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news
BBC Panorama - Adrian Chiles looking at e-bikesBicycle Association formally complains to BBC over Adrian Chiles’ e-bike Panorama “misrepresentation”, claiming episode “unjustifiably damaged” legal e-bike industry
The Bicycle Association, the national body representing the cycling industry in the UK, has lodged a formal complaint with the BBC about its recent Panorama episode on e-bikes, arguing that the controversial programme inaccurately and repeatedly conflated the “safety and social issues” surrounding the use of "illegal e-motorbikes" with road-legal e-bikes, claiming that this “misrepresentation” has “unjustifiably damaged” the e-bike sector.
As part of its complaint, the group called for the term ‘e-bike’ to be removed from the programme’s title to better reflect its apparent focus on e-motorbikes - as the Bicycle Association (BA) refers to them - and claimed the episode failed to provide “fair balance or representation from the reputable e-bike sector”. The BA claims this was a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines, while also failing to properly inform the public about the current laws and regulations around electric bikes.
On Monday, the BBC aired its latest Panorama episode, hosted by Adrian Chiles, titled ‘E-Bikes: The Battle For Our Streets’, which saw the former One Show host ask whether electric bikes are “a new menace in need of tighter regulation”.
However, the episode’s prolonged focus on modified e-bikes – which exceed the maximum 250 watts and 15.5mph cut-off speed for electrically assisted pedal cycles (EAPCs) permitted under UK law to ride on public roads – and the failure to consistently and fully distinguish between these machines has seen the BBC come in for some strong criticism from cycling campaigners in recent days.
“Panorama confuses legal with illegally modified e-bikes and ignores their benefits compared to the UK’s car use,” the London Cycling Campaign said in response to the episode on Monday.
“If we switched lots of cars for e-bikes in the UK we’d see health, crime, road danger, and climate benefits, not the tabloid, crime-ridden, apocalyptic vision Panorama paints.”
Referring to the episode’s attempt to discover whether e-bike use is linked to dangerous riding and criminality, Alex Bowden, in his review for road.cc’s sister site e-biketips, said: “Clearly there are specific issues which nebulous questioning and imprecise categorisation won’t do much to resolve.
“Maybe we’re biased but ‘What can we do about e-bikes?’ and ‘What can we do about illegal e-bikes?’ are not to us the same question.”
And on Wednesday evening, following this backlash, the Bicycle Association (BA), the trade organisation representing 140 cycling companies in the UK, lodged a formal complaint with the BBC concerning Panorama’s coverage of e-bikes.
In the complaint, the BA’s technical and policy director Peter Eland called on the BBC to “remove ‘E-bikes’ from the programme title and instead reference ‘illegal e-motorbikes’,” and in future programming on the subject to “make it fully clear and properly inform the public that e-bikes and illegal e-motorbikes are two entirely separate categories”.
He also urged the broadcaster more generally to “provide proper balance when addressing contentious transport issues, including featuring representation by responsible organisations in the sector”.
According to the association, the Panorama episode “repeatedly conflates the safety and social issues surrounding the use of illegal e-motorbikes with ‘e-bikes’ and fails to make it clear that these issues are overwhelmingly not caused by (road legal) e-bikes.
“This is compounded by the juxtaposition (without distinction) of footage of both illegal e-motorbikes and road-legal e-bikes, implying that they are one and the same. This misrepresentation is against the public interest and not fair or accurate (hence in breach of BBC editorial guidelines).”
> More experts, fewer conspiracy theorists on active travel TV shows please
The group also criticised the episode’s choice of ‘expert’ – “an enthusiast with a collection of illegal e-motorbikes, not road legal e-bikes” – and claimed that in doing so the programme “in effect promoted illegal e-motorbike use”.
“No reputable road legal e-bike supplier or cycle industry representative was featured,” the group said in the complaint. “No fair balance or representation from the reputable e-bike sector was provided, also in breach of BBC editorial guidelines.”
Elsewhere in the complaint, Chiles’ claim in the episode that the laws and regulations around e-bikes are “unclear or insufficient” was branded “factually incorrect”.
