E-bikes Dangers

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
At Least 38 Injured in High-Rise Fire in Manhattan
Firefighters used ropes to make a daring rescue of a woman from a 20th floor apartment, officials said.

Nearly 40 people were injured in a high-rise apartment fire in Midtown Manhattan, officials said. Videos shared by residents of the building show smoke billowing from the windows.CreditCredit...April Rubin
By April Rubin and Anne Barnard
Nov. 5, 2022Updated 3:46 p.m. ET
Firefighters, using ropes and dangling off a high-rise in Midtown Manhattan, rescued a woman who was trapped in a fire that injured at least 38 people on Saturday, officials said.
The fire at 429 East 52nd Street was caused by a lithium-ion battery in an electric bicycle, the authorities said. The unit where the fire started had at least five e-bikes, Chief Fire Marshal Daniel E. Flynn said.
Officials said they believe that a resident of the apartment repaired bikes and were investigating whether unauthorized business activity had taken place.
About 200 fires in New York City this year have been caused by lithium-ion batteries, resulting in six deaths, he said.

These batteries are found in micro-mobility transportation devices such as electric bikes, scooters and hoverboards. The fires caused by the batteries are typically intense, and can quickly gain momentum with any combustible objects around them, officials said.
A sign outside the apartment complex read, “No pedal or e-bikes allowed beyond this point.” Fire officials said any device that used the powerful lithium-ion batteries could cause a risk, not only those in bicycles.
In a dramatic moment caught on video and posted on social media, firefighters rescued a woman from a 20th-floor apartment where officials said the fire started. Firefighters pulled the woman through a shattered window on a floor below. One other person was rescued by rope from the unit.
A deputy assistant chief, Frank Leeb, described the use of a rope rescue as “a last resort in the F.D.N.Y.”

Of those hurt, two were in critical condition, five were in serious condition and the rest had minor injuries, fire officials said.

They said they were still compiling information about the people injured, as well as the number of people who were displaced, who will receive help from the Red Cross.
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Officials said lingering questions around whether there had been building safety issues — whether there was or should have been a fire alarm; whether doors were left open, feeding the fire; whether fire protection and planning at the building were adequate — would be part of their investigation.
Residents described a scene of confusion and uncertainty about what had happened.
Riley Jankowski, 23, said she smelled smoke and initially thought her apartment complex had turned the heat on.

It wasn’t until she heard fire trucks, she said, that she opened her window blinds, saw smoke and realized the threat.
At about 10:30 a.m., she ran out of her apartment on the sixth floor and banged on her neighbors’ doors, yelling, “Fire!”
“I run down the stairs, and as I’m running out on the courtyard, the window bursts and glass flies around as I’m on the phone with my mom screaming for my life,” she said.
Allie Gold and Grant Rosenberg, both 26, left their 10th-floor apartment when they smelled smoke and saw it billowing out of a window.

“The alarm didn’t go off, but it seemed like everyone got the memo and started going out,” Mr. Rosenberg said.
Along with Samantha Wilker, 30, a friend who was visiting, and their dog, Norman, they went down the stairs as firefighters were coming in. Upon exiting the building, the three saw windows pop above them.
Residents who lived above the 20th floor, where the fire was, evacuated to the roof. The New York Police Department dispatched a helicopter, but no rescues were conducted with it.
Other residents fled to the street via stairs or elevator, but the fire officials said they may have been safer remaining in their units with doors closed because the structure of the building is not combustible.
The fire comes nearly a year after a conflagration in the Bronx killed 17 people after open apartment and stairwell doors allowed smoke to spread.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Fires from exploding e-bike batteries multiply in NYC — sometimes fatally​

Four times a week on average, an e-bike or e-scooter battery catches fire in New York City.
Sometimes, it does so on the street, but more often, it happens when the owner is recharging the lithium ion battery. A mismatched charger won't always turn off automatically when the battery's fully charged, and keeps heating up. Or, the highly flammable electrolyte inside the battery's cells leaks out of its casing and ignites, setting off a chain reaction.
"These bikes when they fail, they fail like a blowtorch," said Dan Flynn, the chief fire marshal at the New York Fire Department. "We've seen incidents where people have described them as explosive — incidents where they actually have so much power, they're actually blowing walls down in between rooms and apartments."


A fire in Brooklyn in April was traced to a faulty e-bike or e-scooter battery that ignited and gutted two houses.
And these fires are getting more frequent.
As of Friday, the FDNY investigated 174 battery fires, putting 2022 on track to double the number of fires that occurred last year (104) and quadruple the number from 2020 (44). So far this year, six people have died in e-bike-related fires and 93 people were injured, up from four deaths and 79 injuries last year.
In early August, a 27-year-old Venezuelan immigrant, identified as Rafael Elias Lopez-Centeno, died after his lithium ion battery caught fire and ripped through the Bronx apartment where he was staying. Carmen Tiburcio, a neighbor, said Lopez's aunt told her he had tried to escape through the front door, but the bike was in the way. Instead, he took refuge in the bathroom, where he tried to fill up the bathtub with water to protect himself from the flames. But the smoke got to him, she said.

"He didn't make it," Tiburcio said. "His lungs were very bad."

Another danger to delivery work​

Many, if not most, of the fires in New York involve e-bike batteries owned by restaurant delivery workers, who work long shifts, traveling dozens of miles a day.
"The bikes tend to get beat up, subjected to the elements," Flynn said. "They're not really made for our streets."
The longer the batteries are used, the more time it takes to fully recharge them, and it can take up to 8 hours. That in turn makes it harder for owners to keep on eye on their batteries the whole time they are plugged in, which is key for safety.

E-bike batteries are made up of numerous "cells," each a bit larger than a AA battery. If they are damaged and leak fluid, they can easily combust.
FDNY
In addition, new batteries are costly, and the temptation to opt for a less-expensive refurbished battery for much less money is great — especially for couriers who make an average of $12.21 an hour after expenses, according to a survey by Los Deliveristas Union, an advocacy and membership organization.
Several e-bike owners interviewed by NPR in New York City said they were aware of the risks batteries posed, and took measures to reduce them.
"A lot of guys have four, five, six bikes in their apartment and they swap out chargers for different bikes when it doesn't belong to that bike," said Rafael Cardanales, who lives on the Lower East Side. "You can't just use any charger, you know."

Musfiqur Rahman said that when he first got into the delivery business, he bought two new Arrow brand batteries — for $550 each. He did it specifically to avoid fires.
"As far as I know, this brand never get involved in this kind of incident," the 27-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant said.
The FDNY says most batteries are so destroyed by fire when they inspect them that they can make no conclusions about which brand is safer than another.

The FDNY has begun posting videos on social media warning about the dangers of recharging lithium ion batteries.

Living in close quarters​

E-bike related fires have occurred elsewhere, such as London, San Francisco, Michigan and South Florida. But nowhere does concern for them appear to be as high as in New York, perhaps because of the prevalence of apartment living — and also the prevalence of ordering take-out.
While restaurants sometimes store bikes overnight for employees, fewer people are now working for particular restaurants and many more for themselves, using apps like Door Dash or Uber Eats to connect with customers. And these couriers often don't have any other place to store and recharge their e-bikes except in their apartments.
That, in turn, creates a fire hazard not just for the workers, but also for their neighbors. This summer, the New York City Housing Authority proposed banning e-bikes and batteries from its 2,600 buildings. But the proposal created an uproar, and officials have not gone through with it.

An estimated 65,000 food couriers work in New York City. The vast majority use e-bikes or e-scooters to get around.
Matthew Schuerman/NPR
City councilmembers have proposed their own solutions. One bill, for instance, would ban the sale of used batteries within city limits. Another would require all batteries to be sold to be approved by a national testing service, such as Underwriters Laboratories. Mayor Eric Adams recently announced he would direct $1 million to create hubs for delivery workers with charging stations and other amenities — though they would likely be used during the day and not provide overnight charging.
Councilmember Gale Brewer, who sponsored the legislation that would outlaw the sale of used batteries, says she recognizes that new batteries could be prohibitively expensive to delivery workers.
"They do, you know, God's work, so to speak, because New Yorkers like to have food delivered," she said. "So now the question is how do they get the new batteries that are not going to cause fires?"
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Property managers consider outlawing e-bikes after Midtown fire

London Terrace Towers co-op to vote on ban next week amid safety concerns over batteries​

Multifamily buildings are reconsidering the future of e-bikes in their properties after rechargeable batteries were blamed for a fire that injured 38 last month at a Turtle Bay apartment complex.
The board of the London Terrace Towers, a large co-op in West Chelsea, will vote next week on whether to ban e-bikes, The City reported.
The co-op board was advised to ban e-bikes by an executive from Douglas Elliman, which manages the building. A ban could serve as a precedent for other buildings in response to the nearly 200 fires citywide this year that the FDNY says were started by lithium-ion batteries that power e-bikes. Elliman did not confirm whether it would be advising any of its other buildings to make similar decisions. The company manages 380 buildings across the five boroughs, according to The City.

Glenwood Properties, which manages 24 luxury properties in Manhattan, banned e-bikes immediately after the Rivercourt fire last month on East 52nd Street. Fordham University and Columbia University both have bans in place as well.
Prior to last month’s fire, the New York City Housing Authority proposed banning e-bikes in its properties after 31 fires in the past two years linked to the vehicle, including one that killed a young girl. NYCHA hasn’t officially moved to enact a ban, though.
Marshals are also investigating whether e-bikes were related to the massive fire at an NYPD warehouse in Red Hook this week.

The FDNY and REBNY have not taken official positions on the future of e-bikes in apartment buildings.
While the bikes are being targeted, it’s the batteries that appear to be causing the issue. Certain batteries are recognized to be safer, but it’s nearly impossible for building managers to supervise proper storage and maintenance. Enforcing a ban on e-bikes may also prove a challenge, especially for properties that don’t have anyone monitoring entrances and exits.
While this doesn’t appear to be a City Council issue yet, the governing body is making its own moves to protect residents following the deadly fire in the Bronx in January. The council recently pushed for a crackdown on building violations, which the industry claims would hurt cash-strapped and over-regulated landlords.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

The High Cost of Cheap E-Bikes​

Electric bicycles are catching on—and their lithium-ion batteries are catching fire. Why is so little being done about it?​

Fires and overheating accidents attributed to lithium-ion batteries killed 19 people in the United States in 2022, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In New York City alone, six people died in these uniquely fast-burning infernos. Experts say poorly made batteries, like those often found on cheaper e-bike models, are the primary culprit. So why is it still so easy to purchase them? Does a typical bike owner know how to safely charge and maintain a bike battery? And are lower-paid workers, such as delivery people, essentially being forced to purchase unsafe bikes just to be able to do their jobs? On episode 59 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with writers Greg Smith, Stephanie Clifford, and Ross Barkan about the New York fires and the populations most at risk, the regulatory challenges of reining in the e-bike industry, and the unintended consequences of our on-demand culture.

