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”.
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?
they can go around 45 kph with minimal pedaling and doesn’t require a moped license.
As if it were a bad idea to privilege electric small motorcycles over other small motorcycles.
They should require a license…
Exactly, they’re misclassified mopeds (which do require a license, helmet, and rider age at least 16)
I’d even allow kids as young as 14, they’re potentially great mobility enablers… But standards need to be met and they need to prove they’ll follow them. Licencing may be key, and potentially worth teaching through school.
At what speed?
Big tires are better to ride over potholes and such
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.
Fatbike is notorious for having smaller top speed at like 15kmh. They are good for sand and gravel but may lack maneuverability
This is about electric ones, that are registered as bicycles but can go 45 km/h.
You can buy one of these for around 1k, and it’s a long button press to reconfigure it from the legal 25 km/h, assistance only, no throttle, “EU legal” configuration to the 45 km/h, throttle active “US legal” config.
Honestly wouldn’t mind getting one if I could have it registered as a motorcycle, its cheaper than any other low power motorcycle I can find and it’s electric!
The fuck is this monstrosity. Ugly AF
that’s what your mum said when she poop’ed you out.
Vroomers are stupid and noisy. At least the kids on a fat bike doesn’t wake thousand of people at night with their small dick compensation machine.
I mean there are llke 14 accidents per day. And most people i know are regularly complaining how they almost got run over.
“Like 14 accidents”
Tbf I’ve been many times to the Netherlands and the risk of getting run over by bikes has always been rather high
And yet like everywhere else most road fatalities happens because a stupid vroemer drove into somebody
I’ve actually lived in the place for almost a decade, and the problem there - especially in places like Amsterdam - is much more the tourists stepping into bicycle paths without looking than the actual cyclists.
It actually takes a while to get used to, for example, when crossing a street look twice to each side (and to look properly rather than just slight head turn and rely on sound and peripheral vision to notice approaching vehicles) when crossing a street and also on the other side consider that a car that stopped to let you pass might be hiding a bicycle from your angle.
We used to joke that the proof for us immigrants that one had become a proper Amsterdammer was passing the tourists on the cycle path and just naturally swear at them with “God verdomme” (God damn it).
If it weighs the same as a moped / motorcycle, it should be on the road. Simple as that.
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.
Only in American English. Everywhere else, to tire is to become tired, and a tyre is what goes around a wheel.
If we gonna just be weird about what shits called it’s a aerial wheel so fuck your Tyre or tire bullshit
Lmao. What the heck do you mean “everywhere else”? One specific place where they use that word? I think you guys spell it that way to make it more evident that you would say the world with a silly accent.
Every English speaking country that follows British English rather than American English.
- Core Areas: United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.
- Caribbean: Jamaica, Barbados, The Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago.
- Other Regions: Singapore, Malta, Belize, Canada (hybrid, but with strong British influences), India.
- British Overseas Territories: Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Falkland Islands.
Is that clear enough for you ?
Yea because everyone speaks funny in those countries, so they need to spell words funny to convey the meaning!
Is thyt clyar enuf fer u m8?
ITS IN ENGLISH.
I’m going to make up an example with fake words, But if the literal translation of electric fat bike in Chinese to English is “wide windmill of thunder” and you write an article in English about how the Chinese are banning wide windmills of thunder. Yes you have written something in English. No you have not correctly conveyed the meaning to your audience.
They are not banning “fat bikes” as they are known to English speakers. In the Netherlands THEY DONT SPEAK ENGLISH .They use equivalent words to describe things differently and if you translate them 1:1 and convey then to a different audience, you have lost the original meaning.
You can stop screaming now I think drool is coming out of your mouth.
Maybe you should not be such an anglosphere-centric snob, especially in an eurocentric community.
It’s good to use the correct terminology though, especially when translating.
Okay, let’s correct some things then. Let’s start with chips, crisps and fries. Or what exactly an appartment is, bangers, boilers, entrée, first floor, etc.
As far as I can see, most people having issues with the term fatbike come from north american instances. Europeans here absolutely know what kind of vehicle is meant.
That surprises me. I’m not American and when I hear ‘fatbike’ I don’t think of the e-bike version but the regular bicycle with fat tires. The former are not common around where I live.
Have a look through this thread then. Nobody had issues with the term until someone from an NA instance brought it up.
e-bike is also horribly misused. It’s everything from a bike with a little battery that kicks in a bit when you pedal, to what can only be described as an electric powered motorbike.
Anyone notice how these are mostly prevalent among right-wingers?
No, not really.
