E-bikes and a 12-year-old's death

[Elefantino]

This is an excellent story in Bicycling by Peter Flax. It raises real questions about e-bike safety and is at the same time respectful of a young girl's death.

Quick take: QRs and mechanical discs are a pretty stupid idea for a 70-pound bike that has a throttle and a 750w motor.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Elefantino

This is an excellent story in Bicycling by Peter Flax. It raises real questions about e-bike safety and is at the same time respectful of a young girl's death.

Quick take: QRs and mechanical discs are a pretty stupid idea for a 70-pound bike that has a throttle and a 750w motor.

It isn't an 'e-bike', but an 'e-scooter'..No different than a ICE scooter, that also doesn't need a license to ride. BUT

These are regulated, not sure why -e-scooters' aren't. Few more of these deaths and they will be.

[Elefantino]

Agreed. We call them "mopeds" because that's what they are. And we don't sell them.

[peanutgallery]

I think we have gone around about this not long ago. The parents share some blame as does Rad Power. Its a tragedy all around

The parents were dumb enough to buy the contraption and Rad was greedy enough to sell it D2C and assume 2 lawyers will figure out how to assemble it, you know...like a bookcase. Service, shoddy parts and lack of accountability are going to turn the ebike market into the lowly hoverboard

[Alistair]

Was there anything about this death that was different because it was an e-bike? Seems like just a freak bike accident that could happen to any kid (or adult).

Even more so on any D2C or big-box store bike built to a low price point, as is the case with RadPower (while not cheap in the absolute sense, they are relative to offerings from the big bike brands).

All that said, there's blame to spread around, but I mostly blame RadPower because cable actuated discs and QRs strikes me as a poor design choice for usability on this sort of bike. As fast and heavy as these things are, they really should have heavy duty hydraulics, more like what you'd find on a trail bike (180-200mm rotors, GAs, and possibly even 4-pot calipers). That drives up the price, but at some point, as a seller/manufacturer, you should be asking if you should meet a price point, not if you can.

[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.

[Blown Reek]

Dived a little more into the law. Nevermind.

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by Blown Reek

Dived a little more into the law. Nevermind.

It's right in the article.

Just to be clear, children under the age of 16 are prohibited by California law from piloting a Class 3 e-bike, which can reach 28 miles per hour, but presently no age restrictions exist for riding Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes like the RadRunner that Eme and Molly were on.

[unterhausen]

Do we know that the QR was a contributing factor? I think the driver just screwed up.

I always thought that TA was invented by lawyers. You can still screw it up, but I think it fails more slowly.

[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.”

[bikinchris]

Originally Posted by Elefantino

Agreed. We call them "mopeds" because that's what they are. And we don't sell them.

EXACTLY. Throttle controlled means it's a moped, not a bicycle.

Also, before the advent of thru axles, good manufacturers had changed the design of the fork dropouts to keep the wheel from coming out under hard braking by changing the angle the axle slid in from.

[Alistair]

Originally Posted by bikinchris

EXACTLY. Throttle controlled means it's a moped, not a bicycle.

Legally speaking, RadPower are Class 2, so despite having a throttle, they're considered e-bikes (and allowed to use bike infrastructure, and don't have limits on user age beyond existing bike regulations) in most of the US.

I'd argue the class system is wrong, but not sure there's much to be done there at this point.

[mstateglfr]

I have seen this topic come up on multiple message boards and havent opined up to now since I didnt actually understand what happened and what went wrong.
This article makes it clear that nobody yet knows what happened and what went wrong.

- All the hot takes are just based on preconceived views and bias.
- That article did not address why RadPower is at fault, and in fact said multiple times that it isnt known what RadPower did wrong.
- I cant imagine my kids driving(not riding) the product shown below while only 11 years old. I further cant imagine them driving a friend around. And thats in the suburbs of Iowa. Those CA hills?...come on now.

- Those mechanical disc brakes sound like trash, based on the comments that the author chose to include in the article. Is that an accurate representation?...no idea, but I bet it is pretty common.

- Why would moving the recommended user age to the first page change anything in this instance? It wouldnt have. The girls still would have crashed. If someone wants to argue that moving the user age to the first page would have kept the 11yo friend from even using the vehicle, then that is on the parents of the friend and not on RadPower.

- It is not the responsibility of the brand to ensure their product is used appropriately. If there is advertising that pushes the product towards tweens when the brand claims it is for adults only, then yes that should change.

