Sharing the Road Safely: E-Bikes and Waste Collection

Rising fuel costs and expanding bike infrastructure are bringing more e-bikes onto roads shared with waste collection trucks. How can fleets help prevent collisions and keep everyone safer?

On this episode of Right on Time with RouteSmart, host Matthew Kemeny speaks with safety expert David Biderman, president of Biderman Consulting, LLC, and Jessica Cearfoss, RouteSmart business development executive. They discuss why preventing collisions matters more than assigning blame—and how safety can start before a truck leaves the yard.

Thoughtful route design can account for school traffic, bike lanes, road width, turns, and changing street layouts. Combined with driver vigilance and rider awareness, it can help crews and cyclists share the road more safely.

Learn more about RouteSmart’s approach to waste collection routing: www.routesmart.com/waste-collection

Right on Time with RouteSmart is the podcast that brings industry leaders together to discuss the challenges and innovations shaping waste and recycling, postal and parcel, newspaper delivery, and utility/field service route planning and optimization.

To learn more about RouteSmart and how intelligent route planning can improve safety and efficiency, visit RouteSmart.com
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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think every day brings it.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

If you can't pick up how to get into landmill delivery from what they're doing, you're gonna try to It's easy to use. It's a web interface.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Right on Time with RouteSmart, your discourse destination for all things route planning, optimization, and logistics. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Right on Time with RouteSmart, the podcast where we connect with decision makers, operations leaders, and safety experts across the industries we serve, from postal and parcel delivery to utilities, public works, newspaper distribution, and waste collection. I'm your host, Matthew Kemene, communications analyst here at RouteSmart. And today we are tackling a critical safety crisis facing every commercial fleet on the road. And that's how to safely share our streets with vulnerable road users, specifically bicyclists, e-bikes, and scooters. For many years, many of us in fleet management looked at micromobility as a big city issue. We assumed those crowded corridors in Manhattan or San Francisco were the only places where drivers had to constantly dodge fast-moving scooters and delivery riders. But that reality has shifted dramatically. Our suburbs have transformed. Micromobility is now everywhere, including classic suburban communities like Hicksville, Long Island. The stakes of this transition are incredibly high. Just last May in African California, a classic suburban community, a devastating tragedy occurred. A beloved 30-year-old special education teacher and coach was riding his bike bicycle to work. He was wearing his helmet and riding lawfully in a green painted designated bike lane. Yet as a commercial truck made a right-hand turn across the lane, a collision occurred. He tragically lost his life in a per completely preventable crash. So whether you are managing parcel delivery vans, utility trucks, street sweepers, or waste vehicles, drivers face a massive responsibility every single day when they hit these changing suburban streets. So the question is: how do we prevent these strategies? How do we arm our drivers with the right habits? And how can technology assist in designing safer routes? To discuss this, I am thrilled to welcome back two incredible industry leaders. First, we have David Biederman, president of Biederman Consulting LLC, and a leading national safety expert for commercial fleets. Welcome back, David.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Hello, Matt.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

And joining us is my colleague, Jessica Searfoss, business development executive at RouteSmart, who works daily with fleet and operations managers across a broad spectrum of high-density service and delivery industries, service service and waste collection industries. Great to have you here, Jessica.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Thanks, Matt. Thanks for organizing us.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

So, David, let's start with the basics of driver behavior. When we look at standard safety tips for commercial drivers, things like avoiding distractions from cell phones or in-cab devices, uh, conducting thorough pre-trips, inspections of lights, horns, mirrors, brakes, cameras, etc., uh, these sound like common sense, yet tragedies like the one in Athlignan still happen. From your safety work with national fleets, where is where's the gap? Where why are these critical safety steps still being missed in the cab, and how can operations managers better enforce them?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