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.
seen this in CH. (my first lemmy comment 🖖)
Makes sense that they would cause issues when there are so many bicycles and pedestrians around.
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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
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.
Check the user name and the account age, then stop feeding the troll.
People still do that?
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Who knew that reinventing the motorcycle for like the third time was going to have the exact same result.
It’s not motorcycles, it’s MiCrOmObiLiTy! - some tech bro cheating his way around road safety regulations.
I hope that Eindhoven follows suit.
Hope all city centres.
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?
Current situation in the Netherlands that these aren’t sold as such, they are modified afterwards. This is illegal, but i guess the risk of being caught is rather small.
Don’t ban them, just make them register as electric motorcycles. Which is a market that could do with more choices…
I think a big part of the reason these sell so well is because you don’t need a license (like other bikes) and also don’t need a helmet. I totally agree these are more like mopeds, scooters and motorcycles; but the current regulations makes these bikes accessible to a group that has no access to the other types.
Want to ride around on a moped without having the responsibilities of a moped driver? Get an electric moped, because for reasons, that counts as bicycle.
It’s ridiculous that we even arrived in such a situation.
It’s ridiculous that we even arrived in such a situation.
Even more ridiculous is that looks like we’ll remain in this situation for the foreseeable future.
Electric motorcycles are not allowed on bike paths and parks. Which means they have to go faster so they can be on roads. Throttle control ebikes are right in that grey area of motorized in pedestrian areas that we should not have.
Honest question, wouldn’t enforcing a hard speed limit on them be more useful? If a bike is going 25 km/h, does it matter if it got there with the rider turning the pedals or not? And if it is going 45 km/h, same question, why does it matter? IMO it should be a hard speed limit, and a limit on torque, but the “no throttle” thing is kinda missing the point. Maybe require a licence, and make registration mandatory in an easy way.
I’ve had one of those fatbikes, and of course I wouldn’t ride them in the Vondelpark at full speed, what they were good for is a long commute on rural bike paths going a safe 25 km/h. What I liked about the electric motor was that it would get me back at 25 km/h after stopping at a light without effort. The fat tires meant that if some branch or other random shit was on the road, I would be safer, and of course it also made for a smoother ride.
That said, “pedaling” with these only means exerting the slightest effort, it’s not at all different from a throttle, except it’s harder to control the bike. There is hardly any way to apply only some throttle as opposed to all of it for example. 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.
There is a hard speed limit on them. The thing about these Fatbike brands is that they are purposefully made it very very easy to disable the speed limiter, and make it widely known how to do it.
Wouldn’t it be sufficient then to outlaw the purposefully easy ways to disable the hard speed limit?
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 excemption 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 assist have.
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.
It is not any more a bicycle.
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.
every ebike can be unlocked with relative ease. theres nothing any law can do to stop that from happening unless they ban imports of everything below 250 watts and even then people will still be able to modify the bikes. they even tried it with CANbus, but at the end of the day its a motor, a controller, a throttle or pedal assist, and a battery. you simply cannot stop anyone from modding even completely subpar or top tier bikes from going over the limit. which is limited by the batteries power, and motor/controllers ability to hold a charge. to even try doing so would require powers that reach way into other markets. caps on capacitors, batteries, PCB board controls, motors, etc.
this isnt about bikes. its about brown people and visible minorities riding them en mass and europeans wanting to bring the hammer down on them so they are forced to buy cars, use public transit,become more susceptible to random checks by police, and/or be kicked out of the country for breaking a new law. as well as finding a new way to limit or regulate other related electronics markets, and milk them for more money.
its amsterdam for pity’s sake. quite literally one of the most racist/xenophobic places in europe, despite the fine architecture, rich history and culture. of course they are going to want a way to stop check people using a slower mode of transport that circumvents traditional charges for transportation. its happening all over europe as well.
its rediculous and everyone who disagrees is either chronically online, completely unaware of anything deeper than a scary headline that dictates their beliefs for them. knows nothing about electronics, bikes, ebikes, general safety, race relations, or DOES know these things, but underneath it all supports it because they are also bigoted and/or drive a car/take public transit and dont like cycling of any kind if others are doing it and it even remotely inconveniences them.
they will start with banning a visibly common iteration of cheap ebikes, but at the end of the day, unless they ban every form of it, and install checkpoints to ensure that nobody has them. theres simply no other way to get rid of them. and to do that would be fuhuckin stupid.
we can all lie to another and say its not due to xenophobia, racism, or general support for luxuries such as cars and public transit, and the taxation and fees that come with them, and i dare say a police state. but at the end of the day this is just another way for governments and corporations to use fear to impliment more control over emerging technologies and markets. especially on human mobility.
