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”.
Make it so they have to be licensed, insured and are legal on the roads. But then allow for the bikes to have speed increases.
Basically a really cheap electric motorcycle.
Cannot be done, as these bikes are not technically compliant for that. First you would need to upgrade the brakes, frame, lights et cetera and add mandatory features such as brake lights, a mirror, license plate holder and a horn. Then you would have to get type approval as this is mandatory for every motorized vehicle, which adds cost to every produced bike.
When you’ve done all that, your product is no longer affordable and will fall in the same price category as all other motorized scooters.
The problem is not that the product cannot be classified, the problem is that the product is being used in an illegal way such that its speed and power go beyond what is allowed, which creates safety risks for the rider and anyone else around.
These are not fatbikes. Fatbikes are normal pedal bikes with big tires that are good in snow.
These are Fat Tire e-bikes. You should always be calling them ebikes when discussing them in English. Perhaps this is a mis translation.
It’s in the first par. of the article.
" … thick-tyred electric bikes… the Dutch call “fatbikes”
Yea, so a mis-translation. That’s not what we call them in english.
Agreed. Tyre is a city in Lebanon. Tire is the round rubber thing that encircles a wheel.
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.
That was sadly exactly what I was expecting from the electric motorization of bicycles. It is a history that has repeated itself many times in the last 70 or 80 years since the first combustion engine mopeds.
The fact is that the human-powered bike is at a sweet spot of efficiency and safety. Once you go faster, you need a helmet, a heavier frame, wider tyres, better brakes, wider lanes, protective clothing, protection against cold, a heavier motor for propelling all the extra weight, and so on. The energy input from you the human dwindles.
It is not any more a bicycle.
Yes, a motor vehicle is a motor vehicle creating motor vehicle hazards, regardless of how exactly the motor makes its power, and how that power output is controlled.
most ebikes already go slower, or on par at max speed with an amateur/relatively fit cyclist. roughly 25 to 30kmph.
going after fat tire bikes specifically doesnt really make sense considering they offer more traction for stopping power. if they legally limit the speed it should be on par with elite level cyclists at most. which is about 50 to 60kmph. depending on the area. nobody wants to wipe out and hurt themselves or somebody else.
this is a way for them to add tickets and licensing for people who wish to circumvent owning a vehicle or taking public transit. which the government and corporations directly benefit from financially.
i just dont see the point besides fear mongering in a place where virtuallly everyone has a bike, and cycling accidents are less lethal than vehicular ones. it just seems like an unfair represention of statistics to prop up a bottom line that only serves to extract wealth from the poor, less well off, environementally or financially concious.
if parents dont want their kids to take those risks, then dont buy them an ebike. buy them a regular one, or tell them to take public tranist if they cant offer it themselves.
they always use children as a way to shoe in control with fear tactics.
as an bike/ebike rider. i have a bike that can go about 45kmph and never go over 25 personally, as that feels like a safe speed in my city with the infrastructure and crossings that we have. every incident that has happened to me has come from vehicles doing illegal turns, crossings, or not looking where traffic is coming from before pulling out into the street.
if anything they should focus on getting more people to ride bikes/ebikes, and offering safety courses for those who wish to own ebikes. free of charge.
if they want to regulate them, regulate braking power vs speed potential. and helmets. and create separated concrete barrier bike lanes with covers for weather and wind to avoid ice buildup and snow. fat tire bikes are nearly a necessity for cyclists in colder climate.
They are talking about banning fat “bikes” not fat tire bikes. They are basically electric motorcycles disguised as an e-bike.
Like this one:
There is already regulation and they should be speed limited. But these bikes are designed to unlock the limit very easily.
These are fucking motorcycles.
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Somehow you took statistics about elevated injuries on a specific product and made it about race. It’s not like other ebikes aren’t an option. Wild…
its almost like race, regulations, and monopolies, have a history of being …correlated, or something?
strange. did you know that?
but its totally not like the media to give just one angle of seemingly simple situation, that couldnt POSSIBLY go any deeper, right?
competitors and monopolies certainly dont like to influence politics whatsoever by fuelling fear and discent amongst the population. that would be just down right unethical, especially if they did so to regulate certain industries bit by bit to slowly change the economic landscape… but european countries are completely incapable of even the smallest forms of corruption in their politics. everyone knows that! doy! im so silly!
