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”.
These are not fatbikes. Fatbikes are normal pedal bikes with big tires that are good in snow.
These are Fat Tire e-bikes. You should always be calling them ebikes when discussing them in English. Perhaps this is a mis translation.
It’s in the first par. of the article.
" … thick-tyred electric bikes… the Dutch call “fatbikes”
Why are 12 year olds even allowed to drive what is essentially a motorbike?
Idk how it is in there but In my country, you need only a moped license if it’s limited to 45 and no license if 25 km/h. The latter is considered a bicycle with assistance motor.
human powered locomotion (foot, bike, skate, etc) and mobility assist devices, should be completely separate from motorized vehicles (electric bike, scooter, cars, combustion,etc). simple as.
These are legally not really motorised vehicles if you still have to pedal and they don’t go above 25.
Anyone notice how these are mostly prevalent among right-wingers?
No, not really.
Let’s give motorcycles with insane torque to children, What could go wrong?
Most of those even don’t need you to pedal (which where I live is a prerequisite for e-bikes).
Removed by mod
Also motors are limited to 250W which seriously limits the danger.
Mine is 750W still (from before laws were made, now illegal) and still can’t accelerate fast enough to be dangerous, but without my limiter the top speed is like 45 km/h.
You sound like someone not understanding they can absolutely be dangerous.
A college of mine was in a normal bicycle / rollerskate accident, he spent many months before walking well again and was away from work for several weeks.
You can be dangerous in traffic regardless of your vehicle… A bicycle can easily reach those speeds downhill, but you still apply the brakes because going 2x speed of everyone else is hazardous, no?
I don’t ride irresponsibly, and I’m not about spend 600€ to replace the motor when I can just limit it and drive responsibly. It’s up to the individual whether they wanna be a douchebag or not.
The problem is it’s impossible to know if what you say is really true, because a douchebag would say about the same thing.
Stay safe out there!
I think the laws where I am in Germany are stricter than the Netherlands. But it’s always worth trying more granular rules. Such as age limit, helmets for kids, fines for increasing performance, speed limit or ban in parks. This is fairer, but much harder to police than an outright ban. But big enough fines should be a deterrent. And might be preferred by fat bikers.
Why fine increased performance instead of reckless behavior
Yes. Also good. But if someone has hacked their bike so its no longer safe or it enters a category where it needs different insurance or registration, it is easier to enforce before any dangerous behaviour has occurred. Otherwise its often too late, after an accident.
-
More than 10000 death per year are due to air pollution. About half are due to traffic emission (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5564403_Long-Term_Effects_of_Traffic-Related_Air_Pollution_on_Mortality_in_a_Dutch_Cohort_NLCS-AIR_Study)
-
74% of households in the netherlands have a car. Only 6% of cars are electric
-
Most road fatalities are cyclists. Most road deaths occur in crashes involving a car: single-car crashes, car-car crashes and bicycle-car crashes (https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/road-deaths-netherlands).
-
Boomers: woW ThoSe ElecTriC BikEs ArE Very DangerOus
Nothing’s worse than vroomers, polluting the earth and spreading lung cancer to little children while comfortably lying in their fatzo mover, whining about kids having bikes. It’s a social panick, and the proof is that there is no studies, no figures, nothing in the article. Just testimonies and vibes-based moralism.
And yes, I know you, yes, you, are getting mad at reading this because deep down you know you are a polluter and a piece of shit.
Well, stay mad, idiot.
This is such a dumb argument to make. “Worse problems exist, so let’s not do anything about this one”. Who did you think you’d convince by writing all this out? What a waste of time.
Check the user name and the account age, then stop feeding the troll.
People still do that?
Apparently.
-
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.
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.
Requiring registration plates, training, a license, insurance, safety gear, and making them road only.
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.
mown down on a canal towpath by some 13 year-old, balaclava-wearing scrote
How bad are things over there?? In Vietnam, all the kids use high-powered electrics until they’re like 14 or so and can get on a 125cc, it shocks me when I see kids on major roads, but it doesn’t create the danger to the public you’re describing.
Removed by mod
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.
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, ban them from roadways reserved for non-motorised traffic, and enforce minimal technical standards.
I disagree, I think 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 as 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, there is no reason to exempt them from those regulations that have been written in blood.
Removed by mod
You can easily make these things into much more powerful than what’s on the sticker things.
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
Removed by mod
Blocked
Removed by mod
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.
Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. Growing up in small town Germany, where cycling infrastructure is much worse compared to the NL, I would have loved to have a fat bike. I could have visited my friends living in the villages outside my town without having to rely on a bus that goes twice per day.
But I see how this is different in a place with great cycling infrastructure, and I agree that fatbikes somewhat cannibalize the existing bicycle infra.
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!”