its a damn bike, and its a shit tier one that goes slower than most entry level ebikes unless you swap the controller and battery. and you, again, can do that with literally any and every ebike. its actually a stupidly simple process in most cases.
in a world where we can drive a death wagon at 150+ kmph that virtually guarantees death or significant injury for passengers and anyone it comes into contact with. which also drastically pollutes the environement in comparison, we should limiting cars not dinky ebikes from temu that poor people and immigrants prefer to ride. if anything we should be pushing more people into riding bikes of all types.
its a dumb idea. and anyone who disagrees is at the very least grossly misinformed on the wider issues, i dont blame them, just the media thats controlled by people who like to control people.
no offense. im not writing this in anger to you, or anyone in particular, its purely based on my experience as a person who had made a point of riding bikes in spite of owning vehicles, simply because of the glaringly obvious issues that are caused by cars, and that are answered by bikes/ebikes.
downvote away y’all, i know its controvercial, but the ones who get it are the ones im talkin’ to. everyone else can either take the time to understand it, or kick rocks.
fuck cars, fuck the government, fuck the system. and fuck climate change.
every ebike can be unlocked with relative ease. theres nothing any law can do to stop that from happening unless they ban imports of everything below 250 watts and even then people will still be able to modify the bikes. they even tried it with CANbus, but at the end of the day its a motor, a controller, a throttle or pedal assist, and a battery. you simply cannot stop anyone from modding even completely subpar or top tier bikes from going over the limit. which is limited by the batteries power, and motor/controllers ability to hold a charge. to even try doing so would require powers that reach way into other markets. caps on capacitors, batteries, PCB board controls, motors, etc.
Yeah, like it was easy to mod a moped to go beyond the speed limit (45Km/h in Italy), but it was still illegal.
this isnt about bikes. its about brown people and visible minorities riding them en mass and europeans wanting to bring the hammer down on them so they are forced to buy cars, use public transit,become more susceptible to random checks by police, and/or be kicked out of the country for breaking a new law. as well as finding a new way to limit or regulate other related electronics markets, and milk them for more money.
Or, maybe, is about closing a loophole that allow people to drive bikes more powerfull than the one that need a driver’s license without a driver’s license. Are brown people excluded from obtaining a driver’s license in Amsterdam ? No, so they can simple get a driver’s license like everyone else.
Not everything is about races even if you think so.we can all lie to another and say its not due to xenophobia, racism, or general support for luxuries such as cars and public transit, and the taxation and fees that come with them, and i dare say a police state. but at the end of the day this is just another way for governments and corporations to use fear to impliment more control over emerging technologies and markets. especially on human mobility.
It is about following the traffic regulations. I agree that the ebikes were a nice idea when the electric side of the it was really just just a little help but now, honestly, what I see are ebikes that are more powerfull of the moped for which you need the license.
in a world where we can drive a death wagon at 150+ kmph that virtually guarantees death or significant injury for passengers and anyone it comes into contact with. which also drastically pollutes the environement in comparison, we should limiting cars not dinky ebikes from temu that poor people and immigrants prefer to ride. if anything we should be pushing more people into riding bikes of all types.
Yeah, only difference is that the death wagon at 150 Km/h is not driven on the sidewalk and you need e license to drive it.
its a dumb idea. and anyone who disagrees is at the very least grossly misinformed on the wider issues, i dont blame them, just the media thats controlled by people who like to control people.
no offense. im not writing this in anger to you, or anyone in particular, its purely based on my experience as a person who had made a point of riding bikes in spite of owning vehicles, simply because of the glaringly obvious issues that are caused by cars, and that are answered by bikes/ebikes.
So, why is it a problem to ask to follow the laws ? You can ride a bike, it is not a problem, but you need to follow the rules.
Yeah, like it was easy to mod a moped to go beyond the speed limit (45Km/h in Italy), but it was still illegal.
sure is, but a human cyclist can ride up to 60kmph unassisted. yet no license for that.
Or, maybe, is about closing a loophole that allow people to drive bikes more powerfull than the one that need a driver’s license without a driver’s license. Are brown people excluded from obtaining a driver’s license in Amsterdam ? No, so they can simple get a driver’s license like everyone else.
