Welcome to another week in e-bikes! This edition is loosely about being sensible, whether you’re riding a hire e-bike to Wimbledon, getting irrationally annoyed by Lime bikes outside your gated house, drinking and riding, or vetoing a nonsensical safe-cycling bill.
”Hundreds” of poorly parked e-bikes accumulate near Wimbledon
While lots of very nice bikes cross the Channel for the Tour de France, here in the UK many e-bikes are making a pilmgrimage to south-west London for the Wimbledon Championships — and not everyone’s happy. On Monday, some 10,000 people have joined “the Queue” for Wimbledon tickets, and many have arrived on e-bikes, causing parking chaos near the world-famous tennis tournament.
“It used to be people catching the first Tube into Southfields,” Wimbledon chief executive Sally Bolton told the Daily Mail. “Now, with Lime and other hire bikes, people can reach the queue much more easily from further afield.”
According to the Daily Mail, “hundreds” of hire e-bikes have been dumped by fans, prompting the council to warn that it will confiscate bikes if they’re not parked properly.
”We are committed to making a success of e-bikes in Merton, but we will not accept poorly parked bikes that harm our community,” said Councillor Stuart Neaverson, Merton Council’s Cabinet Member for Transport and Cleaner Streets. “We will be closely monitoring the situation over the coming days, and will seize bikes should serious safety issues emerge.”
Imagine if all these people were arriving by car…
Ant gets angry at e-bikes (but he’s not angry)
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Merton council isn’t the only one with concerns about e-bike parking. I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! host Ant McPartlin complained that the accumulation of Lime bikes “outside the gates” of his £6 million Wimbledon house are one of the reasons he moved out of the city.
”I got so angry and one day, I kicked them all down,” he said on the Hanging Out With Ant and Dec podcast. “I got told I had anger issues by the kids. I don’t have anger issues. I was just angry at the people who kept leaving them… there were like, four of them.”
Free Santander rides this July
Maybe Ant’s irrational anger at four e-bikes could be quelled with a free ride on a Santander Cycle? This month, Transport for London (TfL) is bringing back its Cycle Sundays scheme. Londoners and visitors to the capital can use Santander Cycles free for up to 60 minutes on Sundays in July.
To use a Santander e-bike, you’ll need to be registered via the app or website. The promo codes are:
- CYCLEJULY5 (5 July)
- CYCLEJULY12 (12 July)
- CYCLEJULY19 (19 July)
- CYCLEJULY26 (26 July)
Study analyses alcohol use in fatal micromobility crashes
A new study from Sweden has analysed risk profiles of traditional cyclists versus e-bike and e-scooter riders, and revealed e-bikers sit somewhere in the middle, perhaps unsurprisingly. The research, from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, revealed that the average ages of those killed in traditional and e-bike crashes was roughly the same (about 71), while those who died while riding e-scooters tended to be younger, with a median age of 47.
E-bikers were slightly more likely to be involved in a fatal crash during the weekend, and 27% of them were found to have high blood-alcohol levels. For comparison, 44% of e-scooter riders were intoxicated, and — perhaps unsurprisingly — they were more likely to be involved in a fatal crash over the weekend.
At the other end of the spectrum, conventional cyclists were more likely to be killed on a weekday (Wednesday in particular), and a mere 13% were over the drink-drive limit. There was also a 50/50 split between single-person and multiple-vehicle e-bike accidents, while 60% of cyclist accidents involved other vehicles, and 67% of e-scooter deaths only involved the rider.
As the study points out, countermeasures can only go so far in preventing accidents when users are engaging in risky behaviour.
”The severity of alcohol intoxication observed in this study offers an evidence-based argument for the introduction of a legal BAC limit for micromobility in Sweden, in line with its Nordic neighbours,” concludes the report. ”Such behaviors reaffirm the role of individual responsibility and necessitate targeted, individual-level interventions that complement broader system-level improvements.”
Florida e-bike bill vetoed due to “confusion”
A couple of weeks ago, we covered Florida’s plans to introduce an e-bike safety bill that would introduce a 10 mph speed limit when cycling near pedestrians. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed the bill, as reported by CBS News, citing concerns that the new laws would create “unneccessary oversight” and that they would “create confusion for riders and law enforcement.”
“This bill will likely lead to enhanced surveillance by local governments against citizens,” DeSantis wrote. “Moreover, the bill creates a task force, yet substantive changes are also implemented prior to any task force recommendations.”
“I am disappointed,” Coral Springs City Commissioner Joshua Simmons told CBS News. “I know that there are families all across Florida that were looking forward to moving in the next step of having some state guidance when it comes to e-bikes and e-motor machines, because people are getting hurt”.
