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”.
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.