Not everything is about races even if you think so.recent immigrants are excluded from obtaining a drivers license until they pass a drivers test, or have one from a country with similar laws. in the meantime, many refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, etc are poor and need a way to get around and make money, without taking out thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars in debt, plus fees. so they resort to using ebikes, or regular bikes, public transit, uber, etc. to get around. ebikes are a great way for them to get work doing delivery service in well populated areas. and that has obviously lead to a lot of contention on that subject. ignoring that variable in a much larger equation will give skewed results. so dont ignore it.
It is about following the traffic regulations. I agree that the ebikes were a nice idea when the electric side of the it was really just just a little help but now, honestly, what I see are ebikes that are more powerfull of the moped for which you need the license.
i dont disagree, i just dont believe banning specific vehicles or ebikes will solve the issue.
Yeah, only difference is that the death wagon at 150 Km/h is not driven on the sidewalk and you need e license to drive it.
and that still doesnt stop it from being the deadliest thing any human can get in or be around on a daily basis. stats do not lie about that in any sense.
So, why is it a problem to ask to follow the laws ? You can ride a bike, it is not a problem, but you need to follow the rules.
the rules in this case are banning a particular type of vehicle commonly driven in the area by immigrants doing delivery service or travelling for work, or just in general. and seeing as its amsterdam, a place that has been known to be racist and xenophobic due to decades of cannabis related tourism (amongst other reasons) gives cadence to the fact that recent fluctuations of people fleeing destablized countries arent assimilating the way they are wanted to by locals, and established businesses/corporations. this kind of event always leads to a slurry of new laws and regulations that will please the consistent local registered voter base. the local voter base primarily being white european people who have had a significant uptick in hate crimes and fascistic ideation as of late, all across europe. but also in amsterdam. which, fun fact, is where anne fuckin franks house is. so its not like its historically accurate to say amsterdam isnt susceptable to making policy changes, at least partly based on hate or profit.
banning one model leads to another, and another, and another. a new law, a new regulation, a new business model, higher taxes, higher fees, bigger punishments, more turmoil, its always a slippery slope. and the immigrants historically speaking are a wonderful catalyst for making these changes, either directly, or indirectly. conciously or unconciously, most people just dont question it. pop pop knows best.
banning one bike just makes it easier for them to ban more and push the boot down just a little harder, squeezing more money out of all of us.
it also doesnt solve the problem and is a waste if tax dollars until you consider the legal leverage it gives the political class over the minorities that also drive these things.
sure is, but a human cyclist can ride up to 60kmph unassisted. yet no license for that.
Well, while it is true that you can reach this top velocity, it is not a cruising speed. There is a difference between been able to reach a speed and been able to maintain that speed.
If you are able to maintain 60 km/h for an hour, you could just give a try to the hour recordrecent immigrants are excluded from obtaining a drivers license until they pass a drivers test, or have one from a country with similar laws.
Being a recent immigrant has nothing to do with being excluded from obtaining a driver license until they pass a driver test, this is how it work for everyone: it work this way also for a a Dutch person born in Amsterdam: he has to attend driving school to get it. So where is exactly the discrimination ?
in the meantime, many refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, etc are poor and need a way to get around and make money, without taking out thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars in debt, plus fees. so they resort to using ebikes, or regular bikes, public transit, uber, etc. to get around. ebikes are a great way for them to get work doing delivery service in well populated areas. and that has obviously lead to a lot of contention on that subject. ignoring that variable in a much larger equation will give skewed results. so dont ignore it.
While I agree that they need to move (like everyone else btw) I do not agree on the fact that they should break the law to do it.
Yeah, only difference is that the death wagon at 150 Km/h is not driven on the sidewalk and you need e license to drive it.and that still doesnt stop it from being the deadliest thing any human can get in or be around on a daily basis. stats do not lie about that in any sense.
I don’t agree. While it is true that it can be dangerous, the death for car accident in Italy where a little more than 3000. For comparison in the first 7 months of 2025 there were a little less than 900 work related deaths. In 2024 there where a little more than 1000 work related death. So while I acknowledge that there are too many victims of car accident, I don’t think it is the deadliest thing.
the rules in this case are banning a particular type of vehicle commonly driven in the area by immigrants doing delivery service or travelling for work, or just in general. and seeing as its amsterdam, a place that has been known to be racist and xenophobic due to decades of cannabis related tourism (amongst other reasons) gives cadence to the fact that recent fluctuations of people fleeing destablized countries arent assimilating the way they are wanted to by locals, and established businesses/corporations. this kind of event always leads to a slurry of new laws and regulations that will please the consistent local registered voter base. the local voter base primarily being white european people who have had a significant uptick in hate crimes and fascistic ideation as of late, all across europe. but also in amsterdam. which, fun fact, is where anne fuckin franks house is. so its not like its historically accurate to say amsterdam isnt susceptable to making policy changes, at least partly based on hate or profit.
