THERE can’t be many of us who haven’t had a close shave with an e-bike, be it on a road, pavement or footpath.
They’re big, they’re heavy and they come at you silently, often at alarming speed.
Invariably, it’ll be a food courier bearing special cargo — someone’s dinner — in a big box on the back.
You look at these machines and think, ‘These things can’t be legal, can they?’.”
Well, it turns out that some are legal, many aren’t, and plenty of people don’t know which is which.
Those who do know the rules often ignore them because no one seems to have much of a clue as to how to go about enforcing those rules anyway.
They’re not all bad.
I’d never ridden one before I made a film about them for the BBC’s Panorama programme.
Now I’ve done so, I can absolutely see why people like them.
In London, you can simply rent yourself an e-bike — like a Lime bike, for example — and hit the road.
It’s like cycling, but easier.
Start pedalling and the motor joins in to help you along.
What’s not to like?
These kind of e-bikes are perfectly legal and, for many people, have improved city living no end.
Yes, ridden irresponsibly they can be dangerous — ask Ian Hislop, who had a scrape with an e-bike before Christmas — but we have to believe the pros outweigh the cons.
And anyway, they’re here to stay.
The real problems come with some of the bigger e-bikes, widely available online and in shops.
On a legal e-bike, to get the motor working you need to be pedalling.
There is no separate throttle or switch to get you to full speed.
So if you stop pedalling, the bike slows down.
But the bigger bikes invariably come with throttles, which is illegal.
The retailers often claim they’re in the clear if the throttle is deactivated when you buy it.
However, if it’s a simple matter to get the throttle working once you’ve made the purchase — as it usually is — that, too, is illegal.
Whatever.
Who’s checking anyway?
So off you go.
No need to do much pedalling, your throttle will get the motor doing more of the work.
Effectively, you’ve got yourself a moped.
Except, if you do ride a moped, it needs a registration plate.
And you need to be insured.
With an e-bike, you need nothing of the sort.
It gets worse.
On a legal e-bike, the motor has to cut out when you reach 15.5mph.
And the motor itself must have a maximum output of 250 watts.
Trust me, if you want to buy an e-bike which has a motor much more powerful than that, and certainly doesn’t cut out at 15.5mph, then it’ll take you five minutes max to find one online.
And, incredibly, the Government will potentially help you buy one of these illegal e-bikes via a cycle to work scheme.
This is where you can have the price of a bike deducted from your payslip before you’ve been taxed on that income.
It’s been running for more than 20 years.
The Government insists illegal bikes aren’t eligible for the schemes, but many of the retailers we looked at don’t seem to have got the message.
For the police, e-bikes have become a real challenge.
Almost a thousand illegal e-bikes were seized in the first eight months of 2024.
City of London police took 24 illegal e-bikes off the road in November alone.
Focusing their minds is the fact, in that area, an e-bike is thought to be used in a criminal act every three days.
Robberies, drug dealing, you name it.
On e-bikes, criminals get away quicker — making it that much harder for the police to catch up with them.
And the problem goes beyond the illegal e-bikes you can buy so easily.
There are also the kits you can get to motorise your pushbike or soup up your e-bike.
Some of these kits are legal.
Those that aren’t can be really dangerous.
They can catch fire, often in dramatic fashion, and they can get the rustiest of old bikes going at quite absurd speeds.
In making the Panorama film, I rode my motorbike alongside a rattling old cargo bike with seats on the back for — God forbid — children.
Strapped to the bike with gaffer tape was some kind of motor.
I was on a 1300cc Yamaha and felt I could barely keep up.
This old crate was doing just short of 30mph in no time. And its brakes were rubbish. Lethal.
There are no figures available for accidents, injuries or fatalities specifically involving e-bikes, legal or illegal.
The stats don’t distinguish between incidents involving e-bikes and normal bikes.
But whatever the numbers are, they are only going to go one way unless we get a grip on what’s allowed, what isn’t, and what we’re going to do about enforcing the rules.
Until then, with more e-bikes out there all the time, chaos could be coming our way.
