[thwart]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

It is indeed a tragedy, and of course the bike was a contributing factor, but I dont know much this is really an ebike issue.

growing up as a kid, we rode bmx bikes. growing up as a kid in a family with not a lot of disposable income and as a born tinkerer, my friends and I all had cobbled together bmx lower end bikes with those awful, awful center pivot brakes that were near useless. add some plastic mag rims and stopping was not something that happened fast. foot over the rear tire was the leading method to stop in a hurry.

We'd push our bikes up the biggest hills we could find and zoom down. No helmets. Our parents had no idea where we were. A lot of us got hurt, nothing ever serious.

This strikes me as kind of the same. Kids out in the outdoors having fun, and something that could have just as easily ended with scraped elbows and maybe a broken wrist turned tragic.

It sucks that it happened, and no one ever wants to see it happen, but I dont know that a legal blame game needs to be undertaken. There will always be kids goofing around, and there will always be crappy bikes with crappy brakes, just as there always have been.

I don’t know… I read the story and didn’t reach the same conclusion.

Riding cobbled together bmx bikes down a muddy hill is different than riding a stock e-bike down a local street. Especially a stock e-bike that so many people (including experienced cyclists) have had braking problems with.

In an environment where the CPSC has not been able to protect the average consumer, unfortunately it may be that lawsuits are be the best reasonable alternative to push the market in the right direction.

Quoted from the article:

Keith Bontrager puts it tersely. “The cheapest bikes aren’t always the cheapest in the long run.”

But to be clear, Rad Power and other reputable DTC brands have broken zero rules spec’ing bikes with inexpensive components. Likewise, they have not broken any existing laws governing the required ages to ride an e-bike; they simply tell consumers to follow federal, state, or municipal guidance on that matter. “It would take an act of Congress to change the regulations,” Pizzi says. “Or a lot of deaths to move the CPSC.”

Hon feels that more needs to be done—by either the government or the brands themselves. “In the absence of government standards, it’s up to the brands who are building these bikes to make them safe,” he says. But economic incentives do not always align, and “[t]his is what government is there for,” he says. “Let’s make some rules about minimum quality standards that the U.S. consumer can accept. And for safety as well. Because the consumer, especially with a new product, doesn’t understand the potential risks.”

At Tern, all e-bikes under development are tested rigorously by a third-party laboratory to meet or exceed stricter European Union standards for the bike’s battery system and carrying capacity—even if the bike is destined for U.S. consumers. “Regulation and rules and certification standards make a difference,” says Hon. “Imagine if you didn’t have to certify a car and you could just go over to China and find some factory with open molds, and you just buy the cheapest car components and just come over and sell it online without needing to worry about service. People would distrust the quality of cars.”