CBS New York news clip: New information on a deadly fire in the East Village that left two teenagers clinging to a pole, trying to escape the flames. Investigators now believe e-bike batteries caused the fire.

Laura Marsh: Last year in New York alone, e-bike batteries caused 202 fires, 142 injuries, and six deaths.

Alex Pareene: But it’s not just here. According to a recent story in Consumer Reports, an electric bike battery started a garage fire in Bend, Oregon. In Utah, a charging bike started a fire in a retirement community. In Baltimore, an e-bike set an apartment garage on fire.
Laura: I was really surprised to hear about these fires. You see people riding e-bikes all over the city, especially delivery workers.

Alex: As e-bikes have become more common, so have these fires. Is that because the bikes are inherently dangerous? Is the solution just to ban them?
Laura: Today on the show, we’re talking about why the batteries have been exploding, how the pandemic made fires more common, and what would actually prevent them. I’m Laura Marsh.
Alex: And I’m Alex Pareene.

Laura: This is The Politics of Everything.

Laura: On November 5, a fire broke out on the twentieth floor of a luxury apartment building on East 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan. Inside, firefighters found five e-bikes and that the fire came from the bikes’ lithium-ion batteries. Forty-three people in the building were seriously injured, and two were in life-threatening condition. Greg Smith covered the story for the nonprofit news organization THE CITY, and he’s joining us today to talk about the disaster. Greg, can you give us a sense of just how bad this fire was?
Greg Smith: The e-bike batteries, when they explode, are really hard to put out. Because it’s essentially a chemical fire: You throw water on it, the chemicals move around, and that’s about all that happens. And so for these people, the only way to get out was to climb out these windows. There are no fire escapes on this kind of building. So the Fire Department had to do this crazy rescue thing where they went into the apartment above and then rapelled down and pulled these people out. The other problem, of course, is smoke. This smoke just went throughout the building very, very quickly. Again, these fires are really fast. It went rocketing across the twentieth floor. People were trying to get out, they were going down the staircase that opens the door up. The door then becomes a chimney and it sucks the smoke into it. And so it was a pretty crazy fire, basically. It went roaring through the building very quickly.

Laura: And you mentioned a little bit about how e-bike battery fires are different from a lot of fires that might break out in an apartment. You might have a space heater or an extension cord that causes a fire, and that’s a really bad situation, but this is different by an order of magnitude.
Greg: It’s funny that you’ve just brought up space heaters. One year ago, I think today, there was a really terrible fire in the Bronx called the Twin Parks. In that case, a lot of people died. And in that case, it was a space heater. But guess what else was in the apartment with the space heater.
Alex: Lithium-ion batteries?

Greg: Correct.
Laura: Oh, wow.
Greg: So that exacerbated the fire, made it go, again, very fast. And then it sent smokes throughout the building. That was a disastrous fire. The Fire Department has been, they will send this crazy video out of one of these things erupting, and you can see, it just blows the top off of it. It looks like a volcano. And then they throw water on it and nothing happens. It’s almost like a bomb.

Alex: The residents in that building knew this was a problem and had been trying to stop it already, isn’t that correct? The residents and the owners of the building, is that right?
Greg: Yeah. So it was a very strange situation, truthfully. The tenant was actually an LLC, a limited liability corporation, and wasn’t a person. And it was this service that purports to rent out apartments in Manhattan for businesspeople. So somebody flies in from London to do a six-month stint at Citibank or whatever. And so the people who owned the e-bikes in that apartment had moved in months ago with their e-bikes. And in a lot of cases, they parked them in the hall.
Alex: Mm.

Greg: So everybody knew about this. The tenants on the twentieth floor, particularly, were complaining to building management, “What are you gonna do about this?” And ultimately, the building management filed a lawsuit. And, you know, it’s a lawsuit, it goes into court, and then nothing happens. And so the months go by, and then this conflagration erupts inside that apartment that everybody was predicting would happen.
Alex: You mapped it out, and, according to the map, the largest number of fires since January of 2021 were not in Manhattan, any Manhattan neighborhood at all, but in Corona, Queens.
Greg: Yep, that’s right. All right. Where there are a lot of e-bikes.

Alex: A lot of delivery people, right?
Greg: A lot of delivery people, that’s right. I mean, what you want to do is you want to be able to address this safety issue without destroying people’s ability to make a living. The vast majority of these fires, where you’ll see a bunch of them within a certain zip code, they’re happening in the poorer neighborhoods. They’re not happening in wealthy neighborhoods. And they’re not just happening in high-rise and public housing, they’re also happening in like two-family houses.
Laura: You mentioned that this is becoming more common. Just how much more of an increase have we seen over the last couple years?

Greg: Sure. Three years ago, there were 14 of them red-flagged by the Fire Department. And obviously, the pandemic had an impact on this because, although New York is a big takeout town, the pandemic ratcheted that up on steroids, basically. Everybody was ordering out. And so the number of these bikes just took off. Last year there were 200; I don’t know how many there have been so far this year, ’cause we’re only just starting. But you know, they are already tracking them. In a lot of ways, you can blame e-bike fires on takeout.
Laura: Yeah.
Greg: You know, if you stop ordering these meals, then you won’t have this situation. But there’s an economic aspect to this, which is [that] ordering the meals allows people who might not otherwise be employed to have an employment. Just banning them outright doesn’t seem to solve a problem. And that’s what a lot of the private sector, luxury buildings, and college dorms, that’s what they’re doing. They’re just saying, you can’t bring these things into the building, period. If life were that simple, that would be the end of it, but it’s not, because people need to make a living and they need these bikes to do that. And so there needs to be some kind of way to do it in a manner that addresses this problem but does not undermine a person’s ability to make a living.

Alex: Mm-hmm.
Laura: The story of East 52nd Street seems to suggest that banning may not have much of an effect, right? Because e-bikes were, in fact, not allowed in that building.
Greg: That is correct. That is correct. Look, it’s like anything, you know? You tell people, You can’t smoke on the roof. Well, people smoke on the roof. You know?

Alex: All right, Greg, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Greg: Happy to do it.
Laura: After the break, we’ll look into why batteries are catching fire, and, is it safe to buy an e-bike?


Alex: We’ve been talking about the growing prevalence of lithium-ion battery fires. Many of those fires are happening in low-income neighborhoods in cities like New York, but we haven’t talked yet about why lithium-ion batteries explode. The writer Stephanie Clifford recently wrote about e-bike battery fires for Consumer Reports.
Alex: Stephanie, thanks for joining us.
Stephanie Clifford: Yeah, my pleasure.

Alex: So just to get to the big question, why do e-bike batteries catch fire?
Stephanie: So good-quality e-bike batteries tend not to catch fire. The problem is really with the lower-quality batteries or self-repair batteries. Batteries used too long, poorly made.
Laura: But what is it about lithium-ion batteries that are so explosive? ’Cause there are all kinds of things that you can run on batteries, right? And it seems like e-bikes, particularly the batteries that power these bikes, cause huge conflagration. It’s not on the scale with anything that we usually think about sort of exploding in someone’s home.

Stephanie: Yeah. The issue is that it’s a much bigger battery pack than what you would use for, say, a laptop or something else that uses lithium-ion batteries. They’re an appealing kind of battery because they’re light, they charge quickly, they’re relatively efficient. But as they get bigger, as you need more energy, you’re putting a bunch of regular batteries housed together. And that makes it much easier to catch fire. If there’s a fault in one, other ones next to it will catch fire.
Laura: I mean, I guess it is essentially the engine of these bikes. And you wouldn’t normally bring your car engine into your house and store it.
Stephanie: Or normally have it. I mean, a big issue here is that cars are subject to very, very strict regulations. E-bikes, as this Consumer Reports investigation found out, are not. And so you’re bringing these often untested, unregulated items into your house, plugging it in overnight, forgetting about it. And that’s where the danger really starts.

Alex: And it’s a problem inherent to how lithium-ion batteries are made. But, especially as you were saying, sort of cheaper unregulated ones are the problem here. I remember a few years ago, there were Samsung tablets or phones which were exploding, obviously to less disastrous effect because that battery is so much smaller. But that sort of says that this problem has risen in tandem basically with these battery-powered vehicles exploding in popularity and use over the last few years, right?
Stephanie: Yeah. If you remember around Christmas 2015, there was a spate of hoverboard fires. Those became a really popular Christmas gift, and those, too, had a larger battery pack than people were used to. Some of the same problems we saw with [hoverboards], we’re seeing with e-bikes, where those were also often untested, uninspected. And there actually, there was a happy ending, where regulatory bodies took strong action and sort of fixed that problem. But we’re seeing the same thing happen all over again with e-bikes.
Laura: So what’s the state of regulation on this right now?

Stephanie: So on the regulatory front, e-bikes, as they’re defined by government, are regulated by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. This is a very well-meaning agency but completely underfunded. Defanged. The entire budget of the CPSC is less than the compensation of the Amazon CEO last year.
Laura: So, is that different from the agency that would regulate something like a motorcycle or a moped?
Stephanie: It is. There are certain requirements that would then kick it into the category of being a motorcycle or a moped, primarily how fast it can go. A bike is just regulated as any consumer product is. So same thing as a …
Alex: Same thing as a toaster or …

Stephanie: Toaster, kid’s toy. Yeah, anything like that.
Alex: So what kind of regulation do you think we should have?
Stephanie: The CPSC just doesn’t have all the power it needs to stop unsafe products from coming in, is the problem. The ways the laws have been written, initially, it did have power, and then under the Reagan administration, its power was far pulled back.

Alex: We’ve heard that story before here.
Laura: Yeah. I feel like we need a chime or some kind of klaxon for every “This was OK until the Reagan administration.”
Stephanie: So the way it has power is it really doesn’t have that much power. It has to go through all these loopholes to show that the industry isn’t meeting safety requirements, that something else is needed.

Laura: I mean, it seems like they have now, with 200 fires just in New York just last year, a fairly strong set of examples to point to and say, maybe this isn’t safe.
Stephanie: Yeah, I agree. It’s clearly a safety issue. The CPSC is aware of it. The e-bike industry is just pushing back on any changes that would make this safer but it would make it more expensive for them.
Alex: From my understanding, one of the problems here is the CPSC; you know, I don’t think they have much of, say, an enforcement arm. And if we’re talking about the sourcing of these, especially the most dangerous parts, isn’t a lot of it just sort of relatively faceless, often Chinese companies where these batteries are sort of, purchased online or from, you know, dealers that wouldn’t necessarily even be following regulation to begin with?

