The safety organisation VeiligheidNL estimates that 5,000 fatbike riders are treated in A&E [ i.e Accident & Emergency] departments each year, on the basis of a recent sample of hospitals. “And we also see that especially these young people aged from 12 to 15 have the most accidents,” said the spokesperson Tom de Beus.
Now Amsterdam’s head of transport, Melanie van der Horst, has said “unorthodox measures” are needed and has announced that she will ban these heavy electric bikes from city parks, starting in the Vondelpark. Like the city of Enschede, which is also drawing up a city centre ban, she is acting on a stream of requests “begging me to ban the fatbikes”.
Am I understanding this correctly, that they want to ban bicycles based on the width of their tires?
“fatbike” means something different in The Netherlands than it means in North America.
In North America, fat bikes are mountain bikes with 4 inch wide or wider tires, generally designed for use on snow and sand. E.g.: https://surlybikes.com/products/wednesday-og-algae
In The Netherlands, fatbikes are throttle-controlled e-bikes with 4-5" wide tires with a smaller diameter than typical bikes. They come with pedals, but the gearing and seat position makes the pedals essentially useless; many people remove them. They do not handle well. They do not stop well. They are popular because they are cheap. E.g.: https://www.fatbikeskopen.nl/products/qm-wheels-v20-pro-mini-zwart
So they’re banning electric bicycles based on tire width? That doesn’t really make any more sense to me. Also weird that throttle controlled e-bikes are allowed, but fat tires aren’t. (Especially considering that EU regulation 168/2013 implies that pedal assistance is mandatory.)
Electric bicycles are popular and encouraged. Fatbikes however, have often caused much more accidents on account of their popularity among the youth for being;
They’re also imho ugly, but that aside. Were they made safer, I would probably mandate they can only drive on new lanes for speed pedelecs & fatbikes, and require helmets. It’ll help motorbikes and scooters become less common.
Are you like making up what the rules they’re trying write are by just the word “fatbike”?? It’s obvious the problem is not the width of the tire, so they will not be regulating that.
This is from the article that the Guardian links to as a source. https://www.amsterdam.nl/bestuur-organisatie/college/wethouder/melanie-horst/persberichten-nieuws-melanie-horst/amsterdam-fatbikes-weren-drukke-gebieden/
Well I’ll be damned.
Fatbikes in the Netherlands are a group of e-bike brands that purposefully make it extremely easy to remove their government required speed regulator, and are particularly popular among certain demographics of young immigrant men to use as basically electric motorcycles (since they can be controlled with a thumb-throttle instead of pedaling).
Because there’s a mixture of these bikes causing real problems on the roads, and them being popular young brown dudes, a lot of different forces in the Netherlands are pretty upset about them and want them banned.
While my observations have been that men of color between 20 and 30 seem to disproportionately ride these bikes, a vast majority of people on these bikes are white teens.