“The law is completely clear about what is or is not a road legal e-bike (EAPC),” the association said. “Any electrically powered two-wheeler that is not a road legal e-bike (EAPC), or a properly type approved and registered e-moped/e-motorbike, is an illegal e-motorbike.
“There are legitimate questions about the extent of enforcement of these rules, but the rules themselves are completely clear.”
> Is cycling treated fairly in the media? BBC AntiSocial goes cycling discussed with ‘the cyclist'
The association continued: “The reputable UK cycle and e-bike industry fully supports all and any measures to enforce the current very clear legislation and to remove illegal e-motorbikes from our streets. We also call for reforms of the food delivery sector to address use of illegal e-motorbikes by delivery riders.
“However, these issues are entirely distinct from the road legal e-bike category, which offers many health and mobility benefits for the general public, including many disabled people.
“We consider that this programme has, by confusing these issues, both failed to properly inform the public and also unjustifiably damaged the road legal e-bike sector through misrepresentation.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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44 comments
Glad to see the BBC is still doing a bang-up job of alienating left and right in equal measure.
Keep up the good work, Auntie.
I agree that the BBC programme could have made the distinction between legal e-bikes and illegal e-bikes or e-motorbikes at the start of the programme and then referred to them as e-bikes and e-motorbikes. For those familiar with the rules, the distinction was clear, but viewers who had no knowledge of the rules would probably been confused as to which machines they were seeing were legal and which weren't.
This is EXACTLY why I will not fund the BBC and urge all others to do the same by boycotting the licence scheme. They are anything but impartial employing absolute biggotted dinosaurs left right and centre.
Well that'll be the famous BBC balance.
I've just watched the programme and I don't think the Cycling Association is jutified in its complaint. The programme was generally fair and represented the situation accurately. It highlighted the fact the extent of the eBike problem is unknown from an accident stats point of view. Clearly no-one has a real grasp of the numbers of illegal bikes either manufactured illegaly or modified illegal.
The problem needs addressed and if this programme puts the discussion on the agenda then it will have done some good.
If the programme has damaged the reputation of legitmate manufacturers then they need to step and make change. Make it impossible for your average person to derestrict their bikes. I suspect the manufacturers do not to have two versions of software so they install a version which can easily be by-passed. Perhaps they need a mechanical failsafe rather than a software restriction.
Food delivery companies should be targeted and if one of their riders is caught then the bike should be seized and the food company prosecuted, with potenial high fines. That will force them to properly check and recheck the bikes being used. This needs Government action and legislation.
We all know the police are stretched in all areas of their remitt but if this is as big an issue as Panorama suggest then direct more resources to catching uses of illegal bikes.
Are you sure you watched the right programme?
I liked the bit where you mentioned tackling the food delivery companies, or actually confiscating illegally-used machines *. Seems currently zero enthusiasm for the former and not much for the latter, though **.
I don't think the sellers association is really the issue - it's everyone else, selling entirely unclassified machines (including both internet vendors and high-street shops!) and dodgy parts kits. I would hope rules could be framed to put a little more pressure on some of the retailers but for foreign or "hidden on the net" parts suppliers? Good luck...
I'm not sure "represented the situation accurately" and "clearly no-one has a real grasp of the numbers" sit together that well. "There is a terrible problem, and we can't even tell you how terrible exactly because ... nobody has the faintest idea. But we can promise you it's terrible!"
* Those who've looked further into this tell me that while they should be type-classified and are not, the only actual law-breaking takes place when someone uses one where it shouldn't be ridden. Which to be fair is "almost anywhere" - but that "almost" presumably allows people to keep selling, buying and possessing them without any sanction.
** I bet the police wouldn't be keen to keep some of the dodgier ones on their premises - explosion / fire risk and all that...
The Police certainly like confiscating E scooters, they're ridden around at the local police college.
They must have a surplus though, they are now completely ignored, even the 1000W+ monstrosities.
My personal favourite is the bright orange e-Moto often ridden through the pedestrian town centre by a rider in matching orange MX gear and helmet.
Surely that's worth them grabbing.
I'd love to buy it cheap at the police auction...
The Police certainly like confiscating E scooters, they're ridden around at the local police college
I bet they're not! Making up 'facts' does not help.
