TV..Tonight: E-Bikes & Scooters on itv
- Thread starter Wayners
- Start date
I got rid of TVL & haven't watched a terrestrial broadcasts since 2020, because 99% was tosh. YT & netflix for me.
A lot of people watching that program might well assume that the vast majority of eBikes in use are illegal, when its likley that the majority of eBikes you see on the road are legal.
The bit about the dealer de-restricting an eBike in a couple of minutes, a service which of course he does not supply to customers, was amusing, maybe the program should have posted a link to Pedelecs .
The bit about the dealer de-restricting an eBike in a couple of minutes, a service which of course he does not supply to customers, was amusing, maybe the program should have posted a link to Pedelecs .
In fairness the program had to be viewed as what it was, an explanation for the general uninformed public of the situation, and in this respect within the 30 minute format it was a excellent program and a credit to producer and director.
The first half covered the main problem of illegal usage, concentrating on e-scooters, the major problem. The first part of the second half briefly covered the problem of battery fires and charging, clearly showing the problem without wasting valuable broadcast time. A large part of the remainder was an explanation, illustration and demonstration of what was illegal and what was legal , which also illustrated the problem of the diffficulty for the police with pedelecs in identifying by sight which was which.
In other words it covered every important aspect of the subject, all that could be expected for such brief airtime.
There would be no point in trying to get across that most pedelecs are legal since that would involve unprovable statistics** that anyway would float over the head of an average viewing audience.
** In here we are an informed audience, but do any of us know with any certainty how many legal pedelecs there are on the roads, how many illegal e-scooters there are on the roads or how many illegal pedelecs there are on the road?
The answer is no, we haven't a clue. The total of all illegal e-scooters, illegally tweaked pedelecs and completely illegal pseudo e-bikes like the Sur-ron motorcycles might well match the number of legal pedelecs actually in regular use. Add in all the many thousands of the trial e-scooters in towns and cities across the country, which are technically illegal anyway, and the illegal machines are even more likely to be the majority of actual usage.
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Of course we have clue. When you're out and about riding your bike you look at what other people are riding., and when you go down to the town centre, you look in the bike racks to see what's there.. A sensible person should be able to gauge withiin about 20% what the general situation in their area is.
Through housing estates, I see the odd scooter and hardly any ebikes. On the main cycle routes, the electric bikes are mainly legal ones with Bosch, Shimano and Yamaha motors and some other random ones of all types. On the main roads, I see about 30% with big hub-motors and the occasional BBS** going quite fast, but of course all the legal ones will be going the same speed as me, so less chance of seeing the ones going in my direction. In the town park, it's nearly all Halfords ones with the occasional Amazon or teleshopping one and a few others. Parked up in the town centre, it's about 25% illegal ones.
We don't seem to have many deliveroo ebike riders here, though I saw one in the town park that came past at about double my speed on a Haibike with 29" wheels, probably dongled.
Overall, I'd say somewhere around 20%-25% are probably illegal and about 10% definitely. I'd be happy to bet £100 that the actual number lies between 10% and 40%
By illegal, I mean able to do over 18mph with the motor giving power or not able to be pedalled.
You are making a judgment based on your own area, but despite that your upper end of 40% is close to meeting my matching possibility. If I do the same the majority are overwhelmingly illegal.
I live in the relatively affluent southern half of the London Borough of Croydon where the position hasn't changed one iota from when I first rode legal pedelecs around here nearly twenty years ago. That is to say I usually see none, but I do now see many e-scooters, the Deliveroo type pancake motor illegality and the odd unregistered Sur-ron type motorbikes.
Most of my other travel every week now is in the northern half of Surrey, needless to say even more affluent, so I hardly ever see a pedelec of any sort. Plenty of Teslas and other e-cars though, and numerous privately owned e-scooters illegally ridden by their youngsters of all ages on both pavements and roads.