So, still the question: why immigrant cannot follow the laws of the country hosting them ?
I mean, if I would emigrate to Japan I would follow their laws and while I maybe are not able to integrate completely given the differences in culture probably I would be way more integrate that not even following their laws. I can maintain my traditions at home, I doubt that any Japanese would say something if I had my tipical Christmas lunch instead of their traditional lunch.Same in Amsterdam (or many other place in EU), these immigrants are not integrated because they understand that they can do whatever they want and if someone ask (or force) them to follow the laws of the country immediatly people like you make an excuses about why they can not (or should not) follow them.
It would be better to let them to drive these fat ebikes or whatever they want but just make sure that every every traffic violation is punished (with a fine or whatever) ?
banning one model leads to another, and another, and another. a new law, a new regulation, a new business model, higher taxes, higher fees, bigger punishments, more turmoil, its always a slippery slope. and the immigrants historically speaking are a wonderful catalyst for making these changes, either directly, or indirectly. conciously or unconciously, most people just dont question it. pop pop knows best.
If you say so…
banning one bike just makes it easier for them to ban more and push the boot down just a little harder, squeezing more money out of all of us.
it also doesnt solve the problem and is a waste if tax dollars until you consider the legal leverage it gives the political class over the minorities that also drive these things.
Yeah, yeah, making laws just make it easier for them to make more laws and push the boot down just a little harder and squeezing more money out of all of us. Sound better this way ?
What if everyone just start to follow the actual laws ? Maybe new laws that ban something new would not be necessary, don’t you think ?
im not writing another wall of text just to have a mod who doesnt like my opinion remove it.
just imagine being scared of a bicycle because an article told you to be…smh
good luck nerfing the world yall, you can regulate my phat dick’n’bawlz…cope and seethe :D
Yeah, only difference is that the death wagon at 150 Km/h is not driven on the sidewalk and you need e license to drive it.
then why do they still kill way more people than electric bikes?
this isnt about bikes. its about brown people and visible minorities riding them en mass and europeans wanting to bring the hammer down on them so they are forced to buy cars
Yea exacly. It’s a social panick that’s not based on facts or figures, it’s just a bunch of boomers whining about kids going too fast
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
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but your style of rant is a bit unhinged so it will be hard to win people over like that.
i appreciate your honesty, im simply here to state a point. people can choose whether or not they prefer fluff to facts.
i may sound erratic, but thats because theres a lot of unhinged bullshit behind virtually everything humans do. and the fact that almost nobody gives a fuck about digging and connecting the dots to see the wider picture makes feel like im taking crazy pills for being well informed.
it sounds crazy, until you look into it.
believe me, i know. lol.
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.
outlier of injuries related to that specific type of ebike
How do you know? There is no figure in the article, no studies, just a bunch of boomers whining.
In reality, most of the cyclists are killed by motorists, and at least with a powerful engine you can get way from them fast enough.
These are fucking motorcycles.
it’s a new social panick akin to what the parisians did with the apaches.
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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 (https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/road-deaths-netherlands).
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Boomers: woW ThoSe ElecTriC BikEs ArE Very DangerOus
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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.
You need a helmet on purely muscle-powered bicycles, too. A helmet saved both mine and my father’s life in accidents that would not had happened were we not riding bikes that moment.
A majority of bicycle accident fatalities could have been prevented with helmets.
Wear helmets. There are cool models, too, don’t try that excuse.Oh man I got a concussion while wearing a bike helmet I probably would have died if I wasnt wearing it. And we were just kids makings jumps in the driveway…
Yes, right.
But: A bike helmet won’t help you much if you have a collision at 50 km/h. If you go at moped / light motorcycle speed, you need a motorcycle helmet, too.
Yeah, obviously you need different helmets for different speeds. But the comment I responded to was worded like you wouldn’t need a helmet on bicycles at all.
In principle, this is correct. But the need for a helmet increases massively with speed.
Consider the end speed of free fall when falling a certain height - or the inverse, height in meters versus speed in kilometer per hour. It is:
10 km/h ..... 0.39 meter 20 km/h ..... 1.57 meter 30 km/h ..... 3.54 meter 40 km/h ..... 6.29 meter 50 km/h ..... 9.83 meterWould you jump from ten meters height into a concrete surface? Few people would. But the frame of a car is equally hard.