Stephanie: Yeah, that seems to be the case. If you look at Amazon, just to point out one actor here, you can find a ton of e-bikes for under $800. Now we’ll get into why the $800 limit matters, but if you talk to any reputable e-bike manufacturer, they’re like, “Look, my battery alone cost me 600 bucks.” There’s no way anybody could manufacture and sell a reputable, safe, tested e-bike for that little, but they are, and there’s a flood of these products coming into the U.S. But the second part of that is that there was a change to a trade law in 2016. It used to be a $200 limit for items to come untaxed and virtually uninspected into the U.S. Now it’s $800. So you’re getting this rash of these …
Alex: $800. Yeah. $800 e-bikes.
Laura: I mean, $800 just makes sense as a price point too, right? Because you know, I have a regular bike, not an e-bike, and that costs several hundred dollars. So that sort of feels in line with what a bike should cost. And if a lot of people who are buying these bikes are working delivery, that’s sort of like one of their overheads is to make money at all, and they’re not making a huge amount of money.
Stephanie: That’s right. And you have enormous pressure for the delivery workers from Uber, GrubHub, and DoorDash to take as many orders as they can, to work as long hours as they can. So they can’t use these bikes in the way that they were supposed to be used, which is sort of as recreational bikes. They’re bringing multiple batteries, they’re switching out batteries, they’re using chargers that aren’t meant to be used with the particular battery, but that’s sort of because they’re forced to do so because they’re low-wage workers trying to make a living in a really difficult situation.
Laura: Right, because if you’re doing delivery as a full-time job, you’re using these bikes all day. How long does a battery usually last if you’re using it nonstop?
Stephanie: I talked to Panasonic about that because they do have a tested, reputable battery, and it’s somewhere in the range of eight hours. And these guys are working 12-, 16-hour days.
Alex: Right. You need to switch out your battery, you need to charge, you need easy availability of charging. You probably also need higher-capacity batteries. And a higher-capacity battery is more likely to be dangerous. Especially if it’s one of these badly made ones.
Stephanie: Right. And I’d also say from a consumer point of view, you have very little way of telling which battery is a good battery and which one is not. Like even, you know, I’ve now done this long story on this, and I was going through Amazon trying to sort out which were the reputable bikes, and I was sort of guessing based on price. But other than that, I had very little to go on.
Laura: And because one question that I’ve heard a lot from colleagues and friends as I’ve been talking about this episode is, “Oh, are e-bikes safe? Like, can I get one and store it in my apartment?” And you sort of answered that question earlier in the episode when you said, Well, yeah, if you get a high-quality one, but that opens the door to this quest, right? Online, hours of searching and trying to figure out which brands are safe and trying to find a compromise between, OK, well, this $10,000 brand is probably really safe, but what about something I can afford that’s also safe? Is there something to look for?
Stephanie: Yeah, so the easiest thing to do is to look for a U.L. certification. That’s Underwriters Laboratories. They go through this extensive testing process to make sure the bike and the battery and the components are safe in all kinds of conditions. That’s the easiest thing to do. However, there are only 13 companies who’ve certified to the U.L. standard. Now if you talk to the companies, they’ll say we do all kinds of internal testing that’s equal to U.L. standard. I think people who are more in tune with technical specs probably could wade through that and figure it out. But it’s not for the novices in the e-bike world. I’ll also say that Amazon, when I contacted them for comments, says that they require each of their e-bike sellers to certify to U.L., or to the equivalent from a third-party lab. This was surprising to me since, again, only 13 companies have certified to U.L. (laughs). I reached out to the first, I think I took a dozen Amazon e-bikes listed on the first page that sold for under $800. I reached out to all of them where they did have contact information. Many did not have even websites or emails.
Alex: Mm.
Stephanie: In return, I got one response showing a report of testing from a Chinese lab. I couldn’t assess its veracity. The rest didn’t send anything. They just kept saying send me your order number. I was like, no, I don’t have an order. I just wanna see your U.L. certification.
Alex: Can you give us a sense of how the industry is responding to calls for stricter standards?
Stephanie: There’s a group called the National Bike Dealers Association. The head of it decided that she should suggest that each of their dealers only carry bikes certified to the U.L. standard. She said the dealers were really supportive, but the bike makers were not. She was like, manufacturers who I’d never been able to get in touch with before were calling me, telling me why I couldn’t do this.
Alex: And that’s primarily for the expense of certification?
Stephanie: The expense. That’s right. It’s pretty expensive to certify to these standards because you have to first get certified, then you may have to change various parts of your …
Alex: Right, right.
Stephanie: … bicycle to get up to speed, and then you have to stay certified.
Alex: So it seems, I guess, perfectly rational if unfortunate that the industry would be reluctant to embrace a higher, more expensive standard for certifying their bikes. So in those sorts of situations, we would expect the government to step in and for regulation to happen. And I’m curious if there has been a response since you published your story from CPSC.
Stephanie: There has been. There’s actually been a really strong response. One of the CPSC commissioners came out and said this is a big problem and we have to deal with it. And then, just a few weeks after the story published, CPSC sent a letter to more than 2,000 manufacturers and importers. It’s a warning letter saying that if they did not adhere to the U.L. standards, they could see their products recalled, they could see fines, and they did find that there was an unreasonable risk to consumers. So the industry is on warning. This is kind of the strongest thing the CPSC can do for the moment, given its limited powers. But it did do this with the 2015 hoverboard fires, and it did work. And hover[boards] are now generally fairly safe as far as immobility devices go.
Alex: Well, safe from exploding, not necessarily for riding around traffic.
Laura: Although there was a recall of one brand of e-bike late last year: Ancheer e-bikes were recalled. There were 22,000 of these. What does it take for the CPSC to recall a bike, and why has only this one bike been recalled?
Stephanie: Again, under these slightly nutty regulatory laws, the manufacturer has to agree to the CPSC’s suggestion that they recall. So in Ancheer’s case, they did agree. They recalled it. All was well. But there were other cases where the electric unicycle had been exploding and catching fire. The CPSC went to the manufacturer, asked them to recall it, and the manufacturer just said nope, and kept on doing what it was doing. So all the CPSC can do at that point is just send a letter trying to alert consumers that this is a problem.
Alex: It doesn’t seem like an ideal regulatory apparatus. You have to agree to the recall.
Stephanie: Right, and again, the good actors generally will, the bad actors can ignore it with really little consequence.
Alex: Yeah. I mean, consumer products cover everything, right?
Stephanie: And they put real priority, I think, rightly, on children’s products. But that means that a lot of other products are kind of second in line.
Alex: Stephanie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
Stephanie: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Alex: After the break, we’ll be talking about how e-bikes have changed city life for better and for worse. E-bike riders, especially delivery drivers, would bear the brunt of any potential ban. But where are food delivery apps in this picture?