So I think most companies are providing appropriate training to their workers about uh not having collisions, whether it's with uh e-mobility uh devices like bikes, e-bikes, or scooters, or whether it's with pedestrians or or other motorized vehicles. The issue that seems to have arisen over the last couple of years is that as gas prices have increased, the number of uh users of bikes, e-bikes, and scooters is dramatically increasing. We saw this 10, 15 years ago when the price of gas first spiked up and bike share systems were first implemented in major cities. And we saw a spike then in garbage trucks striking and often killing bicycle users making right turns. What we now have in 2026 is a number of these incidents, not just in cities, as you mentioned, but in suburbs like Fairfax County, Virginia and uh Nassau County, Long Island, where um these uh bicyclists are being struck by trucks either making turns or coming out of um uh shopping centers. And what we need to be doing is we need to be providing drivers with extra reminders to watch out for these vulnerable users. It's not just about, hey, make sure you you you watch your blind spot. It's hey, every time you make a right turn, you need to be thinking about is there a person in that space? And here's what you need to do. You need to signal early, you need to look twice. Uh there are a number of ways to emphasize the vulnerable road users to hopefully decrease the frequency of these horrific events.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

From your safety work with National Fleets, where is the gap? Why are these critical safety steps still being missed in the CAD? And how can operations managers better enforce them?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

So, Matt, that's a good question. I think most solid waste employers are providing appropriate training to their drivers about avoiding collisions with uh other road users, including e-mobility devices. We always tell drivers to, you know, be careful when making turns and to, you know, watch out so you don't collide with something. But what's changed is that there's simply so many more of these devices on the street than there were even three years ago. Three years ago. There are uh a lot of suburbs have uh people riding bikes or scooters to or from school. And we need drivers to be made aware of that fact. And the safety communications to them needs to emphasize a little bit more strongly the need to avoid those types of road users.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

And Jessica, uh Route Smart uh prides itself on creating safe routes, but how important is it to use intelligent route planning to reduce high-risk removal uh maneuvers?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Well, incredibly important. I think most of the fleets that we work with val put a high value on safety. Um, and this seems to be a pretty sensitive area because of just the nature of how how big heavy garbage trucks are and visibility concerns on the vehicle at time of day as well, because this is something that I think this element of safety fluctuates during the day. And also things like, you know, they operate at dark. You know, they may start their route and really be in a pattern and not thinking about that and not have the visibility. But once the sun comes up, um, that's when the bike riders are coming out in the lanes. And some of these considerations change throughout the day of the route, the course of the route. Um, I think this is incredibly important, in particular because of the high emphasis that the industry has adopted for safety. So it's one more factor that needs to be taken into consideration. Um, from the mechanics and the nuts and bolts of the routing part, this is an element of um thinking about turns, thinking about road width and bike lanes. I myself can think of areas that um the areas that come, it's not just seasonal areas, but I think of seasonal areas where there is more bike traffic at certain times of the year. And those are often new lanes. Um, so they are new data points. So if somebody has not rerouted and used data that is considering the fact that there's bike lanes, maybe there's one less lane of traffic involved because of the way that the lanes have been reconfigured. Um, these are all factors that need to be thought about in the route planning element. Um, so there's kind of the the safety as well as just the nuts and bolts mechanical side.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

David, one of the biggest challenges drivers tell us is about how other road users don't always follow traffic laws. So a delivery uh courier on an e-bike might run a red light or a scooter might ride against traffic. But is there a way to train heavy vehicle operators to expect the unexpected and actively scan intersections before entering rather than assuming pedestrians and micromobility riders will yield to a commercial vehicle?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Well, expect the unexpected is a common theme that myself and other safety leaders use when training drivers. You can't expect every single road user to be following the law. And I would suspect that if I was to go out to the interstate, you know, a half of the drivers on that interstate are going above the speed limit. And so we shouldn't pretend that uh, you know, it's just e-mobility users who are potentially violating the law. What we need to be doing is being aware of that fact, uh, adjusting the way we drive so that we don't have these horrendous collisions. Because even if there's a collision and the other uh person, the person on the e-bike is entirely at fault, that truck is gonna be sitting there for hours while the police conduct an investigation. Uh, you're gonna be having to hire lawyers, it's gonna potentially involve your insurance premiums. There may be an insurance case or claim made. And so avoiding the collision is more important than the fault issue here. And we need to continue to focus on reminding drivers that they drive in a challenging environment. We have to acknowledge to them, yeah, you have a tough job. And part of that tough job is avoiding collisions with other people using the road who may not be complying with the law. And once we sort of get past that hurdle, we can then talk about the specifics about, you know, when you make a right turn, you should be signaling early and looking twice. That you should be always checking your blind spots, uh, particularly in urban areas where we have a lot more e-delivery taking place than we used to. And I think Jessica's point about route design is really important. Uh, we should be routing trucks away from schools between 7 and 9 a.m. and between 2 and 4 p.m., when a certain percentage of those school attendees are coming and going using e-mobility devices, not just students, but teachers. And we we really need to increase the focus on that based on what's happened so far in 2026, when I'm aware of at least four fatal incidents in which trucks have collided with bikes um or e-bikes.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