Another data point: In the center of Copenhagen, not so many people use a helmet, but the speed is typically between 10 and 15 km/h - so many bikes there ! - and the number of serious accidents is very low. The contrary is the case for Germany.
And just to make a point: Using a helmet is always safer.
Here is the python code I used to compute the above table:
>>> def fall_height_from_fall_speed_kms(v): ... v_ms=v/3.6 ... a = 9.81 # m / s **2 ... t = v_ms / a ... h = t ** 2 * a / 2 ... return hSo? Nobody is arguing about this but you. Again, my point is not about speeds or certain types of helmets. I just said you should wear a helmrt on bikes FFS!
I think the point is that the convenience of being able to ride a bike without having a helmet at hand is something beneficial for the group. That it, there would be fewer cyclists if wearing a helmet was mandatory, and that would harm cyclists as a group.
By all means, if you consistently go over 20km/h on bike, wear a helmet, as at that speed it’s starting to get dangerous.
Every winter in Canada people die from slipping on ice. Walking in winter should require a helmet, but people would find that absurd.
Okay give me the numbers of fatal pedestrian slips versus fatal bicycle accidents that would not have been fatal if a helmet was worn. Give me data.
The annoying part is having to carry the helmet around with you when bike is parked.
@CyberEgg @HaraldvonBlauzahn
I lost a friend to head injury in a bike accident a month ago. (Hit by a car.)
I don’t know what state I would be in now if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet the numerous times I’ve come off.
Exposed rider of ANY vehicle using a road or a bike lane should wear a helmet. Like car seatbelts, this should be law.A majority of bicycle accident fatalities could have been prevented with banning cars.
Whatever you make up, whoever’s fake account you are.
https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/road-deaths-netherlands
Most road deaths occur in crashes involving a car: single-car crashes, car-car crashes and bicycle-car crashes (Figure 5).
You have a car, don’t ya, fatzo?
You are a day old with a name refering to this thread. Fuck off troll, have fun on my banlist.
Just answer the question. Do you have a car?
No we don’t need helmets. Cars must be kicked out of the bicycle’s areas instead. Fuck that carbrained propaganda.
This reads like you fell on your head without wearing a helmet a few times too often.
Never fell, the single most common cause of bicycle accidents are car drivers – especially drunk ones who speed. You ain’t gonna protect against that with a helmet.
It was not a car that made me slip on an invisible icy spot on a bridge and bang my head against the railing, resulting in a concussion. Without a helmet I’d be dead. Or worse.
Wear a fucking helmet, you idiot.No thanks. I’m not gonna help the car lobby create arguments to limit our freedom and shove off the ‘guilt’ of accidents on us.
I vaguelly remember a study in Denmark (which has roughly 50/50 of people cycling with and without helmets) that showed that cyclists who wear helmets were more likely to have serious accidents than those who did not, though by a small percentage.
There are several factors that are believed to be behind such an unexpected statistic:
- Drivers actually act more dangerously around cyclists who seem better protected than around those who do not and the cyclists themselves are more reckless when they feel they’re better protected (the latter being a much broader and well known phenomenon)
- The weight of the helmet, even though it’s quite low, will on a high speed collision pull the head more towards colliding with something than otherwise - in other words, if you fall the helmet actually unbalances your head and makes it more likely your head will hit the ground.
- The human brain is much more resilient to linear shock than rotational shock - basically when something makes your head rotate the brain inside will also rotate though not instantly since it not part of the bone of your cranium, so it will instead get pulled to rotate and similarly when the head stops be pulled to stop rotating, all of which can cause tearing which can kill a person. Cycling helmets tend to make the head rotate on a collision.
- Cycling helmets are only rated to protect from collisions up to (if I remember it correctly) 15km/h
- Cycling helmets do not protect anything else than the head (which links back to the first point)
Anyways, the point being that at the kind of speed and the environment that people cycle in when just commuting in a city, bicyle helmets can actually make it slightly more dangerous.
Mind you, this doesn’t at all mean that in different situations - such as mountain biking or speed cycling - helmets aren’t a must.
In places like The Netherlands pretty much nobody uses a helmet when just cycling in the city.
I would really like to see that study. Because I have studies showing the opposite.
Here is an article (in German, sorry) summarizing and contextualising several studies. One showed that wearing a helmet resulted in car drivers keeping five centimetres less distance when overtaking the cyclist, but that study’s method was flawed and a study conducted in Berlin with better equipment and better method (bigger sample size, different routes, women being actually test subjects and not just represented by a guy with a wig, etc) that showed helmet wearing bicyclists being overtaken with more distance.