So no, we don't have a clue across the whole country and that we includes you. We can only guess, and that is made even more difficult by the large proportion of pedelecs bought by older people who then use them very little as their S/H extremely low mileages show after years of ownership. As witness also the numerous dead battery problems from those who don't use and neglect to charge for months of non-use than the few we get from those actually using their pedelecs regularly.
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We can ask members of this forum. It actually would be interesting to find out how many of us use legal bikes.
Would you do the honors and open a new poll thread?
Include an address field for the inevitable violent police raids - I'm located on
Ascension Island.
I'll let someone else do that, since it would be of little use due to only a tiny proportion of members ever even viewing. Pedelecs admin stopped posting how many members there are long ago, but it will definitely be well over 20,000 and only a handful join and visit.
There's several times that number of pedelecs sold every year in the UK, so any indication we got from a poll wouldn't reflect the reality.
The polls we held in the early couple of years of the forum when most members popped in regularly were the most useful. One of them showed that 38% of members (including me) owned an Ezee Torq mark one, all illegally capable of reaching 22 mph assisted and with full acting throttle , illegal under the type approval regulations at the time.
Another of these early polls showed us that 80% of the members were in the second half of life, i.e. over forty years old. Combine the two polls and it could be seen we had more than our fair share of ageing hooligan speed freaks!
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99% of what I see are apparently legal bikes ( I'm sure some will be dongled, my last bike was derestricted but to be honest the terrain doesn't justify it).
In my immediate area you are either going up or down at 10%+ most of the time and if you aren't climbing you can't really afford to be wasting battery going fast as you will need it all for climbing at some point. I much prefer my Volts to be as high as possible when going up!
The actual power allowed here (Austria) is 600W but I never see bikes with anything other than Bosch, Yamaha, Shimano etc 250W mid drives up here in the mountains. If I venture down into the Inn valley on my non powered bike there is the occasional hub drive Dutch type bike but even this type of bike is increasingly mid drive and none of them have large direct drive hubs.
There's no doubt that the EU mainland countries are far more law abiding than the UK where pedelec law is concerned. There's none of the talk about throttles being necessary/vital for example, as your mention of the makes you see most commonly shows.
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I get mixed input & of course only a snapshot. One middle aged lorry driver assumed as long as you have only insurance you could ride any speed ebike, he never even thought about type approved etc. Another retiree was explaining that on my perfectly legal ebike I need insurance. I would try to correct these people but, I feel it's a topic that is so misunderstood it is best avoided. Most people take ten minutes of looking at my bike to point at the battery and motor and ask "what is that for?". I guess ignorance is bliss.
Based on what I read on this forum I would say many do really need an insurance. From personal injury, liability, legal aid to theft.
Last time I tried to add my bikes to home insurance, but gave up because they wanted me to list every item separately and I was just to lazy. Perhaps next time I won't give up so easily.
That you 'need' insurance for this or that is missrepresentation that even officialdom will use to get a particular view across in the 'public interest'.
Its easy to pass an opinion that you 'need' insurance, but that is very different to saying it is a legal requirement to have it.
I rang for me and asked for incompetence insurance, they hung up...
Some years ago, I enrolled my son, then about 12 on a local council cycling proficiency course.
The application form stated that the cycle must have reflectors and a bell fitted as this was a 'legal requirement'. Not the case of course, at the time they needed to be fitted on a cycle when sold but it was not a legal requirement to keep them fitted. I complained to the council but was told quite openly that the false claim was done 'in the public interest'.
I suggested that they just make the fitting of reflectors and and a bell part of the conditions of the course and drop the lie about the 'legal requirement' but no joy.
The application form stated that the cycle must have reflectors and a bell fitted as this was a 'legal requirement'. Not the case of course, at the time they needed to be fitted on a cycle when sold but it was not a legal requirement to keep them fitted. I complained to the council but was told quite openly that the false claim was done 'in the public interest'.
I suggested that they just make the fitting of reflectors and and a bell part of the conditions of the course and drop the lie about the 'legal requirement' but no joy.
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