Laura: We’ve been talking about the lack of regulation of e-bikes and e-bike batteries, but there’s a bigger story here about how e-bikes fit into the landscape of the city and the kinds of things we’ve come to take for granted as city dwellers. In just a few years, e-bikes went from being relatively rare to being everywhere, and most of them are ridden by delivery workers. Many of them immigrants. The writer, Ross Barkan, recently argued, in a column for Crain’s, [that] the delivery apps should be responsible for e-bikes, not the rider themselves. “If the companies can’t afford to purchase and maintain safe bikes,” Ross wrote, “then they shouldn’t exist at all.” Ross, thanks for coming on the show.
Ross Barkan: Thank you for having me. Glad to be back.
Laura: We’ve been talking about the whole range of problems that arise from the proliferation of e-bikes, and most of the proposed solutions involve regulating the production of e-bikes or finding safer ways to charge the batteries. But you framed the problem and the solution a bit differently. Ross, can you tell us about that?
Ross: I would say right now, in terms of solving the problem, it really revolves around safer battery usage. I think it’s true that you need safer ways to charge your batteries. And you want to avoid these situations where you have a recreation of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire with these e-bike batteries, but to me, there’s a much bigger problem here which is that the e-bike rider takes on all the risk and all the management of this technology. And this has been broadly accepted by the political class, by progressives, by people in the transportation space. And you know, that’s a bigger concern for me because I really think it’s these companies that should be managing the risk and it’s these companies that really should bear the brunt of this.
Laura: At the moment, if you’re walking along the street and you see a delivery driver and they have a big GrubHub bag on the back of their bike, you assume that they own the bike. You don’t assume the delivery company owns it. And it’s interesting you mentioned the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, because that was very clearly a workplace disaster. People died there, and it was the company’s fault. And we’ve been talking about fires happening in apartment buildings, but in some ways, these are also workplace disasters, right? Because people are workers, they have to bring their bikes home because their jobs basically mean they have to own their bikes. And then everywhere you have the remnants of this work in the residential buildings, but it doesn’t look like a workplace. It doesn’t look the same way we expect the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to look.
Ross: Right. Even the feudal days of the early 1900s, most people were full-time employees. So yes, you know, work then was you reported to a factory and performed at work and went home. Here, your home is your workplace. For some people, that can be liberating, but if you’re a delivery rider and you have this expensive and potentially dangerous technology that you have to entirely manage, you open up this Pandora’s box to all kinds of potential disasters. And unlike factory disasters of yore, there’s really no one to be held accountable. You know, GrubHub, DoorDash, all these companies, they foist the risk onto the delivery worker, and they can wash their hands of it and say, Well, it’s not our bike, not our battery. You know: Tough.
Laura: A lot of the solutions that have been proposed so far really focus still on just limiting what the delivery worker or the person who owns the bike can do, right? So there are proposals to say, Well, you just can’t keep the bike in your apartment. Stuff, rules that would basically just restrict the individual rather than addressing this bigger problem.
Ross: The bigger problem for me, and I don’t know if this is controversial, but this is something that not a lot of people have really wanted to take into account is that we legalized this new technology several years ago and really dramatically, overnight, changed the streetscape of New York. And I think policymakers didn’t really think through what that would mean. And now, there’s this well-intentioned push, for example, to have the city fund more charging stations. But you know, my view of it is, why should the city be subsidizing DoorDash and subsidizing UberEats? Why is it the city’s responsibility to change the streetscape for these companies, in essence, right, to keep doing their business?
Alex: Well, you’ve sort of touched on it, but speaking just politically here, speaking in terms of this as not strictly what would be the ideal outcome policy-wise, but as a political fight, why is this such a difficult question? Why is it so hard to find consensus on what should be done about e-bikes and about batteries?
Ross: I think it’s hard on a few different fronts. For one, the e-bike technology, on its own, has been a boon certainly for people who can get around, for delivery workers to do their jobs more quickly. So there’s definitely a sense on the left that you don’t want to undercut that because you’d be undercutting the livelihood of a working-class delivery person, right? At the same time, for me at least, there’s this greater concern around the type of economy we’re building. For decades, ordering delivery meant you had the Chinese menu on your refrigerator from your local place that was maybe five minutes away or less. You call them on the phone and they brought you food either on foot, on a pedal bike, or they walked it over. And that was life. And then all of a sudden, you had the invasion of these for-hire companies, you know, on the car side with Uber and then Uber Eats, DoorDash, and what have you. That really reshaped the economy in tandem with the rise of the smartphone and created this new expectation for the consumer that now at any time, day or night, you could have any type of food you want at any moment. And these drivers, these bikers will be there for you. And instead of questioning that paradigm, the movement has merely been, well, defend the paradigm fundamentally and just make it easier to charge your bike. I get it. But I don’t quite understand why we now have to build this new kind of society around these for-hire app companies that truthfully aren’t very profitable and kind of have an awful business model. But that’s where we are. And that’s hard to get your hands around.
Laura: So what you’re suggesting is that, if they have delivery workers who use e-bikes, then delivery companies should own the bikes. And they should also have some kind of charging station at their facilities where the delivery worker shows up, picks up a charged bike, and heads off to do their run.
Ross: Absolutely, yes. I think these companies should be paying for the bikes. They should be paying for the batteries. They should be paying for their own charging stations. If they want city property to do it, they should pay New York City to do it. And that’s fine. That’s a private company that is taking on the risk and doing it. Now they don’t want to do that because that imperils their entire business model. All these companies, you know, with few exceptions, don’t really have sustainable traditional business models. As you’re seeing now, with the economy and the tech correction and the popping of the tech bubble, expectations are changing. And quite frankly, that’s not a bad thing. I think a lot of these companies kind of operated with fantasy economics. And, you know, my view is, if DoorDash or any of these companies can’t sustain themselves by paying for the bike and paying for the battery and paying the driver and paying for a charging station, if they can’t do these things, they should go out of business.
Laura: It’s interesting to reframe it this way by looking at the delivery companies because I think, often when the idea of, say, banning e-bike batteries in apartment buildings come up, what you’re looking at is a fight between people who live really close to each other, right? Between neighbors who feel imperiled by the battery versus the neighbor who really needs the bike for work. And what you are talking about is a very different kind of struggle, which is between big tech companies who are running on V.C. and don’t care about their workers and are operating on gig labor versus everyone else.
Ross: Yes. And that’s how it should be framed. It is the tech companies and their technology versus the rest of us. They’re the ones reaping a potential profit. You know, they’re the ones who have created, again, this new expectation. And quite frankly, I am not sure we’d be worse off if these companies collapse tomorrow. I don’t think they’re necessary for the functioning of New York City or any large city, honestly.
Alex: I need an empanada in 10 minutes, Ross. I really, it’s …
Ross: And you’re hungry, it’s 1 a.m., right.
Alex: Yeah. It’s 1 a.m., and I need to eat. I think this is a good way of reframing the issue. It’s really important to have the conversation about the regulation, especially from the federal side of it. And I think it’s unfair that cities and municipalities have been asked to shoulder this burden while the feds have largely not done their job. So it’s important to talk about regulating the batteries themselves, but it’s also important to talk about the working arrangements that lead to unsafe behavior. And I do know of at least one company, called Dutch X, that has owned and maintained its own fleet of bikes and its delivery employees are W-2 workers. They’re actually properly classified W-2 workers who aren’t responsible for maintaining their own bicycles. I just think that’s proof of concept that you can have a delivery company that doesn’t foist all of that responsibility on the drivers themselves. And that seems like a useful place to start the conversation rather than all of these sort of dead ends that people get in arguing about how to police the behavior of individual drivers, basically.
Ross: Yeah. And you can do it and have a healthier economy where the companies that can take on that risk and manage it succeed, and the companies that can’t go away.
Alex: All right, Ross, thank you for talking to us today.

Alex: The Politics of Everything is co-produced by Talkhouse.
Laura: Emily Cooke is our executive producer.
Alex: Myron Kaplan is our audio editor.
Laura: If you enjoy The Politics of Everything and you want to support us, one thing you can do is share your favorite episode with a friend.
Alex: Thanks for listening.
The Politics of Everything
Hosted by Alex Pareene and Laura Marsh, The Politics of Everything explores the intersection of culture, media, and politics in biweekly interviews with scholars and journalists.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Another e-bike fire. These need banning or at least a high level of regulation.
wabc
MORE THAN A DOZEN CHILDREN SUFFER MINOR INJURIES IN QUEENS FIRE
Updated 15 minutes ago

At least a dozen children are being treated for injuries after a fire at a two-story home at 47-07 72nd Drive 147th St. in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens.
KEW GARDENS HILLS, Queens (WABC) -- At least a dozen children are being treated for injuries after a fire at a two-story home in Queens.

There was a report of a fire in the basement at the building on 147-07 72nd Drive 147th St. around 2 p.m.

The NYPD said the home had a day care on the first floor and was under control by 2:45 p.m.

FDNY officials said 18 children were removed from the building, including one in critical condition. The other 17 were stable and refused medical attention at the scene.

A lithium battery was found in the basement but the cause of the fire is under investigation.

"The lithium-ion batteries we've been having problems with, especially with charging them," said Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito. "The message we want to get out is that you should be using other, regulated certified batteries. Should not be charged in entrance or pathway to leave your apartment. Don't charge overnight. Charge when you're awake, at home, in a closed-door room."


Few other details were released.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

E-Bikes Are Convenient. They Can Also Cause Fatal Fires.​

Three years after New York legalized micro-mobility bikes and scooters, lawmakers and building managers are grappling with how to make them safer in the wake of numerous fires, some fatal.

Two firefighters in black uniforms with yellow stripes stand behind a metal fence in the grassy area outside an apartment building. The firefighter on the right is holding a burned bicycle.

Firefighters remove the remnants of a charred e-bicycle after a fire in a Brooklyn apartment building on Nov. 9, 2022. So far this year, fires caused by faulty lithium-ion batteries inside the micro-mobility vehicles have caused at least 30 fires, 40 injuries and two deaths in New York City, according to the Fire Department.
By Joyce Cohen
March 6, 2023
Just before midnight on a Friday in January, a fire tore through a three-story house in East Elmhurst, Queens, injuring 10 people inside and killing a 63-year-old man who was trapped on the second floor. Five days later, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, another fire broke out in the basement of a house in Forest Hills, Queens, where an unauthorized day care center was housed. Eighteen children were injured, one seriously.
The cause of both fires was rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which power the e-bikes and e-scooters that have become ubiquitous on city streets, according to the New York Fire Department.
Jose Corona, whose e-scooter sparked the deadly fire in East Elmhurst, told reporters that he heard an explosion shortly after parking the scooter on the first floor of the house. “Once I opened the door, on the second floor the stairs was already on fire in seconds,” he said.
The use of micro-mobility vehicles surged during the pandemic as New Yorkers shunned public transportation and ordered food from delivery apps rather than crowd into restaurants. Delivery workers are increasingly reliant on e-bikes, which allow them to go farther and faster to meet the demand.

But a deadly, unintended consequence has emerged: Storing and charging such bikes and scooters indoors can create a tinderbox. Last year, the batteries caused 216 fires, with 147 injuries and six deaths. As of Feb. 27 this year, they were responsible for 30 fires, 40 injuries and two deaths, according to the Fire Department.

Nearly three years after New York City legalized the use of micro-mobility vehicles, building managers and lawmakers are grappling with how to prevent battery fires, with some calling for prohibitions on e-bikes and e-scooters, at least until ways to minimize the risks have been established.
Last week, the City Council took what it called “a first step in mitigating the fire risk posed by lithium-ion batteries,” approving a spate of bills that would include new safety and certification standards, education campaigns on how to prevent fires, and restrictions on the use and sale of used or reassembled batteries.

That, experts say, is where much of the danger lies — from off-market, refurbished, damaged or improperly charged batteries. A chemical reaction inside the self-fueling battery can spark a “thermal runaway,” which occurs when the lithium-ion cell enters a volatile, self-heating state. The fires are also difficult to extinguish (the Fire Department warns against using fire extinguishers or water), often spreading to nearby batteries, and can even reignite hours later.

“All it takes is for one small battery cell to be defective, overcharged or damaged, and a tremendous amount of energy is released in the form of heat and toxic flammable gases all at once,” said Daniel Murray, the Fire Department’s chief of hazmat operations.
The Fire Department started tracking fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in 2019, “when we recognized we had a problem,” Mr. Murray said. That year, the department recorded 28 fires resulting in 16 injuries — a number that has skyrocketed with the proliferation of the bikes and scooters.
Lithium-ion batteries can be found in computers, cellphones and some household devices, but micro-mobility vehicle batteries are bigger and “are subject to a lot of wear and tear and weather, which tends to damage them,” Mr. Murray said. “So that’s why we are seeing a lot of fires specifically in the bikes and scooters.”

Battery fires have broken out in a range of buildings around New York, from public housing complexes to luxury towers.
“I didn’t even know I was supposed to be afraid of the e-bike battery-charging station on the ground floor,” said Gail Ingram, who until last June lived above a pedicab and bike-rental business in a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up. One morning, she “heard a woman screaming” outside. Then she saw smoke rising from the floorboards.

The stairwell was quickly consumed by smoke that scorched her eyeballs. “I’ve never felt such a terrifying feeling, not being able to breathe,” said Ms. Ingram, 51, a nurse practitioner.

No one was seriously injured, though Ms. Ingram lost almost everything. Unlike most of her neighbors, she had renter’s insurance, which is now paying for her to live in a tiny hotel room with her two cats. “I’m still going through boxes of non-salvageable keepsakes and water-soaked paperwork,” she said.
Ms. Ingram’s upstairs neighbor, Madison Coller, 26, who works in risk management for a payment-processing company, was on the third floor when the fire broke out. She recalled a harrowing day, awakening from a nap and fleeing after she smelled smoke and heard a voice yelling, “Fire!” Displaced by the fire and having no insurance, she stayed with her brother in Bushwick and moved back to Rochester for a short while. Battery-powered vehicles “should be banned until there is a safer solution in place, because too many people have lost their lives,” said Ms. Coller, who now lives in Bushwick.
Some buildings have already taken that action. Last November, dozens of people were injured in a luxury high-rise rental building on East 52nd Street when a battery exploded in an apartment doubling as an unauthorized bike-repair shop. The incident spurred Glenwood Management, which operates more than two dozen luxury rental buildings in the city (though not that one), to ban e-bikes and e-scooters in all its buildings. “If you have one,” the company wrote in a notice to tenants, “we ask that you remove it at once from your apartment.”