It won’t create a utopia, but displacing cars with 2-wheelers and giving kids more independence is good for everyone’s mental health.
Riding a motorbike in Hanoi is infinitely less stressful than driving a car on any stroad in America. In China on an ebike you get the unique ability to ride both where cars or bicycles go.
The issue here isn’t ebikes, its unsafe behavior. If you need speed limits, put in speed limits. It would be silly to limit cars and trucks to 20 horsepower instead of setting the appropriate speed limit for where they’re driving.
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 lead to them being treated as bicycles in the first place.
unfortunately thats not the world we live in though
When are cars banned?
Believe it or not, cars are already banned from bikelanes and parks in Amsterdam. I hope this helps.
They’re allowed everywhere else and they make up most of the fatalities.
They should be banned from the city.
You just need to build a public transpotation system that can render cars useless for every use (shopping, commute, free time activities and so on) and that is usable from evertwhere to everywhere, even outside big (and small) cities.
They already have it. Yet 78% of household have one.
Public transit is one aspect, another one is walkable cities where everything you need in your daily life is just a short walk away. Also, sensible laws regarding rights to work from home for applicable jobs etc.
Car accidents are the natural state of things as opposed to this!! /s
The second I saw the first fat bike I knew it was a bad idea
It’s literally a worst of all worlds type vehicle, why are they so popular anyway? Is it just the “cool” factor?
Fat bikes were originally designed for snow as mountain bikes. I sold one a few years ago and every guy who responded to look at the bike was obese. For some reason, they assumed it was a bike for fat people.
Big tires are better to ride over potholes and such
deleted by creator
they can go around 45 kph with minimal pedaling and doesn’t require a moped license.
They should require a license…
Exactly, they’re misclassified mopeds (which do require a license, helmet, and rider age at least 16)
I’d even allow kids as young as 14, they’re potentially great mobility enablers… But standards need to be met and they need to prove they’ll follow them. Licencing may be key, and potentially worth teaching through school.
At what speed?
As if it were a bad idea to privilege electric small motorcycles over other small motorcycles.
That was sadly exactly what I was expecting from the electric motorization of bicycles. It is a history that has repeated itself many times in the last 70 or 80 years since the first combustion engine mopeds.
The fact is that the human-powered bike is at a sweet spot of efficiency and safety. Once you go faster, you need a helmet, a heavier frame, wider tyres, better brakes, wider lanes, protective clothing, protection against cold, a heavier motor for propelling all the extra weight, and so on. The energy input from you the human dwindles.
It is not any more a bicycle.
Yes, a motor vehicle is a motor vehicle creating motor vehicle hazards, regardless of how exactly the motor makes its power, and how that power output is controlled.
You need a helmet on purely muscle-powered bicycles, too. A helmet saved both mine and my father’s life in accidents that would not had happened were we not riding bikes that moment.
A majority of bicycle accident fatalities could have been prevented with helmets.
Wear helmets. There are cool models, too, don’t try that excuse.Removed by mod
Whatever you make up, whoever’s fake account you are.
Removed by mod
You are a day old with a name refering to this thread. Fuck off troll, have fun on my banlist.
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
I vaguelly remember a study in Denmark (which has roughly 50/50 of people cycling with and without helmets) that showed that cyclists who wear helmets were more likely to have serious accidents than those who did not, though by a small percentage.
There are several factors that are believed to be behind such an unexpected statistic:
- Drivers actually act more dangerously around cyclists who seem better protected than around those who do not and the cyclists themselves are more reckless when they feel they’re better protected (the latter being a much broader and well known phenomenon)
- The weight of the helmet, even though it’s quite low, will on a high speed collision pull the head more towards colliding with something than otherwise - in other words, if you fall the helmet actually unbalances your head and makes it more likely your head will hit the ground.
- The human brain is much more resilient to linear shock than rotational shock - basically when something makes your head rotate the brain inside will also rotate though not instantly since it not part of the bone of your cranium, so it will instead get pulled to rotate and similarly when the head stops be pulled to stop rotating, all of which can cause tearing which can kill a person. Cycling helmets tend to make the head rotate on a collision.
- Cycling helmets are only rated to protect from collisions up to (if I remember it correctly) 15km/h
- Cycling helmets do not protect anything else than the head (which links back to the first point)
Anyways, the point being that at the kind of speed and the environment that people cycle in when just commuting in a city, bicyle helmets can actually make it slightly more dangerous.
Mind you, this doesn’t at all mean that in different situations - such as mountain biking or speed cycling - helmets aren’t a must.
In places like The Netherlands pretty much nobody uses a helmet when just cycling in the city.
I would really like to see that study. Because I have studies showing the opposite.
