Compulsory motor insurance for Ebikes?

[Canardly]

Have you seen this?

https://www.bikebiz.com/news/vnuked

[Nick H.]

If that's how they see  e-bikes they might as well classify a cyclist as an engine and all bicycles as motor vehicles.

[Duckfoot1606]

Curiously enough t’other day I saw an e bike chasing a moped, the rider of the latter with helmet and (I assume) insurance etc. The former had no helmet and I would guess no insurance, both riding at what appeared to be similar speeds, got me thinking.......... 🤔🤔

A

[Phil W]

Curiously enough t’other day I saw an e bike chasing a moped, the rider of the latter with helmet and (I assume) insurance etc. The former had no helmet and I would guess no insurance, both riding at what appeared to be similar speeds, got me thinking.......... 🤔🤔

A

You don't see many mopeds these days, both e bikes and mopeds have pedals, but the latter a petrol engine and higher power output.

[Duckfoot1606]

Curiously enough t’other day I saw an e bike chasing a moped, the rider of the latter with helmet and (I assume) insurance etc. The former had no helmet and I would guess no insurance, both riding at what appeared to be similar speeds, got me thinking.......... 🤔🤔

A

You don't see many mopeds these days, both e bikes and mopeds have pedals, but the latter a petrol engine and higher power output.

When I say moped I mean of course a scooter, one of those 30mph speed restricted jobbies the 16 year olds buzz around on these days. Showing my age I guess 😀😀.

I don’t know how long the e bike could sustain that kind of pace, but I did get me thinking, of course bearing in mind most of us are capable of 30mph at some point (gravity assisted in my case 😂😂)

[Cunobelin]

The problem at the moment is also the solution.

A road legal e-bike is a different machine from the many illegal e-bikes on teh road that already require insurance, VED and a license.

The legislation is already there and applies for those bikes that are over 250W or speeds greater than 15.5 mph

The article is really a "puff piece" with lots of conjecture and speculation, with little fact.

Anyone else get as far as the compulsory helmets?

The cost of motor-vehicle insurance and the possibility of being made to wear helmets and sport number plates would be “a huge burden for an emerging market,” warned Mayne, “and we know that in most countries cycling is not mainstream enough for consumers to ignore the barriers. It removes one of the most important competitive advantages pedelecs have over scooters and mopeds, their freedom and flexibility.”

[quixoticgeek]

E bike is quite a broad term. It can mean a pedal assist bike upto 250w, which cuts out at 25kph. Or it can mean something more powerful, that can do 50+, without a need to pedal.

Over here we have two types of dinosaur powered bikes, those limited to 50kph, where you have a blue number plate, no helmet, and are allowed in the cycle lanes, and anything capable of more speed, where you need a license and a helmet. There are moves in Amsterdam to ban the former from the bike lanes, which is a welcome move, they are a noisy menace. Especially as many of them have been derestricted, the local plod do frequent cracking downs on such machines. I wish brommer riders would stop trying to play chicken with me, they always lose... but I digress.

E bikes that are capable of speeds more than 25kph, or do not require the pedals to be turning, sure, treating them like their dinosaur burning equivalents, but I very much doubt that trying to enforce insurance requirements on pedal assist bikes will ever work. Apart from anything else, the benefits of pedal assist bikes to the health of the nation far out way any advantages of the insurance would give.

Pedal assist e bikes allow an older generation that had had to stop cycling due to age, to continue to do so, this is good for their health. It should be encouraged.

And I say this as the person who was over taken recently on the Cauberg by oma and opa on pedal assist bikes.

J

[T42]

Allowing cyclists enfeebled by age and illness to go on cycling is great. Being tanked into at 25 kph by an out-of-control 23-kilo bike ridden by an inexperienced 120-kilo fat bastard is not.  Even more so an uninsured 120-kilo etc.

Insurance please.

[quixoticgeek]

Allowing cyclists enfeebled by age and illness to go on cycling is great. Being tanked into at 25 kph by an out-of-control 23-kilo bike ridden by an inexperienced 120-kilo fat bastard is not.  Even more so an uninsured 120-kilo etc.

Insurance please.

Being tanked into by a 60kg lycra clad bag of muscle, at 50kph is sub optimal, insurance please...

Consider also that some pedal assist e bikes are weigh less than an all steel city bike. Some unassisted heavily laden bikes weigh more than most pedal assist bikes...

See how the argument follows?

If you start mandating it for one, you're going to need it for everyone as the argument follows for all. Given how catastrophic it would be for the nation and for cycling to require insurance of everyone, the logical options of all, or noone, mean that noone has to be the choice.

J

[Kim]

Ignoring the fact that many of them will already be insured for third-party injury/damage (I reckon ebikes are more likely to be insured against theft than pedal cycles, so third party insurance is likely to come along with that)...

I agree that having the pedalec class with the same requirements as an unpowered pedal cycle is the way to go. 