Here (again German, sorry) is a research report comparing 543 accidents with injured bicyclists in University Hospitals of Munich and Münster and 117 accudent fatality from a database. From the 117 fatalities, 50% died of traumatic brain injury and six wore a helmet. Furthermore, from those injured (not the 117 fatalities) and with traumatic brain injury, none wore helmets.
Here (this time in english) is a meta analysis of studies about the safety of wearing helmets when cycling, concluding the discussed studies show a benefit for safety when wearing a helmet while cycling (too much for.me to summarize).
Sadly I read about this over a decade ago and don’t have a link for it anymore.
I looked around and all I could find were studied pointing out that helmets protect against head injury, which was never in dispute and you yourself linked studies for that - my the point was not about helmets reducing head injuries (though the whole rotational vs linear collisions thing means good helmet design is important) but about how as per risk compensation theory if there is an overal increase in risk due to increased perception of safety it might offset the increased in protection from helmets since helmets only protect the head.
Also found lots of things about how mandatory helmet use for cyclists in overall causes more deaths (for example and another example) because it reduces the number of people who take up cycling and the overall negative health outcomes of fewer people cycling add up to to higher mortality that the increased risk of head injury from cycling without a helmet given the low baseline risk of cycling in general.
Here’s a pretty good summary from the views in the EU.
Helmet studies typically have a bias for or against from the start. The reality is wearing a helmet is always safer, and would save lives of pedestrians and car drivers. However, making cycling as easy as walking means no helmet laws. In Netherlands, helmeted riders have more injuries because they tend to be the riders on expensive road race bikes going considerably faster in car traffic.
Helmet studies typically have a bias for or against from the start.
The reality is wearing a helmet is always safer
You writting one after the other just makes clear you’re hugely biased in this as you basically put forward an absolute statement of yours “wearing a helmet is always safe” as objective truth whilst studies “typically are biased” or in other words, you know better than studies.
Definitelly agree that using numbers from injuries of cyclists with helmets in The Netherlands without any further considerations yields biased results for the reasons you described. It’s not by chance that I did not quote such figures at all and in fact explicitly said from the start that people doing things like speed cycling and mountain biking should wear a helmet.
No idea were you pulled that specific argument you decided to counter in a response to my posts.
Specifically for The Netherlands and from the last link in my previous post, the only thing about them is the general belief there that “Promoting the use of bicycle helmets runs counter to present government policies that are aimed at the primary prevention of crashes (as opposed to secondary prevention) and at stimulating the use of the bicycle as a general health measure” which is really about not having mandatory helmet laws because it reduces cycling in general and how it’s more important to push for safe cycling conditions (such as good cycle paths) than for cyclists wearing protection, all of which makes sense.
Personally I think that wearing a helmet or not should be down to each cyclist and should take in account the conditions they are cycling under, always remembering that wearing a helmet is not a silver bullet. My own experience of cycling in different countries (The Netherlands, England, Germany, Portugal) and different conditions is that the level of risk can be very different sometimes even from city to city, making helmet use more or less important relative to other things.
Again and above all, always keep in mind that wearing a helmet is not going to make you totally or even mostly safe, if only to avoid the increase risk taking due to a sense of increase safety exceeding the actual amount of increased safety from a helmet - as per risk compensation theory - which ultimatelly can make you less safe.
In my view your whole “wearing a helmet is always safer” absolutist posture is a needlessly dangerous mindset to have - it’s far better to have a far more general approach to cycling safety in city traffic (which is basically what I went with when I moved from cycling in the far safer Dutch conditions to cycling in London, meaning that I ran around with all sorts of risk mitigation practices not just towards motorists on the road but even towards pedestrians in the sidewalk that were even adjusted depending in the area of London I was in) that thinking that just a helmet will make you safe.
Well, first, you did try to make points about brain injuries caused by wearing helmets. Now you claim you never argued about that, so what is it?
Second, it is IMHO not quite intelligent to make an argument about head protection not protectng other body parts. That’s like saying a stab protection vest is useless because you can get shot in the head.
Third, the first article I linked talks about a systematic comparative analysis of 23 studies examining risk homeostasis hypothesis, of which 18 could not confirm the hypothesis, three showing inconclusive results and only two being arguments for the hypothesis, the analysis concluding there is little to no evidence for bicycle helmets leading to riskier behavior.I know the studies about mandatory helmet rules (something I actually never talked about), I find people’s behavior in this case utterly incomprehensible and stupid, but again, it’s not something I argued for. It just shows me we need to encourage helmet use in different ways. Mandatory for children maybe so that they get used to it, normalizing and encouraging wearing helmets by advertisements etc. IDK, but such efforts can be quite successful if funded and supportes sufficiently.
