Amsterdam testing system that can remotely slow e-bikes down
Amsterdam testing system that can remotely slow e-bikes down
Amsterdam is one of six European cities that will soon test a system that can remotely limit the speed of electric bicycles. Amsterdam’s traffic alderman, Melanie van der Horst, tested the system herself last week, NRC reports.
Alrighty,
So your system knows the exact situation and still is slowing down my bike, just at the moment I need to accelerate to avoid being overrun by that large truck heading into me.
How stupid are these folks? We've got rules, when people don't follow those rules, you fine them. Case closed.
No system to prevent a bike speeding, teach people to obey the law.
People in this thread clearly have never been to Amsterdam. We have protected bike lanes, and where there is mixed traffic, bikes have preference and are actually respected by larger vehicles.
On the other hand, there has been an increase in accidents due to electric bikes going too fast mixed with normal bikes and pedestrians.
So your system knows the exact situation and still is slowing down my bike, just at the moment I need to accelerate to avoid being overrun by that large truck heading into me.
After reading the article, it seems like the system is supposed to temporarily jam pedal assist, turning your ebike into a regular bike. And the system would need to be installed in all street legal ebikes for that to happen. Since you're still free to accelerate by pedaling like a normal bike user, that significantly reduces the amount of situations where the pedal assist would actually save you. If you can't avoid collision by pedaling harder, you probably had no chance in the first place.
Considering most of the inner city's roads now have a 30 km/h speed limit for cars, collision safety is probably even less of a concern now.
I do share the concern of others in the comments that such a system would probably be broken on day one, and you have a bunch of script kiddies with flipper zeros running around bricking ebikes.
The only way for that not to happen is to use proper encryption for any wireless signals being used to control this system. Considering the Dutch governmental reputation for IT failures, this is probably not going to go well.
The obsession with scooter and bike speeds that don't have the mass to seriously hurt people at top speed is crazy.
Like you can find videos of people being hit at top speed by scooters/bikes, usually the pedestrian is pretty fine but rightfully annoyed. Every fatal accident I can find is the escooter/ebiker was hit by a car.
Fingers crossed they stop being dumb and just make actual infrastructure for micromobility so they don't have to compete with giant murder machines.
So, implement it in cars... Lethal machines that need to be limited.
The speed limits they listed seem so low given that 90% of bicycles in Amsterdam (or at least, those that are “victims” in traffic accidents) are unpowered. I’m not even a hobbyist cyclist, but on my (unpowered) entry-level hybrid bicycle I rode faster than 25 km/h (or 15 mph) the last time I took it out… and heck, I can run faster than 15 km/h.
The accident stats also don’t back up the idea that e-bikes are a problem demanding regulation, which makes me think that there’s knee-jerk politics at play here rather than this being a clear-headed response to a real problem. I’ll explain how I arrived at that conclusion.
First of all, as an aside, it’s weird that they said “more than half of all traffic victims were on a bicycle,” when the metric here should be the number of traffic collisions caused by cyclists. But supposing that’s actually what they meant:
- if half of all accidents are caused by bicycles, then the other half are caused by cars and other motor vehicles. Since bicycles outnumber cars 4:1 in Amsterdam, that means cars are 4 times as likely to cause accidents as bicycles (startling low compared to how much more dangerous they are in the US). They recently lowered the speed limit of cars to 30 km/h, but I’m not sure if the stats take that into account. Maybe it needs lowered further, or maybe they should only allow cars with the same sort of smart governors installed that they’re testing out for e-bikes?
- One in ten of those cyclists was on an electric bike (meaning 5% of accidents were caused by someone on an e-bike). 57% of bicycles sold in the Netherlands in 2022 were electric, but bikes last a while and they have a ton of them. As of the start of 2023 they had an estimated 5 million e-bikes, and the country has 23 million bicycles total (more than 1 per person). This means that 22% of their bikes are e-bikes, and (assuming that ratio applies to bikes on the road in Amsterdam) then given that only 10% of accidents involving bicycles involved e-bikes, that means that unpowered bicycles are a bit over twice as likely to cause accidents as e-bikes. Honestly, though, the ratio of e-bikes to unpowered bicycles is probably higher - I would expect people are more inclined to ride the new bicycle they just bought rather than one of the ones they’ve had for several years.
Obviously these stats are fairly sloppy, but I worked with what I could find.
Assuming my conclusion is accurate, this still doesn’t mean that e-bikes are less dangerous than bicycles - the accidents they’re in may be worse - but it certainly doesn’t suggest that e-bikes are the problem. I’m aligned with the other commenters here - this isn’t going to address the problem of people riding already illegal e-bikes.
The tech sounds cool and I’d love if it could be applied to cars, too, even if it’s opt-in only.
The usual "too many people are getting hit by cars while on bicycles, obviously it's the bicycles that are the problem"
If ebikes that go over 25kmh are already illegal, why would those ebikes have this speed limiter module installed?
Why are ebikes are not allowed to go fast enough to just ride on the road with cars, making it much safer for pedestrians and for the ebikes?
According to Paul Timmer of the Townmaking Institute, getting the device working on all e-bikes should be pretty straightforward. “There are five manufacturers and suppliers of motors for electric bicycles. They all work with similar systems,”
Also completely false, are they going to make it illegal to buy ebikes that don't come with those 5 drive systems from large corporations, and shut out the small businesses that make ebike motors?
Ha! Do it for cars first
Being a pedestrian in Amsterdam can be pretty bad. Dutch on bikes are insane. No slowing down is allowed. The bike might be rigged like the bus in Speed or whatever. Ready to explode.
People on heavy e-bikes are riding 25km/h over pedestrian crossings with poor visibility.
It is dangerous, and should be treated as such.
Cars in Amsterdam is a much smaller consern than bikes. Really.
Been there. Beautiful city. Terrible biking culture. The Dutch know. They reference it occasionally.
The more complicated question is whether cities actually want to implement the system and can convince e-bike riders to use it, he said.
Convince? So it's volunteer.
This seems ripe for workarounds.
It's not too complicated to fix a motor to your normal bicycle. I wonder how well this will implemented.
That said I'm surprised this is coming from Amsterdam, considering they're both very pro bike. And I also see very little controversy coming from the Netherlands in general (farm laws primarily)
We've got that here. You jam a stick in the spokes, then throw the bike and the rider in the canal. Lots of fun.
They should do it for cars first and see what happens
Hey I used to go to school here, it's the Wibautstraat at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam
If you're speeding up to avoid traffic on a bike, you're doing something wrong in the Netherlands. Thats dangerous behaviour.
-Dutch guy who has cycled for 30 years.
Is this the same system they use to slow down basically everything at AMS? Like seriously, that's the worst, dirtiest major international airport I've ever had the misfortune of having to use.
Overcontroll of citizens free will. A recurrent problem in northem europe. Because the goverment knows your safety and ethics better than yourself. And as some people view it:
Because of that they have the right to force your actions into what works best with society. Because individuals don't matter just collectives. Because enforcing is justified as long as it has an ethic basis, whatever it is.
It sounds dystopian and it is. Societies of the penitence, societes with ideals more religious than real religions. Where suicide rates are high, and society happines also is.
As a conservative it warms my heart to see so many people in this thread responding with indignation to government intrusion.