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”.
Agreed that it may cause some confusion but in The Netherlands the amount of electric fatbikes against plain old fatbikes is in the order of 1000:1.
Actually “ebike” is also too generic as there are multiple ebike classes. The one discussed here is the pedal-electric one that has a legitimate maximum of 25 kmph in Europe. But there’s also the speed-pedelec which can go up to 45 kmph and has type approval.