Anecdatally their riders do have more accidents than unpowered cyclists, but that's because as a group they tend to have less cycling experience (because many haven't been able to cycle before they had a motor^[1]).  Critically, it's overwhelmingly the riders themselves that are injured, and usually at low speed where the motor itself isn't really a factor; most ebike accidents involve mounting and dismounting or wobbling at low speed.  And the health and mobility benefits greatly outweigh those risks.

Insurance isn't the solution, free-at-point-of-use healthcare is.

On the other hand, I'm all for electric motorcycles.  Human-scale faster motorised transport without the noxious emissions and wanky exhaust noises, what's not to like?  But treat them as motorcycles.


_{[1] Would be interesting to see if this effect diminishes over time, or is maintained by the higher proportion of elderly / disabled riders.}

[CAMRAMan]

I enquired about theft insurance for my ebike and it was £184. To insure a 600cc motorbike, fully comp. was £84! That's without any NCB. Crazy, but there aren't enough players in the market at the moment.

[Kim]

I enquired about theft insurance for my ebike and it was £184. To insure a 600cc motorbike, fully comp. was £84! That's without any NCB. Crazy, but there aren't enough players in the market at the moment.

Sanest approach seems to be to find home contents insurance that covers them.  This appears to be particularly complicated if you also happen to need contents insurance that it's overly fussy about proximity to a canal.

[CAMRAMan]

Most providers don't cover ebikes...

[Kim]

Most providers don't cover ebikes...

Indeed not (well, some just exclude bikes over an arbitrary value).  That's why you have to find one.

[T42]

Allowing cyclists enfeebled by age and illness to go on cycling is great. Being tanked into at 25 kph by an out-of-control 23-kilo bike ridden by an inexperienced 120-kilo fat bastard is not.  Even more so an uninsured 120-kilo etc.

Insurance please.

Being tanked into by a 60kg lycra clad bag of muscle, at 50kph is sub optimal, insurance please...

Almost every lycra-clad bag of muscle over here belongs to the FFC, FFCT, UFOLEP or other sporting federation and is automatically insured.  Can't say the same about MTB riders but they're weird.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I was talking to someone I know about their new-to-them ebike yesterday. She's an experienced utility cyclist but has been having ITB problems lately and decided to try an ebike; you can hire them for a short time from the council here. She's not terribly impressed by a couple of things safety-wise, including the throttle control (it's an old bike) which apparently has the potential to set the bike moving when you're not even on it if you accidentally press the switch (this surprised me), and more immediately the weight of the battery makes low-speed handling wobbly.

How does that anecdote affect insurance? Don't know! She doesn't seem to present any more of a danger to others on the ebike than on her pure pedal bike; pretty minimal either way. There are all sorts of ways in which we can all cause injury to others while eg just walking around, these risks are so small they're not worth insuring. If you're going to insist on compulsory insurance for them all it probably makes sense to do it at birth!

[Kim]

She's not terribly impressed by a couple of things safety-wise, including the throttle control (it's an old bike) which apparently has the potential to set the bike moving when you're not even on it if you accidentally press the switch (this surprised me), and more immediately the weight of the battery makes low-speed handling wobbly.

I think this is the logic behind the requirement that the pedals be turning for the motor to operate[1] in the harmonised regulations.  It's particularly hazardous^[2] with a full-length twist grip throttle, which can be set off by leaning the bike against a wall on that side.

The downside is that you can't ride it home without pedalling when your chronic lower limb condition flares up.  Perhaps an arse-on-saddle sensor would be reasonable as an alternative to crank rotation/torque?



_{[1] I think they're allowed to operate at sub-walking-speed on hand control alone, making 'walk assist' modes (for wheeling the bike uphill) permissible.
[2] For small values of hazardous, as you'd expect for bikes falling over.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

The downside is that you can't ride it home without pedalling when your chronic lower limb condition flares up.  Perhaps an arse-on-saddle sensor would be reasonable as an alternative to crank rotation/torque?

Thus tying you into one particular saddle or seatpost!

[Kim]

The downside is that you can't ride it home without pedalling when your chronic lower limb condition flares up.  Perhaps an arse-on-saddle sensor would be reasonable as an alternative to crank rotation/torque?

Thus tying you into one particular saddle or seatpost!

I can think of ways of doing it that might avoid that, but it's not going to happen, so it doesn't really matter.

[quixoticgeek]

Almost every lycra-clad bag of muscle over here belongs to the FFC, FFCT, UFOLEP or other sporting federation and is automatically insured.  Can't say the same about MTB riders but they're weird.

Over here very few are insured no matter what they ride.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

In Taiwan they're considering number plates. Well, maybe.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3461230
The bike in the photo looks more like an electric moped, with pedals just for show or to satisfy some regulations rather than for propulsion, rather than what we generally think of as an ebike. But there are such bikes here too, of course; there's a bloke two streets away who's got a pretty pink one! (No numberplate, no pedalling, no idea if he has insurance.)