Panorama: "E-Bikes: The Battle For Our Streets"

[Merle Haggard]

I find it ironic that the programme was made with funds provided by the compulsory Television Licence fee, but if you watch it without a licence you can face a fine of "up to £1,000". If you can't afford to pay the fine you can be thrown into prison. As you languish in your cell you can watch (TV licence-free) how Deliveroo and Just Eat electric-motorcycle riders get away scot-free while blatantly and repeatedly breaking the law thanks to non-enforcement by the police.

A not disimilar irony is that if I'm driving a car and pass close to a cyclist there's a big fine - again about £1,000.

But in Northampton there's apparently no action against riding an hired electric scooter on the pavement at full speed, approaching pedestrians from behind silently without warning and missing them by millimetres. Moving quickly out of the way of an approaching one, or stumbling on uneven paving, are both dangerous for the pedestrian as a result.

In Northampton a considerable number of the hire scooters are already ridden on the pavement - fully expecting pedestrians to jump out of the way. That's in addition to those being ridden two-up, the wrong way down one-way streets, through red lights, across parks, by people who are obviously underage, etc.

Each time the scooter hire scheme comes up for renewal we are promised that the operators will impose tighter controls but still there are those users who ignore all the conditions that are supposed to be part of the hire.

Not to mention abandoning them and forming an obstruction to access - for example at the bottom of the steps leading to the station.

When they're actually on the road they are more often on the wrong side of the road, or in the centre, than the correct side and will suddenly veer from one side to the other, or cross at right angles, all with headphones on. The totally illegal (I think that's true) all black ones never seem to have lights, sometimes difficult to spot at night particularly as the riders often wear all-black for some reason .


If you see a hire scooter unusually left at the end of your quiet residential side street or cul-de-sac in the early evening you might possibly connect it with a neighbour suffering a break-in that night, and the scooter's disappearance.

 

[BingMan]

Certainly electric motorcycles are a good thing compared to petrol ones - they just need to be type approved, insured etc and the rider wear a helmet. Prior to the easy availability of e-bikes the normal steed for a delivery rider was a 50cc scooter, which presumably was taxed and insured or they wouldn't be out long before being caught.
.

That is a very bold presumption

 

[jon0844]

As to the e-bikes used by Deliveroo etc riders those I see are more like an electric moped than a UK legal electrically assisted pedal bike. I must look closer if they actually have to pedal at all but certainly the way they can accelerate and the speed they can achieve with electric 'assistance' is way outside of the UK legal definition. As to the road regulations for bikes if the riders even they even know what they are they totally ignored as they seek prioritising the fastest route.

They'll almost certainly not need to pedal and will have a throttle. Some may pretend to pedal but actually just move back and forth (as if they don't actually know how to pedal or convince anyone else that they're doing so!), while many are using handlebar gloves to hide the throttle. You can argue that they'd need these now because it's cold, but they'll use them all summer too!

Compared to a car, these are a better way to do deliveries - but they need to be treated like any other motorised vehicle as that's exactly what they are. EAPCs are treated different because of the limited assistance. Many imported EAPCs can be modded in software to remove the restriction and maybe go up to 30mph (realistically, that might be a bit of a stretch if the motor is only 250W but many motors are higher and just labelled as 250W with software limiting) but they usually won't have a battery good enough for someone doing lots of deliveries.

The telltale factor, and why the delivery bikes are even more dangerous, is the batteries stacked up with duct tape to work for hours between charges, and I wouldn't want to know someone was charging one of those in a block of flats I lived in.

Ultimately, the problem isn't that e-bikes are especially dangerous - it's that there are an awful lot of unregistered, uninsured electric motorbikes on the streets!

This.

We don't generally allow people to hack around with cars without making sure they're roadworthy. However, bikes that can do 40, 50, 60mph and cause harm or even death are somehow tolerated and people can sell them by saying 'you will be using on your private land (snigger)?'.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That is a very bold presumption

Well, I got about 2 miles driving an apparently uninsured* vehicle before I was pulled over by the Police and asked to produce documents.

* It was actually insured, the policy was taken out last minute and hadn't been put on the motor insurance database (MID) yet.