Some 17,500 fatbikes imported from China have been held by Dutch authorities over concerns about speed manipulation and safety risks.
I’m going full old man yells at cloud here, but here goes. I have no problem with E-bikes. They are great, green modes of transportation. Having said that, they are motorized, and imo basically an electric Vespa. To ride one you should be required to be licensed in the state. I see a bunch of 12 -15 year old boys ripping these through the park. Imo this is wildly irresponsible parenting, and going to cause a ton of broken bones and deaths. Kids treat these as toys and have 0 regard for the law. I have seen far too many near collisions when taking my kids to the local park. I think (don’t quote me on this) you don’t need to be licensed for E-bikes and they are treated the same as bicycles here. I’m just assuming because I’ve seen cops look the other way. When I was a kid, go-ped scooters with 2 stroke engines were all the rage among this age group, and eventually the law caught up and I stopped seeing kids riding them. Now it’s the same with E-bikes. I get that kids in this age group want some kind of transportation to go hang out and all, but it’s dangerous having underage, unlicensed people operating them.
Ebikes are regulated in the EU, they’re nothing like Vespa. What you’re referring to is an electric motorbike and already requires a license. What is needed is enforcement.
Technically you are right.
The fat bike is considered to be a normal electric 25km/h bike (here in NL).
What changed (our view) on it was that some Chinese brands made it possible to raise the speed by doing a trivial change (either hardware or software) allowing speeds upto 45km/h.
In some extreme cases even higher.
Combine this with 12 year olds with soft skulls and you have the reason why the legal age is going to be raised to 16 years old and wearing a helmet.
And the old man in me screams: also require some training and a license for it.
And yes, I hate those things with a vengeance and have an opinion on everyone on such a vehicle. They are noisy, tent to break the speed limits and attract a certain type of people.
Old man signing off.
Is there a requirement for how much assistance the bike can give. Because I see kids hardly pedaling and still going 25km/h.
And yeah, these bikes are upgraded by people and not following code. But enforcement has started. The police needed new Rollerbanks… and these have now been distributed. They can now check mopeds and e-bikes on the same device.
But then, I’d be for age restricting e-bikes and possibly even giving them tags and requiring bike helmets… so…
You don’t need a licence if they are in the category of electric bike, meaning they cannot be self propelled (you need to peddle) and they have a limiter limiting the speed to 25 km/h.
Unfortunately, these things are wicked easy to circumvent. Many retailers will sell you a throttle (meant for moving the bike while walking with it) and changing the speed limiter and peddle requirement is as easy as going into the software settings. This results into what is effectively an electric moped without the licence plate and requirement. According to the law, such a vehicle requires you have a license and wear a helmet, but of course nobody does.
I agree, licensure is appropriate for electric bikes that work like petrol powered bikes. If you use a hand control or foot control to make the bike accelerate it is a vehicle with similar enough properties to a motorbike or motorised scooter that it should require a license plate, registration, and driver’s license.
That said, anything that does assist only is more like a mobility scooter or bike with training wheels. You may not be able to go as long as you can with the electric bike by yourself, but if the drive characteristics are similar then it should be a bike. Those characteristics are speed, stop distance, involvement with the generation of motion, and how the weight is balanced.
So a bike that assists when going up a hill but won’t help you go faster past a certain speed is not fundamentally changing how you behave on the bike, but if you can twist the handle and get acceleration beyond your personal max speed it is clearly different.
If we could have many more people riding electric bikes which behave like supported push bikes then there would be fewer cars on the road, more exercise for people, and no massive increase in risk, actually probably a decrease due to fewer bikes being hit by the reduced number of cars.
I don’t see anything wrong with the electric motorcycles, but they shouldn’t be on a pedestrian or bicycle path, they should be on the street and you should need a license to drive them just like any other motorized vehicles capable of those speeds.
Electric motorcycles and electric bicycles are two very different things.
Well they were. But these fatbikes bring them on par, with a throttle instead of having to pedal, a riding stance similar a scooter and an unlocked speed limit.
That’s not a fatbike / bicycle then, but I have no idea about the context here. The photo shows a regular fatbike hardtail, with rather small tires even.
That’s the issue. They aren’t supposed to go that fast. It’s an illegal alteration for a reason. And we are talking about teenagers.
They don’t need a driver’s licience to ride a bicycle. So people may not know how to traverse traffic safely if they go on the car lanes. Or not care about safety as teenagers tend to do.
But the fatbike fad — they are especially popular among teenagers — has triggered a myriad of complaints and prompted a call for new legislation aimed at restricting their use.
Apart from the humming noise made by the large tyres on the road, authorities are also concerned at the ease in bypassing software that restricts their speed to the legal limit.
I’m sure the same people complaining about fat bike tire noise have never once complained about the much louder sound of car and truck tires.
Wait, hang the fuck on…
the ease in bypassing software that restricts their speed to the legal limit.
As opposed to the insurmountable difficulty of pressing the car’s accelerator pedal a bit harder?
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.
Fuck off mate. We have seperate lanes for bikes and cars. We’ve been hating on vehicles going too fast on the bike lane since their existance. Scooters, e-bikes and anything else that’s a danger to other cyclists.
Firstly check your attitude, dick.
Secondly I’m a cyclist. I was only pointing out the absurdity of complaining about road noise from a bike that is at most 50dB when road noise from cars hovers in the 90dB range yet no one ever complains about car noise.
Thirdly, not every city has separated bike and car lanes. I personally have no issue with fast moving bikes in the same lane as me because I’m not a coward like you seem to be. I also know how to handle my bike properly and keep my head on a swivel which helps me avoid accidents.
It’s not about you mate. Or your pathetic bravado. “Oh look at me, I don’t mind people making the bike lane less safe because I’m so brave! Road safety? That’s for whimps!”
As if teenagers aren’t at risk here, or anyone else who travels by bike.
And where comes the idea from that people don’t complain about loud trucks/cars? That’s some made up bs. Nor does it at all solve anything about the boosted issues of fatbikes/scooters. Which is more traffic accidents!
This article reads like an awesome ad and meow I want one of these bikes.
Mine is pretty sweet… The tires made it much more comfortable to ride in general and having the motor for the assist on hills is frikken amazing. Really helps prevent the deterrence against using it as a bike.
The motors have quite the kick too… I expect the urge to get into trouble is great.
Yeah, they’re basically electric motorcycles, and it makes sense that’d they’d be held.