Here is an article (in German, sorry) summarizing and contextualising several studies. One showed that wearing a helmet resulted in car drivers keeping five centimetres less distance when overtaking the cyclist, but that study’s method was flawed and a study conducted in Berlin with better equipment and better method (bigger sample size, different routes, women being actually test subjects and not just represented by a guy with a wig, etc) that showed helmet wearing bicyclists being overtaken with more distance.
Here (again German, sorry) is a research report comparing 543 accidents with injured bicyclists in University Hospitals of Munich and Münster and 117 accudent fatality from a database. From the 117 fatalities, 50% died of traumatic brain injury and six wore a helmet. Furthermore, from those injured (not the 117 fatalities) and with traumatic brain injury, none wore helmets.
Here (this time in english) is a meta analysis of studies about the safety of wearing helmets when cycling, concluding the discussed studies show a benefit for safety when wearing a helmet while cycling (too much for.me to summarize).
Sadly I read about this over a decade ago and don’t have a link for it anymore.
I looked around and all I could find were studies pointing out that helmets protect against head injury, which was never in dispute and you yourself linked studies for that - my the point was not about helmets reducing head injuries (though the whole rotational vs linear collisions thing means good helmet design is important) but about how as per risk compensation theory if there is an overal increase in risk due to increased perception of safety it might offset the increased in protection from helmets since helmets only protect the head.
Also found lots of things about how mandatory helmet use for cyclists in overall causes more deaths (for example and another example) because it reduces the number of people who take up cycling and the overall negative health outcomes of fewer people cycling add up to to higher mortality that the increased risk of head injury from cycling without a helmet given the low baseline risk of cycling in general.
Here’s a pretty good summary from the views in the EU.
Well, first, you did try to make points about brain injuries caused by wearing helmets. Now you claim you never argued about that, so what is it?
Second, it is IMHO not quite intelligent to make an argument about head protection not protectng other body parts. That’s like saying a stab protection vest is useless because you can get shot in the head.
Third, the first article I linked talks about a systematic comparative analysis of 23 studies examining risk homeostasis hypothesis, of which 18 could not confirm the hypothesis, three showing inconclusive results and only two being arguments for the hypothesis, the analysis concluding there is little to no evidence for bicycle helmets leading to riskier behavior.I know the studies about mandatory helmet rules (something I actually never talked about), I find people’s behavior in this case utterly incomprehensible and stupid, but again, it’s not something I argued for. It just shows me we need to encourage helmet use in different ways. Mandatory for children maybe so that they get used to it, normalizing and encouraging wearing helmets by advertisements etc. IDK, but such efforts can be quite successful if funded and supportes sufficiently.
Ovoid shapes will cause rotational forces on perpendicular impacts, whilst spherical shapes do not. This is just Maths.
Notice how motorcycle helmets are actually spherical.
In my experience the traditional bicycle helmets are half ovoids.
That said I drilled down to the comparative analisys linked from the study you indicated and it basically concludes that people who are more fearful tend to wear helmets when cycling, so the reverse causality relationship of the risk compensation theory (which would be that a person that starts wearing a helmet when cycling becomes more risk taking).
So you make a good point that advising people to wear helmets is not a bad idea.
IMHO, as long as it doesn’t turn people away from a more compreensive risk reduction form of cycling (which is how I personally tackled changing from cycling in The Netherlands to cycling in London, which at the time had much worse cycling infrastructure and were motorists weren’t used to cyclists when I started doing it - by having quite a lot of tricks to keep me safe from the innatention and error of not just motorists but also pedestrians, most of which were not at all needed in The Netherlands were other road users always expect cyclists to be around), it’s fine.
As for mandatory cycling helmets, I’m against it because it severely lowers the uptake of cycling which ultimatelly is worse for people because of worse health outcomes. Also my experience cycling in London during the period were it went from quite atypical to more normalized, is that more cyclists around results in more motorists and pedestrians being naturally aware of and careful towards cyclists (an effect I also noticed from the other side in myself as both a motorist and a pedestrian when I moved from a country with no cycling culture to The Netherlands and got used to lots of cyclists around) which in turn makes cycling safer for everybody - in other words, more cycling adoption makes cycling safer. This seems to be aligned with the most common position in The Netherlands as per my last link:
The Dutch government, private safety organizations and cyclists’ groups all tend to agree on the following propositions: Promoting the use of bicycle helmets runs counter to present government policies that are aimed at the primary prevention of crashes (as opposed to secondary prevention) and at stimulating the use of the bicycle as a general health measure.
Ovoid shapes will cause rotational forces on perpendicular impacts, whilst spherical shapes do not. This is just Maths.
Notice how motorcycle helmets are actually spherical.
In my experience the traditional bicycle helmets are half ovoids.
Bruh, it’s not that deep. Statistics show that wearing a helmet reduces chances to severe head and brain injuries.
