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A Real Risk
According to Dirk Zedler, bicycle and e-bike expert witness and Managing Director of the Zedler-Institut for Bicycle Technology and Safety, this concern is far from exaggerated. In his view, the escalating performance race is an existential issue: “The current arms race is one of the major threats to the very existence of the entire European cycling industry,” he explains.
He points out that bicycle status is merely an exemption under the law – together with all the associated privileges, from access to cycle paths to riding on forest trails. “If bicycle status is lost due to tuning and the pursuit of ever-higher performance, type approval (vehicle homologation), mandatory helmet use, and compulsory insurance will follow,” he warns.
For him, the decisive factor in classification is vehicle mass: in every law of physics – from momentum in a collision to the gravitational force acting on a slope – mass plays a fundamental role. Vehicles weighing between 400 and 800 kilograms on cycling infrastructure would undermine precisely the “low inherent operating risk” that forms the legal basis for the bicycle’s special status.
By contrast, Zedler believes it is entirely possible to quantify the level of power appropriate for human riders, referring to the exercise stress test (cardiac stress test) performed by physicians: an average man weighing just over 85 kilograms can typically sustain around 250 watts during such a test, while professional cyclists can maintain more than 400 watts for over half an hour, and winners reach around 500 watts – despite significantly lower body weight. “In my opinion, these values should serve as the benchmark for a conventional EPAC; otherwise, you enter the realm of motor vehicles,” he explains. He considers it entirely realistic that policymakers could eventually reconsider the vehicle’s legal status, noting that it is reviewed by the EU every few years. Initial signs are already emerging – for example, mandatory helmet requirements for certain electric vehicle categories in the Netherlands. He concludes with a historical warning: “Those of us who are older remember how the moped and the companies associated with it disappeared. The European bicycle industry is now facing the very same fate.”
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Author: Werner Müller-Schell
Read the full article online at: www.sazbike.de