they represent the common man, every time! certainly not the elite class. no, never!
perhaps i should stop pouring over articles, and researching all these topics day after day, for hours on end.
seems like a simple existence, compeletly devoid of critical thought or a thirst for knowledge over the worlds inner machinations. just coasting on headlines and trust in the government and the system itself.
nothing negative can happen to our rights and freedoms by simply switching our brains off, can it?
its not like thats why the world is the way that it is, no sir! no relation whatsoever!
thanks, friend :D
Do you think that only minorities ride fat bikes? This has nothing to do with race or xenophobia or what the fuck else. It’s a direct reaction to an outlier of injuries related to that specific type of ebike, and the ban proposal is only in specific areas. This has nothing to do with race. To try and draw some bullshit correlation is fucking stupid.
The world is certainly full of racist driven policies. This is not that, unless again, you think that only minorities ride fat bikes or a disproportionate amount of fat bike riders are minorities.
Your whole argument is built on generalities that don’t apply to this situation involving public safety.
re read what i wrote. then come back and try again.
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human powered locomotion (foot, bike, skate, etc) and mobility assist devices, should be completely separate from motorized vehicles (electric bike, scooter, cars, combustion,etc). simple as.
That is sort of true. Electric bikes are allowed because they provide assistance only when humans are riding (pedal assist), never autonomously. The initial idea was to help elderly people cycle. The category has been abused over the years in such a way that we now have bikes that compete with motorized vehicles and unsafe import that is easy to tweak, pushing bikes way beyond their legally intended limits.
The second I saw the first fat bike I knew it was a bad idea
It’s literally a worst of all worlds type vehicle, why are they so popular anyway? Is it just the “cool” factor?
Fat bikes were originally designed for snow as mountain bikes. I sold one a few years ago and every guy who responded to look at the bike was obese. For some reason, they assumed it was a bike for fat people.
Yes, these bikes can be dangerous. I’ve seen, and almost be hit by people riding them top speed on a shared pathway.
I mean there are llke 14 accidents per day. And most people i know are regularly complaining how they almost got run over.
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Throttle controlled ebikes should be banned. Pedal assist only. Article doesn’t say which these are.
Throttle controlled ebikes should be banned.
I thought that was already the case in Europe?
I hope that Eindhoven follows suit.
Hope all city centres.
Am I understanding this correctly, that they want to ban bicycles based on the width of their tires?
“fatbike” means something different in The Netherlands than it means in North America.
In North America, fat bikes are mountain bikes with 4 inch wide or wider tires, generally designed for use on snow and sand. E.g.: https://surlybikes.com/products/wednesday-og-algae
In The Netherlands, fatbikes are throttle-controlled e-bikes with 4-5" wide tires with a smaller diameter than typical bikes. They come with pedals, but the gearing and seat position makes the pedals essentially useless; many people remove them. They do not handle well. They do not stop well. They are popular because they are cheap. E.g.: https://www.fatbikeskopen.nl/products/qm-wheels-v20-pro-mini-zwart
So they’re banning electric bicycles based on tire width? That doesn’t really make any more sense to me. Also weird that throttle controlled e-bikes are allowed, but fat tires aren’t. (Especially considering that EU regulation 168/2013 implies that pedal assistance is mandatory.)
Electric bicycles are popular and encouraged. Fatbikes however, have often caused much more accidents on account of their popularity among the youth for being;
- cheap (not the issue, but it explains their abundance)
- easy to jailbreak their speed limit
- hard to brake and steer
They’re also imho ugly, but that aside. I would probably mandate they can only drive on new lanes for speed pedelecs & fatbikes, and make it much harder to jailbreak their speed limit (should also happen for cars). It’ll help motorbikes and scooters become less common.
Fatbikes in the Netherlands are a group of e-bike brands that purposefully make it extremely easy to remove their government required speed regulator, and are particularly popular among certain demographics of young immigrant men to use as basically electric motorcycles (since they can be controlled with a thumb-throttle instead of pedaling).
Because there’s a mixture of these bikes causing real problems on the roads, and them being popular young brown dudes, a lot of different forces in the Netherlands are pretty upset about them and want them banned.
While my observations have been that men of color between 20 and 30 seem to disproportionately ride these bikes, a vast majority of people on these bikes are white teens.