As for mandatory cycling helmets, I’m against it
I don’t care since I am not discussing helmet mandates.
As for the rest, obviously it’s better to prevent accidents in the first place and obviously we need to reduce the number of cars on our streets for multiple reasons. But that’s all policy while wearing a helmet is a cheap and easy way to protect yourself against unavoidable accidents and avoidable accidents while waiting and advocating for policy change.
Helmet studies typically have a bias for or against from the start. The reality is wearing a helmet is always safer, and would save lives of pedestrians and car drivers. However, making cycling as easy as walking means no helmet laws. In Netherlands, helmeted riders have more injuries because they tend to be the riders on expensive road race bikes going considerably faster in car traffic.
Helmet studies typically have a bias for or against from the start.
The reality is wearing a helmet is always safer
You writting one after the other just makes clear you’re hugely biased in this as you basically put forward an absolute statement of yours “wearing a helmet is always safe” as objective truth whilst studies “typically are biased” or in other words, you know better than studies.
Definitelly agree that using numbers from injuries of cyclists with helmets in The Netherlands without any further considerations yields biased results for the reasons you described. It’s not by chance that I did not quote such figures at all and in fact explicitly said from the start that people doing things like speed cycling and mountain biking should wear a helmet.
No idea were you pulled that specific argument you decided to counter in a response to my posts.
Specifically for The Netherlands and from the last link in my previous post, the only thing about them is the general belief there that “Promoting the use of bicycle helmets runs counter to present government policies that are aimed at the primary prevention of crashes (as opposed to secondary prevention) and at stimulating the use of the bicycle as a general health measure” which is really about not having mandatory helmet laws because it reduces cycling in general and how it’s more important to push for safe cycling conditions (such as good cycle paths) than for cyclists wearing protection, all of which makes sense.
Personally I think that wearing a helmet or not should be down to each cyclist and should take in account the conditions they are cycling under, always remembering that wearing a helmet is not a silver bullet. My own experience of cycling in different countries (The Netherlands, England, Germany, Portugal) and different conditions is that the level of risk can be very different sometimes even from city to city, making helmet use more or less important relative to other things.
Again and above all, always keep in mind that wearing a helmet is not going to make you totally or even mostly safe, if only to avoid the increase risk taking due to a sense of increase safety exceeding the actual amount of increased safety from a helmet - as per risk compensation theory - which ultimatelly can make you less safe.
In my view your whole “wearing a helmet is always safer” absolutist posture is a needlessly dangerous mindset to have - it’s far better to have a far more general approach to cycling safety in city traffic (which is basically what I went with when I moved from cycling in the far safer Dutch conditions to cycling in London, meaning that I ran around with all sorts of risk mitigation practices not just towards motorists on the road but even towards pedestrians in the sidewalk that were even adjusted depending in the area of London I was in) that thinking that just a helmet will make you safe.
No we don’t need helmets. Cars must be kicked out of the bicycle’s areas instead. Fuck that carbrained propaganda.
It was not a car that made me slip on an invisible icy spot on a bridge and bang my head against the railing, resulting in a concussion. Without a helmet I’d be dead. Or worse.
Wear a fucking helmet.This reads like you fell on your head without wearing a helmet a few times too often.
Oh man I got a concussion while wearing a bike helmet I probably would have died if I wasnt wearing it. And we were just kids makings jumps in the driveway…
Yes, right.
But: A bike helmet won’t help you much if you have a collision at 50 km/h. If you go at moped / light motorcycle speed, you need a motorcycle helmet, too.
Yeah, obviously you need different helmets for different speeds. But the comment I responded to was worded like you wouldn’t need a helmet on bicycles at all.
In principle, this is correct. But the need for a helmet increases massively with speed.
Consider the end speed of free fall when falling a certain height - or the inverse, height in meters versus speed in kilometer per hour. It is:
10 km/h ..... 0.39 meter 20 km/h ..... 1.57 meter 30 km/h ..... 3.54 meter 40 km/h ..... 6.29 meter 50 km/h ..... 9.83 meterWould you jump from ten meters height into a concrete surface? Few people would, because it is almost certain that you die. But the frame pillar of a car is equally hard as such a surface.
Another data point: In the center of Copenhagen, not so many people use a helmet, but the speed is typically between 10 and 15 km/h - so many bikes there ! - and the number of serious accidents is very low. The contrary is the case for Germany.
And just to make a point: Using a helmet is always safer.
So? Nobody is arguing about this but you. Again, my point is not about speeds or certain types of helmets. I just said you should wear a helmrt on bikes FFS!
Every winter in Canada people die from slipping on ice. Walking in winter should require a helmet, but people would find that absurd.
Okay give me the numbers of fatal pedestrian slips versus fatal bicycle accidents that would not have been fatal if a helmet was worn. Give me data.