Ovoid shapes will cause rotational forces on perpendicular impacts, whilst spherical shapes do not. This is just Maths.
Notice how motorcycle helmets are actually spherical.
In my experience the traditional bicycle helmets are half ovoids.
That said I drilled down to the comparative analisys linked from the study you indicated and it basically concludes that people who are more fearful tend to wear helmets when cycling, so the reverse causality relationship of the risk compensation theory (which would be that a person that starts wearing a helmet when cycling becomes more risk taking).
So you make a good point that advising people to wear helmets is not a bad idea.
IMHO, as long as it doesn’t turn people away from a more compreensive risk reduction form of cycling (which is how I personally tackled changing from cycling in The Netherlands to cycling in London, which at the time had much worse cycling infrastructure and were motorists weren’t used to cyclists when I started doing it - by having quite a lot of tricks to keep me safe from the innatention and error of not just motorists but also pedestrians, most of which were not at all needed in The Netherlands were other road users always expect cyclists to be around), it’s fine.
As for mandatory cycling helmets, I’m against it because it severely lowers the uptake of cycling which ultimatelly is worse for people because of worse health outcomes. Also my experience cycling in London during the period were it went from quite atypical to more normalized, is that more cyclists around results in more motorists and pedestrians being naturally aware of and careful towards cyclists (an effect I also noticed from the other side in myself as both a motorist and a pedestrian when I moved from a country with no cycling culture to The Netherlands and got used to lots of cyclists around) which in turn makes cycling safer for everybody - in other words, more cycling adoption makes cycling safer. This seems to be aligned with the most common position in The Netherlands as per my last link:
The Dutch government, private safety organizations and cyclists’ groups all tend to agree on the following propositions: Promoting the use of bicycle helmets runs counter to present government policies that are aimed at the primary prevention of crashes (as opposed to secondary prevention) and at stimulating the use of the bicycle as a general health measure.
Ovoid shapes will cause rotational forces on perpendicular impacts, whilst spherical shapes do not. This is just Maths.
Notice how motorcycle helmets are actually spherical.
In my experience the traditional bicycle helmets are half ovoids.
Bruh, it’s not that deep. Statistics show that wearing a helmet reduces chances to severe head and brain injuries.
As for mandatory cycling helmets, I’m against it
I don’t care since I am not discussing helmet mandates.
As for the rest, obviously it’s better to prevent accidents in the first place and obviously we need to reduce the number of cars on our streets for multiple reasons. But that’s all policy while wearing a helmet is a cheap and easy way to protect yourself against unavoidable accidents and avoidable accidents while waiting and advocating for policy change.
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.
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.)
Are you like making up what the rules they’re trying write are by just the word “fatbike”?? It’s obvious the problem is not the width of the tire, so they will not be regulating that.
Of een fiets een fatbike is, wordt in dit APV-artikel bepaald op basis van de bandendikte: Als die meer dan zeven centimeter is, dan valt de fiets onder de bepaling.
This is from the article that the Guardian links to as a source. https://www.amsterdam.nl/bestuur-organisatie/college/wethouder/melanie-horst/persberichten-nieuws-melanie-horst/amsterdam-fatbikes-weren-drukke-gebieden/
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. Were they made safer, I would probably mandate they can only drive on new lanes for speed pedelecs & fatbikes, and require helmets. 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.
Why are 12 year olds even allowed to drive what is essentially a motorbike?
Idk how it is in there but In my country, you need only a moped license if it’s limited to 45 and no license if 25 km/h. The latter is considered a bicycle with assistance motor.
When are cars banned?
Believe it or not, cars are already banned from bikelanes and parks in Amsterdam. I hope this helps.
They should be banned from the city.
You just need to build a public transpotation system that can render cars useless for every use (shopping, commute, free time activities and so on) and that is usable from evertwhere to everywhere, even outside big (and small) cities.
They already have it. Yet 78% of household have one.
Public transit is one aspect, another one is walkable cities where everything you need in your daily life is just a short walk away. Also, sensible laws regarding rights to work from home for applicable jobs etc.
Having everything you need daily at a walkable distance only works in big cities, in small towns it do not work.
Of course that can work as well.
Only up to a point. Small cities have not the critical mass of inhabitants to make certain services logical or even sustainable.
They’re allowed everywhere else and they make up most of the fatalities.
Gar accidents are the natural state of things as opposed to this!! /s