A few months earlier, the New York City Housing Authority had proposed a ban on storing and charging e-vehicles in all 335 of its building developments, to prevent fires and preserve the health and safety of residents.” After an outcry by residents opposing the ban, the agency decided to pause and revisit the issue.

“Some buildings are taking the approach of a complete ban on e-bikes, and other buildings aren’t doing anything, and then there are those buildings in the middle that are trying to regulate and pass rules that kind of split the baby,” said Leni Morrison Cummins, a lawyer at the firm of Cozen O’Connor, who represents condominium and co-op boards. “At first we saw all the buildings that jumped on the bandwagon with the ban. Now I am seeing buildings trying compromise positions.”
Proposals include requiring residents to register their e-bikes. Others call for fire-safe bike rooms in apartment buildings and more education about battery safety.

“It’s a conversation buildings need to have: How do we limit the risk?” said Eric Wohl, a lawyer representing condo and co-op boards at the firm Armstrong Teasdale. “Unit owners are allowed to have candles, and that’s a fire risk, too.”

Drake Chan initially used a kick scooter to commute from his condo on the Upper East Side, cutting his long walk to and from the subway. He bought an e-scooter last year.
“You get places faster, and it saved me in terms of sweating it out during the summer,” said Mr. Chan, 37, who works as a project engineer in the field of transportation. “It can also carry quite a bit. I can put two bags of groceries on each handlebar.”
So when his condo board recently considered banning e-bikes and e-scooters in his building, he persuaded the board members to reconsider, emphasizing that most lithium-ion fires are caused by low-quality or misused batteries. “I encouraged them to look into registering all e-bikes and e-scooters, so we know what we have on our hands,” Mr. Chan said.
He also urged the board to educate residents on safe battery use, including charging the batteries only while attended (never overnight), keeping flammable materials away, and using the manufacturer’s original cords and chargers.

Another potential solution is safer bike rooms. Ariel Aufgang, a New York-based architect and the principal at Aufgang Architects, has designed one using cinder blocks, upgraded electrical outlets and additional sprinkler heads. “Government moves too slowly,” he said. “These safety measures are a no-brainer.”

But some building managers question why the burden of safeguarding against battery fires should fall on them. “To me, the issue is product safety,” said Michael Rothschild, the president of the residential management firm AJ Clarke.
Someone shopping for a bike or battery “isn’t going to know if the battery is poorly made,” he said. “There should be an oversight agency to make sure what’s being sold is safe. That’s the way we handle most things.”

Last month, Laura Kavanagh, New York’s fire commissioner, sent a letter to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, saying the department was “on the front lines of this fight against deadly fires involving batteries in e-micromobility devices,” and urging the government to promote more safety regulations, including seizing imported batteries that fall short of industry standards, penalizing manufacturers who fail to inform authorities about product hazards, and recalling unsafe devices. She also recommended a ban on sales of “universal” battery chargers.
City lawmakers are just beginning to catch up. As part of the legislative package the City Council approved last week, Gale Brewer, a council member who represents the Upper West Side, has sponsored a bill that would require the fire department, in consultation with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, to develop an information campaign about the fire risks. Ms. Brewer proposed a bill in November that would “ban the sale of second-use batteries, those which are reconditioned or manipulated and sold on the secondary market,” according to her office.
“Older residents call me all the time. ‘There’s a bike in my building.’ They are very nervous,” Ms. Brewer said. “We have to do something about this issue because more people will die.”
Oswald Feliz, a council member who represents some neighborhoods in Bronx, has also introduced a bill that would impose “recognized safety standard certification” and require an micro-mobility vehicle to be certified in order to be sold in New York City. Another member of the council, Robert F. Holden of Queens, recently introduced a bill that would temporarily ban certain e-bikes and e-scooters throughout New York City.

Sam LaMontanaro, director of engineering for Aufgang Architects, in a bike room in Hell’s Kitchen. “A bike room is at the lowest part of the building and has the greatest water pressure for a sprinkler system,” he said.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

A man in a blue vest and checked shirt stands in front of several bicycles in a white room.

“Right now, these batteries are killing people, and that’s why we have to do something drastic, or it’s going to continue,” Mr. Holden said. “I don’t want to not allow them forever. It’s only a pause until we get back to the drawing board and get the proper safeguards on them.”

Some of the proposed legislation focuses on the thousands of delivery workers who have come to rely on e-bikes to make a living. One bill would require the consumer and worker protection agency to distribute educational materials on e-bike safety for delivery workers in their language.
“I worry about the delivery people,” Ms. Brewer said. “They need support. They go through a lot of batteries because they are working on the street.”

New lithium-ion bike batteries typically cost at least $300 (and often much more), forcing many riders to turn to lower-quality products. “There is definitely a market where people don’t want to spend that,” said Mr. Wohl of Armstrong Teasdale. “Delivery guys don’t have a lot of money and they want to go as fast as they can because the more trips, the more tips.”
Los Deliveristas Unidos, a guild representing 65,000 app-based food delivery workers, is pressing the city to boost the e-bike infrastructure to include charging and parking stations, along with bathrooms, something that Mayor Eric Adams and Senator Chuck Schumer have pledged to do.
Ligia Guallpa, director of the Worker’s Justice Project, which oversees Los Deliveristas Unidos, said that e-bikes are invaluable in low-income communities that lack accessible transportation, and that without sufficient charging stations, many have no better option than to charge their e-bikes at home.
“Banning e-bikes from buildings without offering an alternative is not the right solution,” she said. “Low-income New Yorkers don’t ride a bike as a fun activity. These e-bikes are legal and people are using them as a way of survival.”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

E-bike fires sparking concerns for deliveristas​

BY CLODAGH MCGOWAN NEW YORK CITY
PUBLISHED 8:00 AM ET MAY 02, 2023

Gustavo Ajche hits the streets battling city traffic in all kinds of weather.
He’s a deliverista — a delivery worker — who relies on an e-bike to make deliveries for GrubHub and DoorDash. He says during the pandemic, many delivery workers were forced to switch from traditional bicycles to e-bikes.
“Food delivery work. It's a dangerous job,” Ajche said. “A lot of places was closed around the area. So you have to travel long-distance, 40 blocks, 30 blocks, 20 blocks to drop a delivery. So by the end of the day, if you're using a regular bike, it's really tough and hard for workers."

What You Need To Know

  • Longtime delivery worker Gustavo Ajche says during the pandemic, many deliveristas turned to e-bikes to keep up with the demand
  • Ajche says most deliveristas own their e-bikes, and are responsible for the upkeep of the batteries
  • Ajche says a new e-bike costs around $2,500 — and a good battery starts at $700
  • According to Los Deliveristas Unidos, a labor group representing 65,000 app-based delivery workers, fewer than 10% of the e-bikes sold in the city meet the city's new stricter safety standards


The bikes, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries, add another risk to an already dangerous job.

The batteries have sparked dozens of fires so far this year, killing five people. Ajche says most deliveristas own their e-bikes, and are responsible for the upkeep of the batteries. They take them home at night to charge because there are no other options, knowing now, they’re putting their families at risk.
“We're really concerned about all these fires happening everywhere,” Ajche said.

In March, Mayor Eric Adams signed laws creating stricter safety standards for e-bikes sold in the city. But according to Los Deliveristas Unidos, a labor group representing 65,000 app-based delivery workers, fewer than 10% of the e-bikes sold in the city meet those standards.
Advocates say delivery workers won't able to afford any required upgrades until the city guarantees minimum pay for the delivery workers, who rely heavily on tips.
“So deliveristas don't have to work long, extensive hours, take the risk of traveling long distances, and have to make a huge investment in order to transition to buying safer batteries in the city of New York,” said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project.

In fact, many have to bring two fully charged batteries to work to make it through what often turns into a 12-hour shift. Ajche says there is no going back to a traditional bicycle.

“We have to create programs to support workers, too, because it's not easy just to force people say, hey, this bike is not allowed to use. You got to get a new one. So it's a lot of money, it's not cheap,” Ajche said.

Ajche says a new e-bike costs around $2,500, and a good battery starts at $700. Those high costs have created a gray market for cheaper, off-brand, unregulated and refurbished batteries, but Ajche says those deals are playing with fire.

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Or we could just ban e-bikes altogether which even aside from fires are making our streets more dangerous on a daily basis. Alissa Walker continues to simp for Billionaires who want you to own nothing and be happy.

Uber Says It’s Trying to Fix the E-bike Battery Crisis​

By Alissa Walker, a Curbed senior writer

Uber will sponsor two programs to help the city’s deliveristas buy or rent safer e-bikes, the company announced this week. As the largest delivery app operating in New York, Uber’s interest in the issue is obvious: The city’s 65,000 delivery workers who rely on e-bikes and e-scooters to make a living (or to just barely get by) are generally zipping around on the company’s behalf. And with 59 fires and five deaths in 2023 so far — including two children who died in Astoria on Monday — and everything we know about the dangers of the shoddily manufactured, non-UL-certified lithium-ion batteries of some e-bikes and e-scooters, Uber’s move seems to be as much about protecting its own brand as protecting New Yorkers.
The two “cash for clunkers”-style pilots sponsored by Uber are an immediate way to get dangerous bikes off the street. The first is a partnership with Zoomo, which makes micromobility vehicles that are popular with delivery workers. Zoomo will accept old e-bikes of any make or model in exchange for a credit to put toward a UL-certified e-bike. (The value of the credit has yet to be confirmed, but Streetsblog reported it at $200, which would pay for a bike rental for one month, the down payment for a $3,348 rent-to-own bike, or one-third of a $675 refurbished bike.) Uber will also work with the New York–based Equitable Commute Project coalition to help workers to trade in noncompliant models at local bike shops and receive discounts on UL-certified e-bikes. (The value of the credit has not yet been set here either.) Both programs would be open to all workers — even if they don’t deliver for Uber Eats.