I think the point is that the convenience of being able to ride a bike without having a helmet at hand is something beneficial for the group. That it, there would be fewer cyclists if wearing a helmet was mandatory, and that would harm cyclists as a group.
By all means, if you consistently go over 20km/h on bike, wear a helmet, as at that speed it’s starting to get dangerous.
Here is the python code I used to compute the above table:
>>> def fall_height_from_fall_speed_kms(v): ... v_ms=v/3.6 ... a = 9.81 # m / s **2 ... t = v_ms / a ... h = t ** 2 * a / 2 ... return h
most ebikes already go slower, or on par at max speed with an amateur/relatively fit cyclist. roughly 25 to 30kmph.
going after fat tire bikes specifically doesnt really make sense considering they offer more traction for stopping power. if they legally limit the speed it should be on par with elite level cyclists at most. which is about 50 to 60kmph. depending on the area. nobody wants to wipe out and hurt themselves or somebody else.
this is a way for them to add tickets and licensing for people who wish to circumvent owning a vehicle or taking public transit. which the government and corporations directly benefit from financially.
i just dont see the point besides fear mongering in a place where virtuallly everyone has a bike, and cycling accidents are less lethal than vehicular ones. it just seems like an unfair represention of statistics to prop up a bottom line that only serves to extract wealth from the poor, less well off, environementally or financially concious.
if parents dont want their kids to take those risks, then dont buy them an ebike. buy them a regular one, or tell them to take public tranist if they cant offer it themselves.
they always use children as a way to shoe in control with fear tactics.
as an bike/ebike rider. i have a bike that can go about 45kmph and never go over 25 personally, as that feels like a safe speed in my city with the infrastructure and crossings that we have. every incident that has happened to me has come from vehicles doing illegal turns, crossings, or not looking where traffic is coming from before pulling out into the street.
if anything they should focus on getting more people to ride bikes/ebikes, and offering safety courses for those who wish to own ebikes. free of charge.
if they want to regulate them, regulate braking power vs speed potential. and helmets. and create separated concrete barrier bike lanes with covers for weather and wind to avoid ice buildup and snow. fat tire bikes are nearly a necessity for cyclists in colder climate.
Removed by mod
They are talking about banning fat “bikes” not fat tire bikes. They are basically electric motorcycles disguised as an e-bike.
Like this one:
There is already regulation and they should be speed limited. But these bikes are designed to unlock the limit very easily.
These are fucking motorcycles.
Removed by mod
every ebike can be unlocked with relative ease. theres nothing any law can do to stop that from happening unless they ban imports of everything below 250 watts and even then people will still be able to modify the bikes. they even tried it with CANbus, but at the end of the day its a motor, a controller, a throttle or pedal assist, and a battery. you simply cannot stop anyone from modding even completely subpar or top tier bikes from going over the limit. which is limited by the batteries power, and motor/controllers ability to hold a charge. to even try doing so would require powers that reach way into other markets. caps on capacitors, batteries, PCB board controls, motors, etc.
this isnt about bikes. its about brown people and visible minorities riding them en mass and europeans wanting to bring the hammer down on them so they are forced to buy cars, use public transit,become more susceptible to random checks by police, and/or be kicked out of the country for breaking a new law. as well as finding a new way to limit or regulate other related electronics markets, and milk them for more money.
its amsterdam for pity’s sake. quite literally one of the most racist/xenophobic places in europe, despite the fine architecture, rich history and culture. of course they are going to want a way to stop check people using a slower mode of transport that circumvents traditional charges for transportation. its happening all over europe as well.
its rediculous and everyone who disagrees is either chronically online, completely unaware of anything deeper than a scary headline that dictates their beliefs for them. knows nothing about electronics, bikes, ebikes, general safety, race relations, or DOES know these things, but underneath it all supports it because they are also bigoted and/or drive a car/take public transit and dont like cycling of any kind if others are doing it and it even remotely inconveniences them.
they will start with banning a visibly common iteration of cheap ebikes, but at the end of the day, unless they ban every form of it, and install checkpoints to ensure that nobody has them. theres simply no other way to get rid of them. and to do that would be fuhuckin stupid.
we can all lie to another and say its not due to xenophobia, racism, or general support for luxuries such as cars and public transit, and the taxation and fees that come with them, and i dare say a police state. but at the end of the day this is just another way for governments and corporations to use fear to impliment more control over emerging technologies and markets. especially on human mobility.
its a damn bike, and its a shit tier one that goes slower than most entry level ebikes unless you swap the controller and battery. and you, again, can do that with literally any and every ebike. its actually a stupidly simple process in most cases.
