Belgium and the Netherlands reacted to a surge in e bike rider injuries by offering free training refreshers. The safety institute spokesperson interviewed reckoned many injuries came from having the assistance on max power all the time and surging forwards at inopportune times. Not to say that's what's happening here.
I have family who works at the ambulance 112 call-out in the Netherlands they seen an sharp increase in live changing injuries. particularly amongst young people, now the traning you speak about helps for example elderly people there are a lot of elderly people bing longer mobile because of ebikes.(yes also more incident but to an extent, that's also dying whilst living your life instead of stuck behind the flower pots.)
I was also struck by "All three had concerns about the maintenance of the brakes on Lime bikes." Always always always test your brakes at the start of every ride, even on your own bike in case the cables have been knocked while parked, and definitely on public bikes. Not everyone flags faults on public bikes because they think they can cope with the fault and may want to ride it later. Also, I'm unsure if the bikes stay out of service correctly always, so I like to spin the saddle backwards on faulty bikes if possible, to warn other riders. At least the operators can't undo that remotely yet.
Yes but also if you're not driving you own bike, the calculation like in the linked article shouldn't be ''i can just make it'' ''it should be i don't know this bike so i 'll wait.'' apart from the claim the brakes didn't work. i don't know lime bike very well to be honest but i find no response at all very strange an ebike has and engine cut out, sometimes an additional engine brake, in addition to the ''normal'' brakes the way he describes his fall also implies a strong rear brake response as that often leads to the rear ''sliding away'' (my parents didn't like the quickly bald patches on my tires as i child but i love to play around with that feeling, sliding trough a corner.) where is no or to little brake would more likely throw you are the handlebar or make the bike slip from the front before it will fall sideways.
I see an awful lot of them and it appears they need virtually no effort and hardly any time to reach max speed. I wonder whether it might be wise to turn down the assistance on them to dampen the acceleration, not necessarily the speed.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of victim blaming and this might be entirely unrelated to the incidents up thread. However I think it is still something worth thinking about as a side issue to what could potentially be poor maintenance.
Yes even with the limit of 250W it doesn't take much effort for an ebike to reach the 15.5 mph, let alone all those with illegal's engines that go anywhere from 500 to 2000w
Well if you look at current ebike sales and mainly those of the china kits, we need some victim blaming because some of the victims because victim because they are flouting the rules. But more over we need competent goverments wo not only can set some rules but also enforce them.
, I'm not convinced it was ever a good idea to lump EAPCs into the same legal category as push bikes in the first place, I think they would have been better classed as some sort of reduced regulation motorbike.
Agreed, years ago the Sparta met (push bike with an petrol engine, with plastic!! rear wheels) was/is a snorfiets in both the Netherlands and Belgium, you can still drive them like a normal bike, but in the Netherlands it requires registration (as in a reg plate) and in Belgium it need an yellow sign to indicate it's motorised.
So ebikes should considered the same.