As demonstrated by wildly popular e-bike incentive campaigns elsewhere, the most effective way to get safer, cleaner vehicles on the road is by giving people money to buy them. Both Zoomo and the network of local retailers participating in these trade-in programs will serve as strong complements to existing projects seeking to prevent deadly battery fires: The city is rolling out its own slate of reforms — including the first public charging hub (a huge victory for deliveristas), a law requiring new micromobility vehicles to be UL-certified, and an action plan with strategies for safer battery storage. The state legislature is currently considering a “clean rebate” proposal that would be publicly financed and administered — a way to ensure access to safe, UL-certified e-bikes and e-scooters for everyone.
These are all good things, but what Uber is offering is nowhere close to what it actually owes its workers. The company’s existence hinges on an employment scheme that denies people basic labor protections, and earlier this month, Uber successfully lobbied against a minimum-wage increase for the city’s delivery workers. All of this leaves people with little choice but to use a bike that’s cheap and deadly. Uber is trying to leverage this sponsorship as an attempt to solve the problem, with the company’s senior director for public policy, Josh Gold, saying, “Delivery workers should not have to choose between making a living and safety.” But clearly, they do.

.

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

New Federal Regulations for Bikes Will Come Soon. But What Should They Be?​

THE CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION IS CURRENTLY SOLICITING PUBLIC COMMENT ON E-BIKES AND COASTER BRAKES.
Headshot of Taneika Duhaney
BY TANEIKA DUHANEYPublished: May 25, 2023

Government regulation tends to lag behind technological advances. Bicycles designs and technology continue to advance while much of the federal regulations governing cycling seems to be track standing. Now, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is looking to update these regulations and they want your input.
The CPSC, the federal agency responsible for protecting “the public against unreasonable risks of injury or death from consumer products through education, safety standards activities, regulation, and enforcement,” plans to review how existing guidelines apply to e-bikes.

"More than 20 years ago, Congress authorized CPSC to promulgate regulations to protect the safety of consumers who ride low-speed electric bicycles. The agency has not done so, and it is past time that we take a hard look at whether we should do so now,” said CPSC Commissioner Mary T. Boyle, according to Bicycle Retailer.

The agency that dictates everything from what a bicycle is and how fast it should travel to the requirements for wheels, pedals, and even reflectors is soliciting public comments starting Thursday through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. For the next 60 days, consumers are encouraged to “evaluate whether compliance with these standards provides adequate safeguards, especially related to e-bikes.”
The review of existing bicycle safety requirements comes as the public embraces micro-mobility. As more states incentivize e-bike sales, cities hope that e-bikes will help to reduce traffic congestion, commute times, and greenhouse emissions.
The flip side of e-bike popularity is the associated hazards that have resulted in serious injuries and deaths. In 2021, Molly Steinsapir, 12, died after crashing into the pavement while riding an e-bike, a “CPSC In-depth investigations found four fatalities from E-bike related fires,” and the “NYFD stated in hearing testimony that in 2022 there were 191 e-mobility related fires, 140 injuries and six deaths in the city as of 11/14/22, including 38 injuries in a high rise fire” according to a PeopleforBikes presentation to the CPSC.

Cycling advocacy groups like PeopleForBikes view the comment period as an opportunity to advance much needed safety standards for e-bikes.
"PeopleForBikes looks forward to submitting comments and participating in any future development of needed changes to the CPSC bicycle and e-bike regulations, including the addition of applicable recognized testing standards,” said Matt Moore, PeopleForBikes policy counsel. “After suggesting to the CPSC in January that stronger regulations were needed to limit the import and sale of unsafe, untested batteries for e-mobility devices, we are pleased to see the process moving forward to regulate the unfortunate flow of unsafe mobility products into the U.S. market."
In addition to addressing e-bike safety issues, the CPSC also seeks comments on “[eliminating] the coaster brake requirement on certain kids’ bikes,” according to Bicycle Retailer.
After the 60 days, PeopleForBikes anticipates the “CPSC likely will create new bike regulations,” according to Bicycle Retailer.

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

At least 4 dead in Chinatown e-bike repair shop fire, officials say​

A photo of emergency workers sorting through the wreckage after a fire at an e-bike shop in Chinatown killed at least 4 people.


Brittany Kriegstein/Gothamist



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Four people died early Tuesday morning after a fire broke out at an e-bike repair shop in Chinatown, according to police and fire officials.
Firefighters arrived at the scene at 80 Madison St. just after midnight, where they found a heavy blaze.
Police said two men and two women died in the fire, but have yet to release their names and ages. Two other women remained in critical condition as of Tuesday morning, and a firefighter suffered minor injuries.
The building is both residential and commercial, and the people affected by the fire were in the residential portion, according to police.
Belal Alayah works at a nearby bodega and said he was getting ready to close up shop when a friend ran in and told him the bike shop was on fire. He said he called 911 and firefighters were on the scene in under 10 minutes.
"It took them a couple of hours but it was already too late," he said. "Everything was already destroyed."


Firefighters at the scene on Tuesday morning worked to clear out dozens of charred e-bikes and scooters from the store as passersby stopped to look at the destruction. At one point, a pair of still-smoldering batteries on the sidewalk burst back into flames and had to be doused with water.
Lithium-ion e-bike batteries have been a top safety concern for city officials in recent years, as they can combust when charged or maintained improperly. Over the last few months, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has cracked down on unregulated e-bike and e-scooter batteries, which tend to pose the greatest risk.
Alayah said he never worried before about the perils of the combustible batteries, but now knows just how deadly they can be.

“I never even thought about them being that dangerous, but I guess they are real dangerous. Especially when they just killed four people today. If one sets on fire, they all set on fire," he said.

Joey Sperduto would come to the shop sometimes to get minor repairs on his e-scooter, which he said he bought directly from the factory and which he uses with a factory-approved battery and charger.

He recalled the store being packed with bikes and batteries.

“He used to have them all up on one wall. There used to be 50 or more, charging,” he said. “It was a matter of time, you know what I’m saying? He was just charging them all day long.”

The FDNY is investigating the cause of the blaze.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
https://www.westsiderag.com/

The Menace of E-Vehicles and What’s Being Done About it​

June 26, 2023 | 1:44 PM
in NEWS, OUTDOORS, POLITICS
73

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An e-scooter rider on Columbus Avenue.
Text and Photos By Daniel Krieger
On a recent evening, several dozen members of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance gathered on the corner of West 88th Street and Columbus Avenue for the group’s first in-person get-together. They had turned out in pursuit of their mission to advocate for street safety at a monthly meeting of the West Side Democrats at Goddard Riverside Community Center that was devoted to the issue.
Carol Van Deusen, a vice president of the West Side Dems, kicked things off by explaining that the danger of e-vehicles (e-bikes, e-scooters, mopeds, etc.) was something that club members and especially the “electeds” needed to hear about.
The group had invited police officials, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, Councilmember Gale Brewer and others, but thirty minutes in, none of the “electeds” had yet arrived. A woman in the audience asked why no one seemed to be solving the problem of e-vehicles and pedestrian safety. Attendees offered various theories, blaming it on the delivery app companies, the city’s Department of Transportation, the bike lobby, and local politicians. “We have zero support from elected officials,” declared one man, right before Sen. Hoylman-Sigal arrived and promptly expressed his support.
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State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal talking to the group. “The issue of e-bikes is the number one constituent complaint that we get in my Senate office,” he said.
“We can’t have our sidewalks be unsafe,” said Hoylman-Sigal. “The issue of e-bikes is the number one constituent complaint that we get in my Senate office. Your voices are being heard and I share your concern.” Part of the issue, he said, stems from a lack of police enforcement of existing laws. Hoylman-Sigal said he is working on legislation that addresses issues contributing to the safety problem – including a bill to increase penalties for e-vehicle hit and runs and another that requires food delivery app companies to have insurance. The senator said Rosenthal has introduced these same bills in the State Assembly. Another proposal, not yet introduced, would require licensing and registration of e-bikes used for commercial purposes.
“It’s going to require a campaign from all of us to advance it,” said Hoylman-Sigal. “Councilmember Brewer told me, ‘you guys have to do something about this in Albany. This is out of control.’ We agree and this is a step forward,” he said, inviting comments from the audience.
“I beg you not to leave out privately owned e-bikes” from licensing requirements, said one woman, while several others in the audience agreed. Someone suggested licensing all bicycles, but Hoylman-Sigal, a cyclist himself, said that would be going too far. Another woman asked if there’s a way to just get people to follow the traffic laws that already exist and are supposed to be enforced by police.
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A member of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance giving a presentation.
“We are victims and potential victims,” said Janet Schroeder, a co-founder of the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance. “We refuse to accept or live with what’s happening on the streets.” She explained that the group of nearly 100 includes 15 victims of e-vehicle recklessness. Several had come to share how disruptive, costly, painful, and traumatic their experiences had been.
Karen Sughrue, a longtime Upper West Sider, said she was hit last summer on Broadway by an e-skateboarder who ran a red light and then fled the scene. “My injuries have mostly healed,” she told the group, “but I get very nervous crossing the street.”
After the meeting, Sughrue told the Rag she had come “because of what happened to me, but I am also just concerned about the decline of the quality of life here in the city because of this problem. The resentment about this issue has really been bubbling beneath the surface and needs an outlet, and that’s what Janet is tapping into.”
The alliance presented the draft of a seven-point plan; the point that got the most enthusiastic endorsement was a call to cancel the recently launched NYC Parks Electric Micromobility Pilot program, which allows e-bikes and e-scooters to use park drives and greenways — paved, off-road paths for cyclists and pedestrians — and is part of Mayor Adams’ “Charge Safe, Ride Safe: Electric Micromobility Action Plan.”
Sen. Hoylman-Sigal praised the group’s engagement. “Bills begin with ideas and community activation, and that’s what we’re seeing tonight,” he said, urging the group to build a movement that could help get bills passed in Albany – and to press for enforcement of them.
“We can pass all the laws we want,” said Assemblymember Rosenthal, who arrived at the end of the meeting. “But if there’s no enforcement, what’s the use?”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Suit: FDNY Commissioner Dragged Feet on E-Bike Battery Danger​

July 12, 2023
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh refused to support chiefs who warned about the deadly danger lurking in public housing.


NEW YORK — New York Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh ignored her staff’'s calls for action against deadly e-bike batteries and refused to publicly support banning them from NYCHA housing out of fear of “political winds,” FDNY chiefs in an ongoing ageism lawsuit said in a new court filing.
Last summer, shortly after becoming acting fire commissioner, Kavanagh “refused” Chief Joe Jardin’s “request to publicly support” NYCHA’s ban on having lithium-ion powered bikes and scooters inside buildings at the city’s public housing developments, say court papers made public Tuesday.
Kavanagh declined to act even though Jardin believed a ban would make housing complex residents safer, says the newly amended complaint in the chiefs’ lawsuit.

