Some 17,500 fatbikes imported from China have been held by Dutch authorities over concerns about speed manipulation and safety risks.
It’s an issue when these vehicle sharing the same bike lane with mostly slow moving bike. They’ve already done with fighting car so I don’t think it’s fair to just bring car into the mix. These thing is already a moped if it can exceed road bike speed with ease.
Yeah the Netherlands has basically a dedicated bicycle infrastructure meant for pedal cycles. There is a whole bunch of context for this story that is easy to miss if you don’t live there.
It’s not about cars vs e-bikes - it’s about not being allowed to bring an ultra powered bike that’s unsafe for other riders. It’s more akin to how your car has to follow regulations to be allowed on the road.
That shit about noise is just old people being old people. It’s the potential safety issues that got these bikes held up in customs.
Yeah, we’re talking about Netherlands here, the cycling haven of Earth, if they think these super pedelec is an issue on bike lane you better take note of it if you want a safe cycling city. These thing have the max speed of 30 to 40mph(48/64kmph) after unlocked and it would get really ugly if it hit someone, as people there tend to not wear helmet when riding bicycle because it’s unnecessary and super safe to do so.
If you ever had a car/moped/motorcycle that zoom by you in 50kmph while riding on the road you know how scarry that is.
I’ll be candid, I was expecting faster. 30mph is pretty regularly doable on a road bike (obviously not a fatbike, but just talking sharing a lane here), not sustained unless you’re riding in the TDF, but as a sprint? Yeah, definitely doable.
Just to be clear I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a problem at 30-40mph for these fatbikes, because you’re talking about anyone being able to do those speeds, fully sustained for long periods, just that I was expecting even higher from the way it was being described.
At the same time I want one to try out…