And just like that - an article about a hit and run on the BBC webiste, on what appears to be an unregistered electronic motorbike, and the headline and caption is about e-bikes. It even makes reference ot the Panorama programme
(you know it is a motor vehicle because the headline is about some kind of driverless vehicle)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75w2xqewx5o
Doubling down on their anti-bike, and anti-ebike stance.
I'm slightly baffled by "The road is fully pedestrianised from 10am until 6am..." If that should have been 6pm, then the collision occurred outside those times, funny how they don't mention that.
Also:
-if it is an e-bike, then the cyclist was allowed in the pedestrian area, so it isn't an issue
-if it is not allowed down there, then it isn't an e-bike but a motorbike, and this shoudl be clear from the headline and text
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint
Grinds my gears that I am obliged to pay a TV Licence that is used to fund the BBCs repetitive anti cyclist bile. They won't lose customers if they supported cycling because those customers are obliged to pay regardless, so it seems obvious to me the BBC (or rather their editors) must be recieving some financial incentives from the motor and oil industry
I think they must receive a lot of back-handers from the motor industry as they seem to go out of their way to support the motornormative agenda and will usually only mention electric cars as a climate tackling solution rather than e-bikes, e-scooters or active travel. They quite often promote electric cars too and now they're deliberately conflating electric motorbikes with e-bikes to tarnish their image.
Could be. But the main point is they're not independent from the government though*, and all of those have been essentially "thoughts and prayers for cyclists" up to this point **, so...
* Yes - they like to point out they sometimes annoy governments / the military etc. - but how is the BBC funded and operated again? "The BBC was established under a royal charter, and operates under an agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee..." [here] Also key posts are still being vetted by MI5 for what that's worth!
** With the odd, minor, good point - a successful road safety initiative under a former Labour government, BoJo's lot (was it?) creating Active Travel England and getting some funding established (which was swiftly canned IIRC).
You're not obliged. Just don't buy a TV licence.
I stopped ours 2 years ago because none of us was watching the telly. Most of it is rubbish and repeats anyway while their news and current affairds coverage is piss-poor and run by a bunch of Conserative party members. Unbiased it certainly is not and does not earn its 'public service' remit. C4 and Sky are better at news while political shows like Question Time are a waste of time (I occasionally see it when at my Mum's house; I think it's a pile of crap and prefer to put earphones in and listen to a podcast while she has it on).
The others in the household have Netflix and Prime on their phones and I only tend to watch cycling stuff via youtube. Although I miss out on big events like the Worlds (live on BBC) and the Tour (ITV, so I can watch it legally on catch-up) but it means I have more time to do something else.
To be fair, that's largely down to the calibre of modern politicians, who have mostly been carefully selected for their inability to do anything other than repeat their rehearsed talking points regardless of their relevance to anything anybody else may have said, while anybody actually half-capable of engaging in an intelligent debate is winnowed out in case they inadvertently say something meaningful.
The BBC has a history, in news items, of describing two wheeled electric powered machines involved in dangerous, criminal and antisocial activity as E-bikes when they are not. This innacuracy often starts in the headline and then is repeated within the article. It's pure ignorance. Perhaps the Police are unaware of the difference too?..and should make sure they are informing journalists accurately before they put their stories into print.
The BBC aren't ignorant about it - they are deliberately anti-cyclist.
I thought there'd been so much commentary about this programme that I'd sit down and watch it on iplayer: I managed about a minute before I wanted to throw my remote at the telly. The voiceover talked about "e-bikes becoming the dominant form of life in the universe" (or something) whilst the video constantly cut between Lime bikes, clearly street-legal e-bikes, and clearly NOT street-legal electric motorbikes as if they were all the same thing.
I decided that my blood pressure doesn't need this, and turned it off.
Just found this from Mark Hodson
"I've no faith in BBC reporting since I was cancelled off a Radio 5 debate on Smart Motorways at the last minute with the researcher saying it was obvious I was going to shut down the debate with stats and evidence & that's not what they wanted. Panorama failing to correctly identify a Transport type is just part of the course given the incompetence that has seeped into the BBC in recent years. It's all about interest and fear to gain viewers, clicks or streams rather than truth and facts to inform the public correctly."
https://bsky.app/profile/mrmarkhodson.bsky.social/post/3lfd2tsxm3s27
Let's hope lots of other people and organisations complain so that the BBC won't be able to sweep it under the carpet as they have done a thousand times before.