Kavanagh “justified her actions based on the concern about the ‘political winds’ because such a ban would negatively impact, among others, low-income delivery persons,” the lawsuit says.
When Jardin and Chief Frank Leeb put together a symposium to educate FDNY members and other fire departments about the dangers of lithium-ion battery fires that September, Kavanagh wouldn’t invite City Council members to the event.
She “skipped the symposium altogether — despite the presence of fire commissioners from across the country and Canada — because she did not want (the) FDNY ‘out in front’ of the issue,” the lawsuit claims.
“Despite Kavanagh’s recent media campaign concerning the dangers of lithium-ion batteries, for years she suppressed and did not support action within the FDNY to press for regulations and bans, and even suppressed a campaign to promote greater awareness of the risks,” the lawsuit states.

An FDNY spokeswoman said the allegations against Kavanagh are “meritless.”
“She has been relentless in sounding the alarm about the dangers of lithium-ion batteries for both the public and FDNY members,” spokeswoman Amanda Farinacci said. “She is a national leader on this topic, and any allegation that she has not paid this dangerous issue appropriate attention is preposterous.”
But Jim Walden, the chiefs’ lawyer, said Kavanagh’s current stance against e-bike battery fires can’t make up for years of inaction.
“She can’t whitewash what happened in 2020 and 2021,” Walden said. “She stood idle for the better part of two years while lithium-ion related fires skyrocketed and the deaths from those fires increased significantly from that period.”
The allegations come from three witnesses who heard Kavanagh balking at the chiefs’ concerns, as well as documents and other evidence, Walden said.
Her refusal to back NYCHA’s rule change came after the FDNY had already banned e-bikes and scooters from their own building, Walden said.
“The department banned them in their own premises, and the chiefs of Fire Prevention and Safety wanted to do more, including support a ban in NYCHA buildings,” Walden said.
“She still refused to take on the issue because she didn’t want backlash from politicians and those who sympathized with delivery people who use these e-bikes.”

Kavanagh excluded the chiefs from any City Hall meetings she may have had to hash out what to do about e-bike fires, Walden said.
“She was meeting with other agency heads before the FDNY did anything and excluded the chiefs with the expertise on these dangers from the meetings,” Walden said.
The e-bike battery bombshell is the latest in a string of allegations against Kavanagh in the ageism suit. Fire chiefs claim they were harassed, maligned and ultimately demoted because they were too old in Kavanagh’s eyes.
At 40, Kavanagh is one of the city’s youngest commissioners.
Assistant Fire Chiefs Michael Gala, 62, Jardin, 61, and Michael Massucci, 59, Leeb, 54, retired EMS Chief James Booth, 59, and EMS Computer Aided Dispatch Programming Manager and Deputy Director Carla Murphy, 56, say they were targeted by Kavanagh and her team “because they were at or near the age of 60″ according to the lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
The lawsuit was filed in March, about a month after Gala, Jardin and Assistant Chief Fred Schaaf were all demoted to deputy chief by Kavanagh.

Their demotions sparked a mass protest by FDNY chiefs who criticized Kavanagh and asked to be demoted in rank and moved out of department headquarters.
Kavanagh hasn’t signed off on any of the demotion requests, FDNY officials said.
The lawsuit claims Kavanagh and FDNY Deputy Commissioner JonPaul Augier conspired to force the older chiefs “off medical leave” as well as “threaten to withhold earned or customary benefits.” They also “cut off their computer access” and “leaked false information about them to the press.”
Schaaf, 60, was added to the lawsuit as a plaintiff in the amended complaint, and Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Phil Banks was added as a defendant for advising Kavanagh and rubber-stamping the demotions, the lawsuit claims.
Over the years, the FDNY has been vocal about the dangers of lithium-ion battery fires, which have taken 13 lives so far this year, including four residents living above a Chinatown bicycle repair shop that burst into flames when an e-bike battery exploded.
Since officially becoming fire commissioner, Kavanagh has been on the forefront of the fight, promoting a massive crack down on bicycle shops that are improperly storing and charging e-bike and scooter batteries. She’s also written opinion pieces about their dangers and has asked the federal government to join the fight against these volatile batteries.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member


‘A Dangerous Combination’: Teenagers’ Accidents Expose E-Bike Risks​

The e-bike industry is booming, but many vehicles are not legal for teenagers, and accidents are on the rise.

Reporting from Irvine, Calif.
July 29, 2023
On a Thursday evening in late June, Clarissa Champlain learned that her 15-year-old son Brodee had been in a terrible crash, the latest teen victim of an e-bike accident.
He had been riding from home to shot-putting practice. The e-bike, a model made by Rad Power, had a top speed of 20 miles per hour, but his route took him on a busy road with a 55-mile-per-hour limit. While turning left, he was clipped by a Nissan van and thrown violently.

Ms. Champlain rushed to the hospital and was taken to Brodee’s room. She could see the marks left by the chin strap of his bike helmet. “I went to grab his head and kiss him,” she recalled. “But there was no back of his head. It wasn’t the skull, it was just mush.”

Three days later, another teenage boy was taken to the same hospital after the e-bike he was riding collided with a car, leaving him sprawled beneath a BMW, hurt but alive. In the days following, the town of Encinitas, where both incidents occurred, declared a state of emergency for e-bike safety.
The e-bike industry is booming, but the summer of 2023 has brought sharp questions about how safe e-bikes are, especially for teenagers. Many e-bikes can exceed the 20-mile-per-hour speed limit that is legal for teenagers in most states; some can go 70 miles an hour. But even when ridden at legal speeds, there are risks, especially for young, inexperienced riders merging into traffic with cars.
“The speed they are going is too fast for sidewalks, but it’s too slow to be in traffic,” said Jeremy Collis, a sergeant at the North Coastal Station of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating Brodee’s accident.
To some policymakers and law enforcement officials, the technology has far outpaced existing laws, regulations and safety guidelines. Police and industry officials charge that some companies appear to knowingly sell products that can easily evade speed limits and endanger young riders.

“It’s not like a bicycle,” Sergeant Collis said. “But the laws are treating it like any bicycle.”
Two federal agencies, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said they were evaluating “how best to oversee the safety of e-bikes,” according to a statement provided by the highway safety agency.

Communities have begun to alert their residents to the dangers of e-bikes. In June, the police department in Bend, Ore., ran a public service campaign acquainting the public with the e-bike laws that were frequently being broken there. Days later, a 15-year-old boy was killed when the e-bike he was riding was struck by a van.

Sheila Miller, who is the spokeswoman for the Bend police and helped develop the public service campaign, emphasized that not everything that calls itself an e-bike qualifies as one, or is safe or legal for minors. Under Oregon law, which is more restrictive than those in most states, a person must be at least 16 to ride an e-bike of any kind.
“Parents, please don’t buy these bikes for kids when they are not legally allowed to ride them,” Ms. Miller said. “And if you own an e-bike, make sure that everyone who is using them knows the rules of the road.”

Booming Industry, Modest Regulation​

The typical e-bike has functioning pedals as well as a motor that is recharged with an electrical cord; the pedals and the motor can be used individually or simultaneously. Unlike a combustion engine, an electric motor can accelerate instantly, which makes e-bikes appealing to ride.

E-bikes are also seen as vital in shifting the transportation system away from emission-spewing cars and the congestion they create, said Rachel Hultin, the policy and governmental affairs director for Bicycle Colorado, a nonprofit advocacy group for bicycle safety and policy. E-bikes and electric scooters are part of the so-called micromobility movement, propelling commuters and other people short distances across crowded spaces.

The number of e-bikes being sold is unclear because, like regular bikes, they do not need to be registered with the government. (Cars, motorcycles and mopeds must be registered through a state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.) Many are sold directly to consumers over the internet, rather than through physical retailers that often track sales. John MacArthur, an e-bike industry expert with the Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University, estimated that roughly one million e-bikes would be sold in the United States this year.

Ashely Kingsley and her daughter, Scout, at Charlie’s Electric Bike store in Encinitas, where they were renting e-bikes for the day.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

The minimal regulation around e-bikes is a selling point for the industry. Super73, a company in Irvine, Calif., that makes popular models, advertises on its website: “RIDE WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS. No license, registration, or insurance required.”


“It’s one of the very unique categories of vehicle that there really isn’t any kind of onerous regulation,” a company co-founder, LeGrand Crewse, said in an interview, noting that helmet requirements were also modest, depending on the state and the rider’s age.
Law enforcement officials have begun to express concerns about the minimal training required of teenage e-bike owners, and about their behavior. Car drivers ages 16 to 19 are three times as likely to be killed in a crash as drivers 20 or older, and bicyclists ages 10 to 24 have the highest rate of emergency room visits for crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some states have begun to raise the training requirements for young drivers, including adding graduated license programs that require extended hours of supervised driving, limit night driving or restrict the number or age of passengers.
The California Legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit e-bike use by people under 12 and “state the intent of the Legislature to create an e-bike license program with an online written test and a state-issued photo identification for those persons without a valid driver’s license.”
“I know the e-bike situation is evolving,” said Sergeant Collis of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office. “But personally, with all these bikes, you should have at least a permit or a license to ride them at the speed they’re going.”

As a transportation solution, e-bikes seem promising. “I’m really bullish about middle and high schoolers being able to use e-bikes,” said Ms. Hultin of Bicycle Colorado. She noted that e-bikes offered children and busy families more transportation options at lower cost. But she worried that the vehicles could lead to an unsafe mix of untrained e-cyclists and unaware car drivers.
That problem, Ms. Hultin said, was exacerbated by “an algae bloom of noncompliant e-bikes.” She was referring to products on the market that call themselves e-bikes but are not, either because they can go faster than allowed by law or because, once purchased, they can be modified to do so.

One vehicle that has drawn attention for its speed is made by Sur-Ron, whose products have been involved in several recent deaths. In June in Cardiff, Wales, two boys on a Sur-Ron bike died in a crash while being followed by the police; days earlier, a boy riding a Sur-Ron in Greater Manchester had died after colliding with an ambulance.

In its marketing materials, Sur-Ron describes one model, the Light Bee Electric Bike, as “easy to maneuver like a bicycle, with the torque and power of an off-road motorcycle.” Its operating manual cautions the owner to “please follow the traffic rules and with the safe speed (the top speed for this electric vehicle is 20 km/h).”
But the speed restraint — equivalent to about 12 m.p.h. — can be removed by simply clipping a wire, a procedure that is widely shared in online videos, and which law enforcement officials said appeared to be there by design.
“There are all kinds of videos on how to jailbreak your Sur-Ron,” said Capt. Christopher McDonald of the Sheriff’s Department in Orange County, Calif., where e-bike accidents and injuries are rising. With the speed wire clipped, the vehicle can approach 70 miles per hour, he said. Several requests for comment were sent through the Sur-Ron website but did not receive a response.

