The safety organisation VeiligheidNL estimates that 5,000 fatbike riders are treated in A&E [ i.e Accident & Emergency] departments each year, on the basis of a recent sample of hospitals. “And we also see that especially these young people aged from 12 to 15 have the most accidents,” said the spokesperson Tom de Beus.
Now Amsterdam’s head of transport, Melanie van der Horst, has said “unorthodox measures” are needed and has announced that she will ban these heavy electric bikes from city parks, starting in the Vondelpark. Like the city of Enschede, which is also drawing up a city centre ban, she is acting on a stream of requests “begging me to ban the fatbikes”.
Throttle controlled electric bicycles have revolutionized individual mobility in Chinese major cities. They are low cost, low emission, and can be used by a wide demographic, for example, teenagers, who also want individual mobility.
By banning them “because they’re unsafe”, western governments are missing an opportunity to modernize the way in which people move around. Instead, they should figure out how to have people use these safely.
That’s probably (hopefully) the next step, but sometimes governments have to act fast for safety purposes
They wouldn’t have to act at all, hadn’t they given those light electric motorcycles an exemption from regulations that treats them as bicycles in the first place.
unfortunately thats not the world we live in though
I think teenagers riding them would be disastrous, otherwise I agree.
Yeah, I disagree – I think teenagers are one of the most miserable demographic group in western societies, think teenage depression.
They aren’t allowed to vote, they have limited agency, because they have limited money, they have limited mobility, because they aren’t allowed to drive. I think they should be empowered, and I think electric scooters empower them somewhat.
My experience in the NL: bicycles and functioning public transportation is what gives teenagers mobility, without requiring a lot of money (especially bicycles). Forcing them to share infrastructure with much faster, much more expensive electric mopeds claiming to be e-bikes to avoid safety and licensing requirements makes this much worse. The hard-earned mobility from the infrastructure already in place gets worse, not better, from fatbikes being treated as bicycles.
Pretty much everyone grew up just fine having much less than today’s teenagers.
Lack of dangerous vehicles is certainly not the cause of their depression.
Look around you. Do people look just fine?
“If everyone had access to a fatbike, we would live in utopia. No fascists, no pedophiles, no corruption, no billionaires, no climate change!”
I think they’d all be happy to classify them as electric motorbikes.
Requiring registration plates, training, a license, insurance, safety gear, and making them road only.
They don’t belong on cycling or pedestrian infrastructure. They shouldn’t be ridden by children.
That’s the thing, these things are light enough they’re perfectly fine anywhere a bicycle can go. If you need speed limits, enforce speed limits.
If it’s limited to what you’d expect in a bicycle lane, sure. But they’re not. There’s nobody to enforce it.
UK rules are they can only be pedal assisted and can only go up to 15mph (at which point the motor cuts out and if you want to go faster then grow some leg muscles).
That feels reasonable to me. I just don’t want to be mown down on a canal towpath by some 13 year-old, balaclava-wearing scrote doing 30mph on his Temu motorbike.
Cars shouldn’t be driven by anybody above 50 and below 25.
I’d settle for a moped classification with cheap registration and basic licencing for kids that teaches them, “only use the throttle in bike lanes, and we’ll take the bike away if we see you do it anywhere else.”
Shouldn’t it be “don’t use the throttle in the bike-lane”?
For clarity, “on infrastructure intended for small vehicles to do 20-40kph”. I mostly mean bike gutters on roads and dedicated bike paths as opposed to footpath/sidewalk with pedestrians.
Bicycles already exist and Amsterdam is famously cycle friendly. But these things go way to fast for the kids riding them without helmets or insurance, zipping through unsuspecting tourists and getting into loads of accidents
How many accidents?
Blocked
Blocked accidents? That’s not a number
There isn’t much to figure out. Treat them as what they are: Small motorcycles, and as a consequence, require a license, insurance, mandate helmets, and enforce minimal technical standards.
I disagree, they have other properties than small motorcycles. Motorcycles drive faster than 30-45 kph, are more expensive to buy and maintain, and they’re noisy, whereas electric bikes are noise-free.
Requiring an insurance and license makes them needlessly expensive - in China, neither is required, except for wearing a helmet. (on paper, they require license & insurance, but police doesn’t enforce this).
Lack of noise doesn’t make them less, but more dangerous, because you won’t even hear them coming.
Small motorcycles do also exist as mopeds in a class limited to 25km/h, yet require a license and insurance for good reason. They are way heavier than a bicycle and will go those speeds uphill.
The absurdity of this situation has only arisen from stupid politicians making a legal exception by treating such vehicles with an electric motor as bicycles rather than what they actually are.
It’s really quite simple. If it has a motor, it’s a motor vehicle. Motor vehicles have been around for more than a century by now, and, due to long experience, have been quite sensibly regulated to prevent excessive accidents and cover the damages. Just because electric motor vehicles have been become more viable due to improved battery technology, is no reason to exempt them from those regulations that have been written in blood.
no, the stupidity is whining about electric bikes when most cyclists fatalities are killed by motorists. You’re whining based on vibe, not facts, not science.
You can easily make these things into much more powerful than what’s on the sticker things.