in a world where we can drive a death wagon at 150+ kmph that virtually guarantees death or significant injury for passengers and anyone it comes into contact with. which also drastically pollutes the environement in comparison, we should limiting cars not dinky ebikes from temu that poor people and immigrants prefer to ride. if anything we should be pushing more people into riding bikes of all types.
its a dumb idea. and anyone who disagrees is at the very least grossly misinformed on the wider issues, i dont blame them, just the media thats controlled by people who like to control people.
no offense. im not writing this in anger to you, or anyone in particular, its purely based on my experience as a person who had made a point of riding bikes in spite of owning vehicles, simply because of the glaringly obvious issues that are caused by cars, and that are answered by bikes/ebikes.
downvote away y’all, i know its controvercial, but the ones who get it are the ones im talkin’ to. everyone else can either take the time to understand it, or kick rocks.
fuck cars, fuck the government, fuck the system. and fuck climate change.
Removed by mod
every ebike can be unlocked with relative ease. theres nothing any law can do to stop that from happening unless they ban imports of everything below 250 watts and even then people will still be able to modify the bikes. they even tried it with CANbus, but at the end of the day its a motor, a controller, a throttle or pedal assist, and a battery. you simply cannot stop anyone from modding even completely subpar or top tier bikes from going over the limit. which is limited by the batteries power, and motor/controllers ability to hold a charge. to even try doing so would require powers that reach way into other markets. caps on capacitors, batteries, PCB board controls, motors, etc.
Yeah, like it was easy to mod a moped to go beyond the speed limit (45Km/h in Italy), but it was still illegal.
this isnt about bikes. its about brown people and visible minorities riding them en mass and europeans wanting to bring the hammer down on them so they are forced to buy cars, use public transit,become more susceptible to random checks by police, and/or be kicked out of the country for breaking a new law. as well as finding a new way to limit or regulate other related electronics markets, and milk them for more money.
Or, maybe, is about closing a loophole that allow people to drive bikes more powerfull than the one that need a driver’s license without a driver’s license. Are brown people excluded from obtaining a driver’s license in Amsterdam ? No, so they can simple get a driver’s license like everyone else.
Not everything is about races even if you think so.we can all lie to another and say its not due to xenophobia, racism, or general support for luxuries such as cars and public transit, and the taxation and fees that come with them, and i dare say a police state. but at the end of the day this is just another way for governments and corporations to use fear to impliment more control over emerging technologies and markets. especially on human mobility.
It is about following the traffic regulations. I agree that the ebikes were a nice idea when the electric side of the it was really just just a little help but now, honestly, what I see are ebikes that are more powerfull of the moped for which you need the license.
in a world where we can drive a death wagon at 150+ kmph that virtually guarantees death or significant injury for passengers and anyone it comes into contact with. which also drastically pollutes the environement in comparison, we should limiting cars not dinky ebikes from temu that poor people and immigrants prefer to ride. if anything we should be pushing more people into riding bikes of all types.
Yeah, only difference is that the death wagon at 150 Km/h is not driven on the sidewalk and you need e license to drive it.
its a dumb idea. and anyone who disagrees is at the very least grossly misinformed on the wider issues, i dont blame them, just the media thats controlled by people who like to control people.
no offense. im not writing this in anger to you, or anyone in particular, its purely based on my experience as a person who had made a point of riding bikes in spite of owning vehicles, simply because of the glaringly obvious issues that are caused by cars, and that are answered by bikes/ebikes.
So, why is it a problem to ask to follow the laws ? You can ride a bike, it is not a problem, but you need to follow the rules.
Yeah, like it was easy to mod a moped to go beyond the speed limit (45Km/h in Italy), but it was still illegal.
sure is, but a human cyclist can ride up to 60kmph unassisted. yet no license for that.
Or, maybe, is about closing a loophole that allow people to drive bikes more powerfull than the one that need a driver’s license without a driver’s license. Are brown people excluded from obtaining a driver’s license in Amsterdam ? No, so they can simple get a driver’s license like everyone else.
Not everything is about races even if you think so.recent immigrants are excluded from obtaining a drivers license until they pass a drivers test, or have one from a country with similar laws. in the meantime, many refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, etc are poor and need a way to get around and make money, without taking out thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars in debt, plus fees. so they resort to using ebikes, or regular bikes, public transit, uber, etc. to get around. ebikes are a great way for them to get work doing delivery service in well populated areas. and that has obviously lead to a lot of contention on that subject. ignoring that variable in a much larger equation will give skewed results. so dont ignore it.
It is about following the traffic regulations. I agree that the ebikes were a nice idea when the electric side of the it was really just just a little help but now, honestly, what I see are ebikes that are more powerfull of the moped for which you need the license.
i dont disagree, i just dont believe banning specific vehicles or ebikes will solve the issue.
