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”.
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.