Amsterdam prepares to ‘ban the fatbikes’ amid rise in serious accidents
www.theguardian.com
Experts say souped-up e-bikes pose big risk for children aged from 12 to 15, who account for many A&E cases

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”.

  • someguy3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    16 minutes ago

    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.