Yeah, only difference is that the death wagon at 150 Km/h is not driven on the sidewalk and you need e license to drive it.
and that still doesnt stop it from being the deadliest thing any human can get in or be around on a daily basis. stats do not lie about that in any sense.
So, why is it a problem to ask to follow the laws ? You can ride a bike, it is not a problem, but you need to follow the rules.
the rules in this case are banning a particular type of vehicle commonly driven in the area by immigrants doing delivery service or travelling for work, or just in general. and seeing as its amsterdam, a place that has been known to be racist and xenophobic due to decades of cannabis related tourism (amongst other reasons) gives cadence to the fact that recent fluctuations of people fleeing destablized countries arent assimilating the way they are wanted to by locals, and established businesses/corporations. this kind of event always leads to a slurry of new laws and regulations that will please the consistent local registered voter base. the local voter base primarily being white european people who have had a significant uptick in hate crimes and fascistic ideation as of late, all across europe. but also in amsterdam. which, fun fact, is where anne fuckin franks house is. so its not like its historically accurate to say amsterdam isnt susceptable to making policy changes, at least partly based on hate or profit.
banning one model leads to another, and another, and another. a new law, a new regulation, a new business model, higher taxes, higher fees, bigger punishments, more turmoil, its always a slippery slope. and the immigrants historically speaking are a wonderful catalyst for making these changes, either directly, or indirectly. conciously or unconciously, most people just dont question it. pop pop knows best.
banning one bike just makes it easier for them to ban more and push the boot down just a little harder, squeezing more money out of all of us.
it also doesnt solve the problem and is a waste if tax dollars until you consider the legal leverage it gives the political class over the minorities that also drive these things.
Removed by mod
Somehow you took statistics about elevated injuries on a specific product and made it about race. It’s not like other ebikes aren’t an option. Wild…
its almost like race, regulations, and monopolies, have a history of being …correlated, or something?
strange. did you know that?
but its totally not like the media to give just one angle of seemingly simple situation, that couldnt POSSIBLY go any deeper, right?
competitors and monopolies certainly dont like to influence politics whatsoever by fuelling fear and discent amongst the population. that would be just down right unethical, especially if they did so to regulate certain industries bit by bit to slowly change the economic landscape… but european countries are completely incapable of even the smallest forms of corruption in their politics. everyone knows that! doy! im so silly!
they represent the common man, every time! certainly not the elite class. no, never!
perhaps i should stop pouring over articles, and researching all these topics day after day, for hours on end.
seems like a simple existence, compeletly devoid of critical thought or a thirst for knowledge over the worlds inner machinations. just coasting on headlines and trust in the government and the system itself.
nothing negative can happen to our rights and freedoms by simply switching our brains off, can it?
its not like thats why the world is the way that it is, no sir! no relation whatsoever!
thanks, friend :D
Do you think that only minorities ride fat bikes? This has nothing to do with race or xenophobia or what the fuck else. It’s a direct reaction to an outlier of injuries related to that specific type of ebike, and the ban proposal is only in specific areas. This has nothing to do with race. To try and draw some bullshit correlation is fucking stupid.
The world is certainly full of racist driven policies. This is not that, unless again, you think that only minorities ride fat bikes or a disproportionate amount of fat bike riders are minorities.
Your whole argument is built on generalities that don’t apply to this situation involving public safety.
re read what i wrote. then come back and try again.
Removed by mod
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but your style of rant is a bit unhinged so it will be hard to win people over like that.
i appreciate your honesty, im simply here to state a point. people can choose whether or not they prefer fluff to facts.
i may sound erratic, but thats because theres a lot of unhinged bullshit behind virtually everything humans do. and the fact that almost nobody gives a fuck about digging and connecting the dots to see the wider picture makes feel like im taking crazy pills for being well informed.
it sounds crazy, until you look into it.
believe me, i know. lol.
Who knew that reinventing the motorcycle for like the third time was going to have the exact same result.
It’s not motorcycles, it’s MiCrOmObiLiTy! - some tech bro cheating his way around road safety regulations.
Yes, these bikes can be dangerous. I’ve seen, and almost be hit by people riding them top speed on a shared pathway.
I mean there are llke 14 accidents per day. And most people i know are regularly complaining how they almost got run over.
Removed by mod
Tbf I’ve been many times to the Netherlands and the risk of getting run over by bikes has always been rather high
Removed by mod
I’ve actually lived in the place for almost a decade, and the problem there - especially in places like Amsterdam - is much more the tourists stepping into bicycle paths without looking than the actual cyclists.
It actually takes a while to get used to, for example, when crossing a street look twice to each side (and to look properly rather than just slight head turn and rely on sound and peripheral vision to notice approaching vehicles) when crossing a street and also on the other side consider that a car that stopped to let you pass might be hiding a bicycle from your angle.
