I was interested, so I gave it a read.

I imagine many of you also have the perception that "electric kickboards are dangerous." I had that impression to some extent as well.
But is this way of thinking based on a solid comparison?
Which is more dangerous, electric kickboards or electric-assist bicycles?It seems a Swedish research team conducted a study on this after setting up conditions as fair as possible.

And as the article title suggests, they reached the conclusion that "depending on the comparison criteria, it could be said that electric bicycles are more dangerous."
This "approximately 8 times" figure seems to be based on "travel distance" as the comparison standard.Therefore, while it is not data that can simply be called 8 times more dangerous, if viewed as one standard, well, it's not entirely baseless.

Reading it made me think, "I see," but the comment section of this article is extremely lively.
I read through that as well, and there were many points made that made me realize things.

Since there are many comments posted and it is quite difficult to read them all, I had Gemini summarize the contents of the comment section in bullet points within the brackets below.

『

Questions and points regarding research methods and prerequisites

• There was an opinion that they should have compared by age group as a comparison target.

• There was a point made that it is not appropriate to compare bicycles running on unmaintained roads in rural areas with electric kickboards running on maintained roads in urban areas.

• There was an opinion that since the survey is limited to rental services, "limited to rentals" should be added to the headline.

• There was a point made that the difference in the population of each user should be taken into account when calculating the accident rate.

• There was an opinion that since the standards for electric-assist bicycles differ between Europe and Japan, a simple comparison is meaningless.

• There was a point made that this is overseas data and cannot be applied directly to Japan, where road conditions are different.

• There was suspicion expressed that the original article calculated the accident rate by dividing by the number of accidents, and that this might be biased reporting.

Considerations regarding the background of accident rates

• There was an opinion pointing out the difference in user demographics, such as that electric kickboards are mainly used by young people with good reflexes, while electric-assist bicycles are also used by the elderly and others with reduced physical ability.

• There was an opinion pointing out the difference in vehicle characteristics, such as bicycles having worse balance and electric kickboards being easier to step off of.

• There was a consideration that because the perception that electric kickboards are dangerous has spread, those around them might be more cautious.

Other opinions

• There was an opinion that both are equally dangerous and that both need to be regulated.

• There was an opinion sounding an alarm that the simplistic idea that it is fine because it is an electric-assist bicycle is dangerous.

• There was also an opinion that it is expected that many criticisms ignoring scientific evidence will be raised against such statistical data.

”

Looking at it this way, quite a few problems have been brought to light, haven't they?

I understand that they tried to be as fair as possible, but even so, with things like “the age group of users” or “the level of awareness among people around them (many people have the perception that kickboards are dangerous and are naturally cautious)” and so on, I wonder if fairness is still not guaranteed in this experiment.

In particular, I didn't notice the point that “the standards for rental bicycles in Europe and Japan are different” at all.
I heard the word “moped” (it is written as mopetto, but apparently “do” is correct) for the first time here. It is an electric bicycle that can be moved by either a motor or by pedaling manually. Wow.

It seems that in Europe, they also rent these types of mopeds or motorcycle-like vehicles. Well, if there is an accident, generally speaking, accidents involving motorcycles are more likely to be more severe than those involving bicycles.

One thing I can say is that frankly, you can't really say anything based on this survey alone, and the results are just vague. That is the point.
It might serve as a suggestion that “there might be such a trend,” but it probably won't go beyond that.

I don't think this article is bad at all as a “problem statement.”
However, when the title is stated so definitively, it is inevitable that it will be perceived as misleading.
Since the experiment itself is an article with quite an interesting perspective, it feels like a shame. Or rather, that's how I feel.

I truly think that communicating something is difficult.
Especially when there is a certain limit on the number of characters, such as in a title, there are parts that must be cut even if they are necessary information. However, it is necessary to choose words without excess or deficiency within that limit.
It makes me realize that “a job that deals with words” is truly tough.

Also, since users and readers are exposed to a lot of information every day, there is a possibility that their “reading ability” is naturally increasing.
The eyes that scrutinize “is this information valuable?” are becoming stricter.
If that happens, the writer's ability must also be high, otherwise they will not be able to attract readers.
In that respect, it might be a severe world for writers.

I also write about miscellaneous things on this note every day.
Even if it is not the case that what I want to convey is 100% conveyed to the other party, I must never forget to be considerate of words.
That was a story that made me think so.

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