So for the diverse fleet managers who are listening, uh, whether they're coordinating uh waste collection, recycling, street sweepers, um Jessica, are there any uh intelligent routing tools that can help keep a driver's focus on the road that help prevent distracted driving and and kind of reinforce safe driving behaviors when they're completing their route?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Um well, route smart is coming from the perspective of trying to get ahead of any of the safety concerns before, you know, you're to try to design the routes intuitively around things like what David says. Um, you know, avoiding avoiding an area where it's just naturally a higher volume of safety issues that come up, in this case happen to be mobility riders, um, just extra pedestrians, extra volume in certain areas of town. Um, you know, RoutSmart does have uh functionality that does um account for things like turns and time windows, um, things like that to try to help um in the planning process just get ahead of the game, just avoid the areas at those times of days that where there's a higher volume. Um with respect to in the vehicle, there are onboard devices um that would provide audio, you know, guidance to the route to try to get the um to try to help the driver stick to the route and and not have to, you know, think or make decisions on the flies that that might create um just poor last-minute decisions that lead them into the path of um unsafety, you know, unsafe areas.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Um this issue is a reminder that the people who drive garbage trucks are professional drivers. They have a CDL that's different from a 14-year-old high school freshman who's biking to school or biking home from work from his job. And we have an obligation as professional drivers to drive within the confines of the law, which includes not colliding with other vehicle users, including e-mobility users. I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying we're gonna be able to go to zero overnight. Um, I think the increased interest in the concept of vision zero is a is a good tailwind on this issue, and I would encourage uh viewers to research vision zero and some of the concepts around that, because some of those concepts I think can be applied in the waste sector. But I think the continued focus on safety, uh reminding drivers to do thorough pre-trip inspections, reminding drivers about distractions, not just cell phones, but food and drink in the cab, reaching for the tablet, those are important things that help prevent collisions. And then layering onto that better route design to avoid areas with high percentage of vulnerable road users is a way for us as an industry to reduce the frequency of these horrific incidents.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah, I agree with all of that. RouteSmart as um is part of its values that we design routes around, safety is number one. So we're always um interested in having the awareness of what needs to be considered in addition to what we're trying to already do and functionality that we have in place. So it's of high priority to us to understand as things change in the industry what we need to do or what we could offer to our clients within the software to help get ahead of any safety concerns.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Well, thank you. This has been an incredibly eye-opening conversation. It's clear that whether we're operating in a major metropolitan center or a quiet suburb, that's sharing the road uh safely is a shared responsibility. It requires both human vigilance and technological innovation. I want to thank my guests, David Biederman of Biederman Consulting LLC, and Jessica Sierfoss from RouteSmart for sharing their critical insights with us today. To our listeners across the industries we serve, next time your fleet hits the road, remember to look twice, expect the unexpected, and always make safety your first priority. You've been listening to Right on Time with RouteSmart, and for more episodes, resources, and insights into our intelligent route planning technology, please visit us at RouteSmart.com. Stay safe out there, and we'll catch you next time. Thank you for tuning in to Right on Time with RouteSmart. Make sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss the next episode. You can always catch up on our previous episodes by searching for us on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Learn more by visiting RouteSmart Technologies on social media or by visiting us at Routesmart.com.