Order of Grunts and Gesticulations Ancient Brotherhood. Questionable Purpose.
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Apparently, some of you think the problem is teenage boys on e-bikes doing wheelies.
Fair enough. Wheelies look illegal even when they’re not. They feel like a crime. They have the vibe of something that would be outlawed by a council that also hates outdoor basketball.
But before we appoint a neighbourhood tribunal and start handing out punishments, let’s do the least fashionable thing possible:
Let’s compare harm.
Not vibes. Not “I saw a kid once.” Harm.
Because if you want to talk about danger per capita, you have to first accept an embarrassing truth:
Australia’s most prolific “dangerous rider” isn’t on an e-bike. He’s in a Corolla.
The Car Is the Apex Predator (And It’s Not Subtle)
Australia’s national road trauma reporting doesn’t treat this like a culture war. It treats it like arithmetic.
In the most recent Road Trauma Australia 2024 report, the national road death rate is reported at 4.78 deaths per 100,000 population in 2024, rising again after a low point in 2020.
And here’s the part nobody puts on a neighborhood Facebook banner:
Drivers account for 46% of all road deaths.
Not “e-bike boys.” Not “scooter idiots.” Drivers. Nearly half.
And yes, sometimes a cyclist causes a crash. Sometimes a pedestrian does something suicidal. Sometimes a teenager tests physics with his front wheel.
But the baseline reality is still:
Cars are the main thing killing people on roads.
Not because drivers are evil. Because cars are heavy, fast, and everywhere—operated daily by humans who routinely interpret rules as “optional suggestions for other people.”
“But E-Bikes Are Getting Dangerous!”
Sure. Some are.
Especially when they aren’t actually e-bikes, but quiet electric motorbikes wearing a bicycle costume. (A problem even coroners and cycling advocates keep pointing out—because it muddies the waters and worsens public trust.)
And yes: e-mobility injuries are rising in some places, and there are real stories—some tragic—especially involving speed, alcohol, lack of helmets, and collisions with motor vehicles.
But when you ask: “Are there way more dangerous drivers than dangerous e-bike riders per capita?” we can answer it without theatrics.
Because we have a proxy for danger that’s hard to argue with:
Enforcement: how often people are caught doing the thing they absolutely shouldn’t be doing
In 2024, New South Wales issued 905,672 speeding fines, and Queensland issued 794,883. That’s 1.7 million speeding fines across just two states in one year, and that’s only what gets detected and fined.
That is not a “few bad apples.”
That’s a national hobby.
Meanwhile, when police data is published on personal mobility devices (PMDs) like e-scooters, you’re looking at figures like ~2,700 infringements in Queensland across Nov 2022–Dec 2024.
Read that again slowly.
- Speeding fines (two states, one year): ~1,700,000
- PMD infringements (one state, two+ years): ~2,700
Even allowing for imperfect comparisons, different enforcement intensity, different categories—this is not the same universe. It’s not the same solar system.
If you’re asking “per capita,” you have your answer: the scale of driver lawbreaking dwarfs micromobility lawbreaking.
Stop Signs: The National Rolling Ritual
You mentioned stop signs—nobody stops, they just roll through.
That isn’t your imagination. It’s a symptom of the larger disease: rule evaporation.
Speeding is prolific. People treat red lights as negotiable. Phones are used while driving like they’re surgically attached. And the social norm is basically:
“I’m a good driver. The rules are for other people. Also I’m late.”
The Order recognizes this as a sacred modern rite:
The Ceremony of Personal Exception.
It’s performed daily in the turning lane.
Why the E-Bike Panic Sells Anyway
Because teenage boys are visible.
They are noisy. They travel in packs. They do stunts. They look like a headline. They trigger the ancient adult reflex: “That is not how I would do it, therefore it must be banned.”
Drivers, meanwhile, are invisible because they are us.
They blend into “normal.” Which is unfortunate, because normal is currently the main threat to public safety.
The Actual Point (Under the Satire)
You were right in your original instinct: boys being outside is not a crisis.
The crisis is:
- a transport culture where mass noncompliance is tolerated,
- roads designed like speed temples,
- and enforcement that catches a fraction of what happens.
If we want fewer injuries and deaths, the solution isn’t scapegoating the smallest vehicle with the least kinetic energy.
It’s reducing the harm from the biggest vehicle with the most.
Which means: speed, distraction, intersection compliance, and the general assumption that “my convenience outranks your spine.”
Closing Motion of the Day
Let the teenagers learn risk in public, with friends, outside.
Then deal with the adult risk that’s been normalized for decades.
The Order will now file this under: “Matters of Grave Danger, Treated Casually by Those Holding Coffee.”
