Ban on E-bikes in 10 Beijing Roads Begins This Week

[LockH]

http://en.yibada.com/articles/11519...kes-in-ten-beijing-roads-begins-this-week.htm

The ban aims to ease traffic and reinforce road safety as the 10 roads specified by BTMB suffer from heavy traffic, often has no bicycle lanes and are considered accident-prone areas.

Statistics from the bureau indicated that in 2015, e-bikes caused the death of 113 people and 31,404 traffic accidents, which resulted in 21,423 injured people.

In unrelated news "Over 80% of Chinese Parents Don't Use Child Safety Seats" and "Statistics show that more than 18,500 children under the age of 14 die annually in traffic accidents in China."
http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/news/china/1602/1653-1.htm

 

[wineboyrider]

Qiu also said that the government should take note of the fact that sales of e-bikes in the country are higher than that of electric cars.

No kidding lol?

 

[liveforphysics]

It's difficult to believe the Ebikes caused so many deaths, when in China they rarely do over 20mph.

Seems far more likely cars murdered ebikers doing 20mph and they call that the fault of the person on the intrinsically safer transportation device.

I've spent a lot of time in Beijing, Ebikes are the most common method of transport, it will be interesting to see how the ban goes. Seems like a good way to insight a revolution.

 

[Alan B]

Seems like they should convert a lane each way to bike use only and see how fast folks leave their cars at home.

There's an ebike group that schedules rides during commute hours on the nearly empty bike lane alongside the traffic jam just to show the stuck drivers the alternative they are missing.

 

[John in CR]

Only 2/3rds of reported accidents result in injury is pretty good. 123 fatalities when they put over 10 million new ebikes on the road in each of the last 5 years is also great. They fix them and keep them going, so conservatively 30 million ebikes on the road is only .0004% or 4 in a million. Injuries less than one in a thousand, so I'm doing 1000 times worse since I've had some minor injuries (all very low speed stuff). Yet I guarantee some idiot do-gooder is going to try to use those China stats to clamp down on ebikes. The US has only about 8 times as many cars on the road as China has ebikes (China's# is probably way underestimated), but the US has 265 times the traffic fatalities of China. Ebikes are not only the most efficient form of transportation developed by man, but despite the riders' complete exposure, it's the safest too.

 

[friendly1uk]

Just as I was planning my holiday that involved buying one lol

Many of the bikes there are not operated within the limits. Most are not even registered which is a requirement. They are rode by people without a clue how to drive. It's expected of them to ignore red lights and drive up either side of the road. While the cast system accepts that if you have a Range Rover your expected to run them over or feel the shame of being owned.

 

[heavymetalthunder]

I've been to many cities in China, and I think it is rather insane for cities to have a band on E-bikes. The cities are so congested, so now they are forcing more people to use cars to get around. I saw many cities with bike lanes and on my last trip I saw only one build E-bike all others were the slower factory bike limited to 20 MPH. Reminds me of the ban of E-bikes in NYC, taking from the residents another option to get around. Of course, in NYC it was driven more by the cab owners paying off the politicians.