Firstly, that's a Guardian article. You can take it with a pinch of salt. If you read it carefully, you'll see that it's full of errors, so the writer hasn't much idea of what they're writing about and probably got his facts mixed up or misunderstood what he was told.
Secondly, the main contention is that 65 ebikers died in a year, most of them being over the age of 65. Do you think it was them darting about out of control on speed pedelecs? If you do, you must be a Guardian reader.
It's flat in Holland, so the difference in speed between electric and non electric bikes isn't going to be a lot (excluding S-pedelecs), so whoever came up with this idea is either not thinking straight or has a crooked deal going down somewhere.
How are they going to add such a device to old Wispers and their equivalents, and even the present generation of Bosch and Shimano bikes? There are millions of ebikes used in Holland. Are the owners of these bikes going to be prevented from using them until they get some device fitted? I don't think so, even if it was possible in the present locked Bosch system.
Let's say they make a rule that all new bikes must be fitted with the device. Won't that kill the market for new bike sales and boost the market for repairing current ones? Who will buy an ebike, that has it's power suddenly cut when riding in a city, not city dwellers, that's for sure?
In summary, it's just some pie in the sky academic exercise that the Guardian has misrepresented into a typical scare story for clicks and advertising revenue.
