Springtime is bike time in New England, but there have been mounting concerns about safety as bike paths and bike lanes get more crowded year after year. To learn more about local bike safety, GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz spoke with Josh Zisson, a lawyer who specializes in biking cases and creator of the blog Bike Safe Boston.

Mark Herz: Let’s start with Boston. How would you rate Mayor Wu on supporting biking in the city?

Josh Zisson: I think she started out strong, but recently it’s been a bit of a disappointment. She’s let down some of her constituents when it comes to bike infrastructure projects and removing the plastic bollards that keep people from parking in the bike lanes. It’s been a little bit disappointing and hopefully she can turn it around.

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Herz: How would you compare Boston to other cities for bike safety and bike support?

Zisson: Oh, I think it’s fantastic. The fact that, first of all, Boston is a flat city, makes it a lot easier to get around, and it’s one of the best ways to get around the city. But the infrastructure has dramatically improved since I started doing this back in 2010, and it’s a lot safer and more comfortable to ride around for the most part.

Herz: Well, what’s made it safer? I know when I moved here about a decade ago, and I was quite a cyclist then, sometimes I look at these lanes and I’m like, “you look like you’re inviting me to get doored.” For people who don’t know what that is, that’s when somebody just innocently opens their car door that they’re parked right next to a bike lane, and it can be deadly.

Zisson: Absolutely, and it has been. Hearing you call it innocently opening their car door, I think that that brings us to a pretty important point, which is the responsibilities that drivers have on the road. It includes looking for cyclists when you’re making a right turn, yielding to oncoming cyclists, when you are making a left, and looking in your mirror before you open your door. Doorings are probably our most common case, where someone just opened their door without looking to see if cyclists were coming in. The bike lane is right by the traffic lane usually, so it happens a lot.

Herz: What else is making people less and more safe, in terms of how infrastructure is set up and what’s going on with people? I’m thinking one of the things that goes on with people is a lot of distracted driving. Is that what you see?

Zisson: Oh my goodness, yes. Any cyclist can tell you that you look over to cars when you’re stopped at a red light, everyone’s on their phone all the time. Drivers need to put their phone away while driving. It’s incredibly dangerous to be driving distracted. To your question, I think that what’s making people safer is more bikes on the road. It’s helping to train drivers to be comfortable sharing the road with bikes, to understand how they move in traffic.

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Herz: And cyclists are not without blame or responsibility. What can cyclists do to act more like the vehicles they are, be predictable and be safe? Go ahead and tell us.

Zisson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the first thing is lights. By law, you need a white light in the front and a red light in back. And I don’t see it at all.

Herz: And that’s during the daytime too?

Zisson: No, that’s 30 minutes after sunset. As far as responsibilities, as you said, bikes have to follow the rules of the road. I think that if we’re going to demand these concessions — ask for this improved infrastructure to make us safer — then we need to show that we can operate in the system as it is.

Herz: Well, let’s talk e-bikes. Big rise of them in the last four to five years. They are really in the bike lanes and the bike paths. Maybe some tensions and some extra concerns with the non-e-bikers?

Zisson: I think so, maybe on the bike paths, not necessarily in traffic. I think in traffic, riding an e-bike has a lot of benefits. You can get off the line quicker, get out ahead of cars, it’s generally, I think, safer. So I don’t think that they’re inherently less safe, but I do think that on bike paths, people are whizzing by other cyclists or people walking, but overall, I think more bikes equals more safety, honestly, even if it’s e-bikes.

Herz: What about scooters?

Zisson: I’ve seen an incredible rise in the number of scooters on the road, and we’ve had a number of cases with them. But I think that the main issue with them that people don’t realize is, I believe that they’re an order of magnitude more dangerous than riding a bike. That comes from the way they’re constructed, the fact that the wheels are so small. On a bike, if you hit a pothole about the size of a watermelon, it’s not going to be comfortable and you might fall, but it’s not guaranteed to flip you over the handlebars and land you on your forehead. That’s really what it comes down to. Those tiny little wheels cannot handle Boston potholes.