You won’t believe how clickbaity we made this headline for no reason. Please visit our ad plastered page to find out the one word substance of this whole message.
It’s Amsterdam btw. That’s basically it.
It’s not even the city, it’s just Vondelpark. For now anyways
banned from a park where there are lots of pedestrians. thats fair
These things are quite often modified to drive 40km/h, without paddling. And the brakes go unmaintained. much more often compared to regular bikes, according to ad.nl, which leads to difficulty stopping & as such very dangerous situations on intersections. I’m all for banning these, throughout the country.
wouldn’t they then just modify and drive some type of skinny tire electric bike?
Which is the difficulty in regulating this, unfortunately. But from what I understand, regular e-bikes aren’t as easy to modify as these fatbikes are. so it’d be a temp fix while manufacturers circumvent the ban’s specific phrasing.
The city is Amsterdam
Amsterdam.
Clickbait title…
One small step on a longer road. Sure, these bikes look compelling, and freedom are important, in reality they are too fast and often pimped, it’s a new mode of transport nobody really needs.
In my area of Europe, they are mostly used as food delivery bikes. I would love for them to be classified as a moped or something more than a bike, to get them out of pedestrian areas.
Yeah, electric scooters are awesome, the problem is that they’re classified as bikes just cause they’ve got some pedals stuck on.
Which by default are required, but they are easy to modify to use a throttle lever instead, and they tend to be modded to go 40+ km/h rather than the legal limit of 25 here in the NL.
Those “bikes” are mopeds and are legally only not classified as such due to ideologically guided stupidity of politicians. It’s no new mode of transport, the only thing that’s had a relatively recent revival due to better battery technology is the electric motor. But a motor is a motor. If I fitted a bike with a newly invented fart powered motor that could propel it to the speed of sound, it wouldn’t be a new mode of transport either, but a motorbike.
The problem is that they don’t go above 25km/h out of the factory, they are (easily) modified to do so. And by default you need to paddle to propel yourself, but this is often bypassed as well.
Aren’t they normally used for deliveries?
Widely used for delivery services. The local Wolt gig delivery people are mostly on fat tired electric bikes. With Wolt, you have to bring your own bike, so apparently it’s what people are investing in to do the work. The only real problem is speed and distracted riding (they’re usually on the phone while rolling around).
In the Netherlands, they are mainly used as a means of transport (or rather: racing) for underage teenagers (12-14) in general (and migrants and young people with a lower level of education in particular), as long as they are not yet allowed to ride a moped and therefore happy to use these fatbikes to circumvent the rules for mopeds.
It might well be possible these ‘bikes’ are a gift when buying vapes, or the other way around, don’t know, but somehow they mainly occur in combination with each other.
Perhaps 10%?