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More than 10000 death per year are due to air pollution. About half are due to traffic emission (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5564403_Long-Term_Effects_of_Traffic-Related_Air_Pollution_on_Mortality_in_a_Dutch_Cohort_NLCS-AIR_Study)
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74% of households in the netherlands have a car. Only 6% of cars are electric
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Most road fatalities are cyclists. Most road deaths occur in crashes involving a car: single-car crashes, car-car crashes and bicycle-car crashes (https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/road-deaths-netherlands).
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Boomers: woW ThoSe ElecTriC BikEs ArE Very DangerOus
Nothing’s worse than vroomers, polluting the earth and spreading lung cancer to little children while comfortably lying in their fatzo mover, whining about kids having bikes. It’s a social panick, and the proof is that there is no studies, no figures, nothing in the article. Just testimonies and vibes-based moralism.
And yes, I know you, yes, you, are getting mad at reading this because deep down you know you are a polluter and a piece of shit.
Well, stay mad, idiot.
This is such a dumb argument to make. “Worse problems exist, so let’s not do anything about this one”. Who did you think you’d convince by writing all this out? What a waste of time.
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When are cars banned?
Believe it or not, cars are already banned from bikelanes and parks in Amsterdam. I hope this helps.
They’re allowed everywhere else and they make up most of the fatalities.
They should be banned from the city.
Car accidents are the natural state of things as opposed to this!! /s
Throttle controlled electric bicycles have revolutionized individual mobility in Chinese major cities. They are low cost, low emission, and can be used by a wide demographic, for example, teenagers, who also want individual mobility.
By banning them “because they’re unsafe”, western governments are missing an opportunity to modernize the way in which people move around. Instead, they should figure out how to have people use these safely.
There isn’t much to figure out. Treat them as what they are: Small motorcycles, and as a consequence, require a license, insurance, mandate helmets, ban them from roadways reserved for non-motorised traffic, and enforce minimal technical standards.
I disagree, I think they have other properties than small motorcycles. Motorcycles drive faster than 30-45 kph, are more expensive to buy and maintain, and they’re noisy, whereas electric bikes are noise-free.
Requiring an insurance and license makes them needlessly expensive - in China, neither is required, except for wearing a helmet. (on paper, they require license & insurance, but police doesn’t enforce this).
Lack of noise doesn’t make them less, but more dangerous, because you won’t even hear them coming.
Small motorcycles do also exist as mopeds in a class limited to 25km/h, yet require a license and insurance for good reason. They are way heavier than a bicycle and will go those speeds uphill.
The absurdity of this situation has only arisen from stupid politicians making a legal exception by treating such vehicles with an electric motor as bicycles rather than as what they actually are.
It’s really quite simple. If it has a motor, it’s a motor vehicle. Motor vehicles have been around for more than a century by now, and, due to long experience, have been quite sensibly regulated to prevent excessive accidents and cover the damages. Just because electric motor vehicles have been become more viable due to improved battery technology, there is no reason to exempt them from those regulations that have been written in blood.
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Bicycles already exist and Amsterdam is famously cycle friendly. But these things go way to fast for the kids riding them without helmets or insurance, zipping through unsuspecting tourists and getting into loads of accidents
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I think teenagers riding them would be disastrous, otherwise I agree.
Yeah, I disagree – I think teenagers are one of the most miserable demographic group in western societies, think teenage depression.
They aren’t allowed to vote, they have limited agency, because they have limited money, they have limited mobility, because they aren’t allowed to drive. I think they should be empowered, and I think electric scooters empower them somewhat.
My experience in the NL: bicycles and functioning public transportation is what gives teenagers mobility, without requiring a lot of money (especially bicycles). Forcing them to share infrastructure with much faster, much more expensive electric mopeds claiming to be e-bikes to avoid safety and licensing requirements makes this much worse. The hard-earned mobility from the infrastructure already in place gets worse, not better, from fatbikes being treated as bicycles.
Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. Growing up in small town Germany, where cycling infrastructure is much worse compared to the NL, I would have loved to have a fat bike. I could have visited my friends living in the villages outside my town without having to rely on a bus that goes twice per day.
But I see how this is different in a place with great cycling infrastructure, and I agree that fatbikes somewhat cannibalize the existing bicycle infra.
Pretty much everyone grew up just fine having much less than today’s teenagers.
Lack of dangerous vehicles is certainly not the cause of their depression.