- Nothing in that article, nor any other article, shows the bike failed. I dont look forward to the discovery phase of this lawsuit because it is all due to tragedy, but I am certainly interested in hearing what evidence there is that directly ties RadPower to the tragedy.

[verticaldoug]

I see this as a second coming of Ralph Nadar and 'Unsafe at any speed'.

The publication of "Unsafe at Any Speed" led to numerous lawsuits against automobile manufacturers for wrongful death and other claims related to vehicle safety. The book brought attention to the lack of safety features in cars and exposed the dangers posed by various design flaws. This led to an increase in lawsuits filed against manufacturers by individuals who had been involved in accidents or had lost loved ones in car crashes.

It is difficult to quantify all of the lawsuits that stemmed from Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed" as many of them occurred over several decades. However, here are a few notable lawsuits and settlements that were influenced by the book:

General Motors (GM) was sued for damages in 1966 by the family of a woman who was killed in a Chevrolet Corvair crash. This lawsuit was seen as a direct result of Nader's criticism of the car in "Unsafe at Any Speed".

In 1970, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was created in response to growing public concern about vehicle safety, in part due to Nader's book. The NHTSA is responsible for enforcing automotive safety standards and protecting consumers.

In 1972, the NHTSA mandated that all new cars be equipped with seat belts, following years of advocacy by Nader and others. This mandate was seen as a direct result of "Unsafe at Any Speed" and the growing public awareness of vehicle safety.

In the late 1970s, Ford was sued by families of people killed in Pinto crashes, which were alleged to have been caused by a design defect in the fuel system. This lawsuit was seen as a direct result of Nader's criticism of the automobile industry's focus on profit over safety.

It seems to me that if the bike is designed to carry more than one rider, and the weight of the bike + riders can cause the brakes to fail, then there should be a specific warning in the manual. The biggest issue I have with e-Bikes is they allow novice riders to get into situations they normally couldn't.

If the brakes chosen had a manufacturer warning about the weight of bicycle or rider and this was ignore by Rad, game over.

If anyone internally at Rad wrote a email or other memo about concerns of the brakes, then game over. . .

This really needs to happen...

As a side note, maybe a national safety board can also regulate the batteries so we stop burning down apartments in NYC.

And a side side note, a person in my apartment building has the ebike above. I've seen him commute to work on it. Today we happened to meet in the bike garage since I was coming back from an early ride as he was leaving. I commented the bike looked pretty bouncing with the fat tires. He smiled 'yeah really bouncy'....

If you had some speed and hit any kind of dip with a second rider, you are probably going down as the bounce would most likely throw you off balance. Same reason doing a downhill on a fat bike ends in disaster..

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by Alistair

I'd argue the class system is wrong, but not sure there's much to be done there at this point.

I agree with this. Europe is the birthplace of the e-bike, but in most of Europe the motor assist speed limit is 15.5 mph (25 kph), not 20 or 28 mph, and throttle control is not allowed. The US e-bike class system is closer to the older moped definitions.

Originally Posted by mstateglfr

- Why would moving the recommended user age to the first page change anything in this instance? It wouldnt have. The girls still would have crashed. If someone wants to argue that moving the user age to the first page would have kept the 11yo friend from even using the vehicle, then that is on the parents of the friend and not on RadPower.

- It is not the responsibility of the brand to ensure their product is used appropriately. If there is advertising that pushes the product towards tweens when the brand claims it is for adults only, then yes that should change.

Prior to this accident, the RadPower sales literature featured photos of young children (of similar ages as the kids in the law suit) riding RadPower e-bikes by themselves. Looking at the photos, some might assume they were safe for young children. The operating literature did specify that RadPower bikes were only to be used by operators 16 and older, but this only appeared in the fine print.


An article appeared a few days ago on the Bicycle Retailer website about an email RadPower recently sent to its dealers:

SEATTLE (BRAIN) — Rad Power Bikes CEO Phil Molyneux said in an email to customers this week that the company has made mistakes and will learn from them. In the past year, the direct-to-consumer brand had three lawsuits filed against it, including one for a wrongful death of a girl riding as a passenger on one of its bikes.


"As a young company, we recognize that we have made mistakes. Now we are dedicated to learning from them," said Molyneux, who succeeded founder Mike Radenbaugh in November. "The culmination of these efforts represents the 'New Rad,' one that combines the forward-thinking innovation of our early years with the knowledge and resources to make us more customer-focused than ever before.

"This begins with a laser focus on safety and reliability. From the design phase, through component validation methods, to the ever-improving quality assurance activities within our factories, we are doubling down to ensure safer, more enjoyable rides."