We used to joke that the proof for us immigrants that one had become a proper Amsterdammer was passing the tourists on the cycle path and just naturally swear at them with “God verdomme” (God damn it).
If it weighs the same as a moped / motorcycle, it should be on the road. Simple as that.
Fatbike is notorious for having smaller top speed at like 15kmh. They are good for sand and gravel but may lack maneuverability
This is about electric ones, that are registered as bicycles but can go 45 km/h.
You can buy one of these for around 1k, and it’s a long button press to reconfigure it from the legal 25 km/h, assistance only, no throttle, “EU legal” configuration to the 45 km/h, throttle active “US legal” config.
Honestly wouldn’t mind getting one if I could have it registered as a motorcycle, its cheaper than any other low power motorcycle I can find and it’s electric!
The fuck is this monstrosity. Ugly AF
Removed by mod
Throttle controlled ebikes should be banned. Pedal assist only. Article doesn’t say which these are.
Don’t ban them, just make them register as electric motorcycles. Which is a market that could do with more choices…
Electric motorcycles are not allowed on bike paths and parks. Which means they have to go faster so they can be on roads. Throttle control ebikes are right in that grey area of motorized in pedestrian areas that we should not have.
I think a big part of the reason these sell so well is because you don’t need a license (like other bikes) and also don’t need a helmet. I totally agree these are more like mopeds, scooters and motorcycles; but the current regulations makes these bikes accessible to a group that has no access to the other types.
Want to ride around on a moped without having the responsibilities of a moped driver? Get an electric moped, because for reasons, that counts as a bicycle.
It’s ridiculous that we even arrived in such a situation.
It’s ridiculous that we even arrived in such a situation.
Even more ridiculous is that looks like we’ll remain in this situation for the foreseeable future.
Honest question, wouldn’t enforcing a hard speed limit on them be more useful? If a bike is going 25 km/h, does it matter if it got there with the rider turning the pedals or not? And if it is going 45 km/h, same question, why does it matter? IMO it should be a hard speed limit, and a limit on torque, but the “no throttle” thing is kinda missing the point. Maybe require a licence, and make registration mandatory in an easy way.
I’ve had one of those fatbikes, and of course I wouldn’t ride them in the Vondelpark at full speed, what they were good for is a long commute on rural bike paths going a safe 25 km/h. What I liked about the electric motor was that it would get me back at 25 km/h after stopping at a light without effort. The fat tires meant that if some branch or other random shit was on the road, I would be safer, and of course it also made for a smoother ride.
That said, “pedaling” with these only means exerting the slightest effort, it’s not at all different from a throttle, except it’s harder to control the bike. There is hardly any way to apply only some throttle as opposed to all of it for example. And it’s also easy to fuck up by resting your foot on the pedal and applying torque by mistake, while forgetting to hold the brakes that cut the engines, and ending up with the bike lurching forward.
There is a hard speed limit on them. The thing about these Fatbike brands is that they are purposefully made it very very easy to disable the speed limiter, and make it widely known how to do it.
Wouldn’t it be sufficient then to outlaw the purposefully easy ways to disable the hard speed limit?
There’s lots of responses. First is you’re not going to be able to enforce a speed limit. What are you going to have an army in every park and bike path at all hours of the day and night? Second, throttle control (or either really) ebikes opens the door for everyone to get to that speed everywhere. Previously only the stupidly fit could do it and only in certain areas. Third, throttle puts you in a different mindset than pedal assist. This is critical. It’s just a completely different mode of operation and mentality.
The only exemption to allow throttle control should be medical, so that they still have access to bike paths. Everything else I think puts you into a powered vehicle and you should be on the road, not on bike paths or in parks.
You can do long commutes bike paths with pedal assist bikes. Depends on the jurisdiction but 20 mph / 30 km/h or 25 in the article is typical for those.
That said, “pedaling” with these only means exerting the slightest effort
Again, different mentality.
There is hardly any way to apply only some throttle as opposed to all of it for example.
What? Yes there is, there are different settings for how much pedal assist you want.
And it’s also easy to fuck up by resting your foot on the pedal and applying torque by mistake, while forgetting to hold the brakes that cut the engines, and ending up with the bike lurching forward.
What? With pedal assist the assist/engine cuts out the nanosecond you stop pedaling. That’s what pedal assist means, you get the assisst ONLY when you are pedaling and it cuts when you aren’t pedaling. You have this mixed up so this is my only message.
This concern you have about fucking up, forgeting this or that, lurching, etc are all the problems throttle control has.
Throttle controlled ebikes should be banned.
I thought that was already the case in Europe?
Current situation in the Netherlands that these aren’t sold as such, they are modified afterwards. This is illegal, but i guess the risk of being caught is rather small.
I hope that Eindhoven follows suit.
Hope all city centres.