CUK, Sustrans, BC? How about it?
Given the widespread introduction of 20mph zones the road legal e-bike (EAPC) regulation needs to change from 15mph to 20mph since the difference is enough to encourage impatient drivers to go for a questionable overtake, either breaking the 20mph limit, or passing the 15mph cyclist slowly and dangerously as they retake the lane to avoid oncoming traffic.
So not unregulated rather safer and more realistic regulation.
A realistic limit should serve to reduce illegal limit hacks, as not being able to keep up is a common motivation..
No thanks. More enforcement of existing regulations instead, please.
For lots of reasons:
a) "the difference is enough to encourage impatient drivers to go for a questionable overtake..." - they do now (when people are cycling at the speed limit) and you effectively note this yourself ("...either breaking the 20mph limit"). I don't see any chance MGIF (or other dangerous driving behaviour) will be cured by faster bikes.
b) ... and the motor traffic is not infrequently exceeding the "minimum speed limits" regardless of whether cyclists are present, because "it's too hard / cars aren't designed to go at 20mph!"
c) While this may be welcomed by some (current) EAPC riders, most people aren't riding bikes. They're not going to do so if they can have an EAPC that goes 5mph faster, or even "as fast as the cars". Most people aren't riding because - in part - they just don't want to ride with lots of motor traffic whether or not they can keep up.
"Not interested in what others do, I'm alright Jack" is a response, but then don't expect "but stop the nasty driving though" to get far. That requires fewer people driving / more interest in getting places by cycling, which needs more cyclists, which needs...
d) Why would this make any difference to illegal hacks? It certainly won't when nobody is policing (or is interested in policing) such illegal hacks, and in fact totally legitimate high street chains are happy to sell electric transports which aren't legal to use in most places. I doubt folks will trade in their kit mods and Sur-rons and Engwes because now you can get one that ... only goes 20mph.
e) 15.5mph for the assistance cut-out is somewhat arbitary, but in fact I appreciate there are considered reasons behind this e.g. striking a balance between enabling some cyclists / making transport cycling easier but not making cycling in general less pleasant. There are very few totally illegals at higher speeds around my part of Edinburgh (thankfully) but they definitely don't make me feel good - and I may be one of the faster riders*. There is also some debate as to whether the population at large can safely handle 15.5mph on a power-assist bike (e.g. debated in NL but some people feel there is evidence there for the young and older being more at risk from higher power / speed).
f) It puts us out of step with Europe so getting bikes might be an issue (OTOH I think the US might have the higher limit?)
* Not very fast! I just don't seem to get overtaken often.
I feel much safer being able to ride at the same speed as cars in 20 mph zones but recognise mgif still persists and that 20 mph is too much for many. Given that the USA has 20 as it's legal limit for ebikes, it's probably wrong but handy if you own a set of wheels sold both here and there.
Adian Chiles for instance, despite the fact that he rides motorcycle probably capable of five or six times that.
I don't kow much about Ebikes. In a few clicks on Google I found out that Giant are a member of the Bicycle Association and how to easily derestrict Giant Ebikes.
There IS a problem as I see it - and the Bicycle Asociation's members - and therefore the Bicycle Association itself - are part of it.
Enforcement is the key. If folks spent £3,000 on an Ebike knowing it would be seized and crushed if used modified - those bikes wouldn't get modified - simple as that.
If you believe that, I have a pink battleship I'm trying to move on...
If you knew how much work the BA does to highglight and ultimately indirectly help stop the sale of illegal e-bikes and unsafe imports you might not see it that way. Some brands may make bikes that are easily derestricted, idk about Giant. The BA aren't able to enforce the regs, they advise and campaign for the good of the UK bike market in a way that benefits rider/owners as well as the companies involved. I would suggest emailling them about any bikes you have a concern about.
https://bicycleassociation.org.uk/pages/e-bikes
https://bicycleassociation.org.uk/contact-us
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