Matt Moore, the general counsel for PeopleForBikes, the main trade group for bicycles and e-bikes, said he worried about products like Sur-Ron’s. “Some products are sold as ostensibly compliant but are easily modified by the user with the knowledge and presumably the blessing of the manufacturer,” he said. “Unfortunately, there appears to be a lack of resources at the federal level to investigate and address e-mobility products that may actually be motor vehicles.”

Tragedy in Encinitas​


The day after Brodee entered the hospital, his family sat at his bedside. They played his favorite music, including Kendrick Lamar and early Wu-Tang Clan. “I read to him for hours,” his mother said. “We wanted to wake up his brain.”
Three days later, as Brodee clung to life, Niko Sougias, the owner of Charlie’s Electric Bike, a popular e-bike shop in town, was driving in Encinitas on Highway 101 when he saw two teenage boys riding Sur-Rons in the opposite direction.

“They were doing wheelies,” Mr. Sougias said. He has grown concerned about the e-bike industry, he said, and does not sell many models that are popular with teenagers.
His route that Saturday followed the path of the boys on the Sur-Rons. Moments later, after a turn, Mr. Sougias saw that one of the Sur-Ron riders had collided with an S.U.V., had been thrown from his bike and was under a BMW.
According to the police, the Sur-Ron rider had been seen driving recklessly and was found at fault. “He was lucky to escape with his life,” Mr. Sougias said.

Ms. Champlain was at the hospital with Brodee when the boy who had been riding the Sur-Ron was brought in. Paramedics stopped by Brodee’s room to check in. “I can’t believe I’m here again for this,” she said one of them had told her; the same paramedic had brought in Brodee by ambulance.

Hours later, Brodee was pronounced dead. He was a beloved young man with a bright future ahead of him. He was fluent in Spanish and had a college-level knowledge of Japanese; he could dead-lift 300 pounds and, in 2020, was named student of the year at his high school. “I had so many people call me to tell me they’d lost their best friend,” his mother said.
Ms. Champlain said witnesses had told her that her son “did everything right,” including signaling to make a left turn.
“There should be more education for drivers with the change that’s happened,” she said. “I’d never seen an e-bike on the road until three years ago. Now I see hundreds.”
“They’re treated like bicycles when they’re not. They’re not equal.”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
E-bikes now the leading cause of fatal fires.

FDNY: 2 separate fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in 1 day, 1 dead​

newyork
BY KRISTIE KELESHIAN
UPDATED ON: AUGUST 12, 2023 / 11:58 PM / CBS NEW YORK


NEW YORK -- We've now learned two fires in New York City on Friday were caused by lithium-ion batteries, and one of those fires turned deadly.
Video shows flames in between two multi-family homes on Tinton Street in Morrisania section of the Bronx on Friday. Each sustained serious damage, but fire officials say thankfully, there were no reported injuries.

Luis Garcia owns one of the houses and is now living in a hotel.
"There was one guy that had just moved in from a shelter, that I rented him a room, just yesterday. I've never seen something like this," he told CBS New York on Saturday.
Fire officials say the home where the fire started was vacant. The cause was determined to be a lithium-ion battery.
The FDNY said as of July, there have been 87 lithium-ion battery fires causing injuries so far this year and 13 deaths.
"As leaders, I think we should be able to do better than everybody else ... If it's going to be allowed, there has to be a better way for us to do this and to handle it," Garcia said.
Just a couple of hours later Friday afternoon, another fire broke out on 101st Street in Ozone Park, Queens. This fire was fatal, killing 93-year-old Kam Mei Koo, the mother of the building's landlord.

The FDNY points to the same accidental cause -- a lithium-ion battery from an e-bike. The city's Department of Buildings issued a violation for illegal e-bike repairs in the basement.
But what exactly makes these batteries more prone to catch fire?
"All those potholes, every time somebody drops the bike or gets run into," said Rodger Mort, COO of Packaging and Crating Technologies.
Mort's company manufactures fire suppressant Thermo Shield paper and the LionXtinguisher, both meant for lithium-ion battery fires.
He'd like to see the city repurpose abandoned concrete buildings as safe charging stations.

"If they could do stuff like that and keep 'em out of people's houses and away from the children, that'd be really good," Mort said.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh testified before the Consumer Product Safety Commission in July, calling for stricter regulations on these batteries. She said they are now the top cause of fatal fires in New York.

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
https://brooklyn.news12.com/

NYC E-vehicle Safety Alliance calls for increased regulation, accountability​

Aug 30, 2023, 5:56pmUpdated 23h ago
By: Ashley Mastronardi

The Manhattan Bridge was the scene of a bloody e-bike crash that left four people injured in July. As the number of e-vehicles in the city continues to rise, so do calls for them to be regulated.

“We have 45 people that have already suffered injuries,” Andew Fine of the NYC E-vehicle Safety Alliance told News 12. “One of our founding members is a celloist – a professional celloist – who got hit by a moped in front of Lincoln Center and unfortunately suffered a traumatic brain injury and she’s partially paralyzed. She can no longer play the cello, she’s heartbroken and out of work. This is just another moped that hit her and took off with no repercussion whatsoever.”

The NYC E-vehicle Safety Alliance is a group of 400 concerned citizens, including victims of e-vehicle accidents. The culprits? E-bikes and mopeds, which there seems to be mass confusion over. E-bikes can legally be driven on city streets with no license, but mopeds cannot. To make matters more confusing, some mopeds are being sold erroneously as e-bikes. Fly E-Bike – a brand name – even prints the word e-bike on some of its mopeds. The NYPD recently did a sweep and confiscated illegal mopeds across the city.
“We need to be creating the solutions necessary so that all of these forms of transportation can co-exist. That includes the infrastructure needed for electric-based bikes to get around,” Transportation Alternative’s Juan Restrepo told News 12.
Restrepo says infrastructure - such as more bike lanes, safe places for bikes to stop and charging stations - is the answer.
“The conversation about enforcement and regulation oftentimes resides on human labor to make it safe. I’ve heard people say we need to put security guards or safety guards at specific places. These are people who can be shifted around, but you can’t shift around safe infrastructure,” he said. “It is car violence that is the most pernicious and the worst offense here. And yes there are crashes that happen from e-bikes or from mopeds, but they are vastly outnumbered by the amount of car crashes that are happening.”
According to Department of Transportation data, there were almost 30 deaths that involved e-vehicles in 2022. But the alliance says there’s no way to know how many accidents have actually taken place. The types of accidents listed on an NYPD accident report don’t include a check box for e-vehicle. Upper East Side Assembly Member Alex Bores recently introduced a bill meant to add to get a checkbox to police reports and coroner reports that indicates if an e-vehicle was involved in an accident. Fine says without accurate reporting, there’s no chance for regulation.
“We’re seeing so many of these injuries that are happening when e-bikes or mopeds are going against lights, against traffic, on the sidewalk. E-bikes are hitting e-bikes, and we really want accountability,” Fine said. “We want these registered, licensed, inspected and insured so that the batteries don’t burn down your apartment building and so that people don’t crash into each other and not have accountability, and accountability is having a license plate on your bike to identify who owns that bike.”
As for Transportation Alternatives, Fine says some of their donors are the creators of apps that rely heavily on e-vehicles - including DoorDash. Transportation Alternatives says its donors have no effect on its policies. Despite the mudslinging, both groups want safety for both e-vehicle riders and pedestrians. They’re calling upon the city to do that, but it won’t fall on one agency. Whether it’s through infrastructure changes, regulation or both – a safe e-vehicle landscape will depend on collaboration between local politicians, the NYPD and transportation agencies like the DOT.
“We’re outnumbered. It’s gotten so out of control. We need a full court press to take our streets back,” Fine said.
The E-vehicle Safety Alliance is also asking Central Park to ban e-bikes in the park after a pilot program made them legal this past summer.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member


Woman struck by e-bike driver going wrong way in Murray Hill​


A pedestrian was struck and critically injured by a e-bicyclist going the wrong way in Manhattan. Johny Fernandez has the story.
MURRAY HILL, Manhattan (WABC) -- A pedestrian was struck and critically injured by a e-bicyclist going the wrong way who fled the scene Friday morning.
The 59-year-old woman was crossing Second Avenue westbound on 38th Street just after 7:30 a.m.
That's when police say a man on an e-bike, northbound in the wrong direction on Second Avenue, struck her when she stepped onto the street to cross with the signal.
He fled before police arrived.
She was rushed to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition.
 

David Goldsmith

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OMG! Judson Rev. Micah Bucey hit by wrong-way e-biker, suffers devastating leg injury​

OCTOBER 15, 2023
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Next Sunday, Micah Bucey will be installed as senior minister at Judson Memorial Church. He’ll be easy to spot — he’ll be the guy on crutches and wearing a leg immobilizer.
It will be the first time Bucey has stepped outside of his East Side apartment in two weeks. The last time he did, he was violently blindsided by a man riding an electric bicycle the wrong way down the service road that encircles Stuyvesant Town. The collision left Bucey, 43, with a tibial plateau fracture — a serious and debilitating injury.

He was rushed to the emergency room, and six days later had surgery to repair the damage. The recovery period is two months. Despite being on prescription painkillers, he’s currently in a lot of pain.
Last Sunday, instead of Bucey at the pulpit, Judson had a guest speaker in his place. Bucey was patched in on a video call. Telling the congregants how he was hit by the wrong-way cyclist, he urged them all to “be careful” out there.
The injury has turned his world completely upside down.
“It was quite a shock and I’m glad it wasn’t worse than it was,” the cleric told The Village Sun in a phone interview. “I’m still a bit in shock.”
The incident happened Tues., Oct. 3, around 12:15 p.m. The progressive faith leader had just left the Stuyvesant Town apartment he shares with his husband and was setting out on one of his favorite things to do — make his crosstown walk to Judson Church, on Washington Square South.
Striding toward First Avenue, he had just crossed the complex’s service road, which runs northbound at that spot, when he noticed someone he knew and turned back, wanting to say hello.
“I stepped one foot into the service road,” he said, “and was immediately hit.”
Bucey was struck by the wrong-way e-biker after the pastor had just left his home at Stuyvesant Town and was on his way to the church — but had stepped back into the service road to say hi to an acquaintance. (Photo by The Village Sun)
The cyclist came from behind him, to his left. The impact sent the unsuspecting reverend to the ground. Gathering his wits, he saw the cyclist had been riding a Zoomo e-bike, making him initially think he was a deliveryperson.
But the cyclist — who looked to be in his late 20s and did not leave the scene — was apparently not a deliveryman and told him that he leases the bike.

The cyclist urged Bucey not to try to get up and called 911 to get him an ambulance. He also left Bucey his card. Bucey has since spoken to him on the phone.
“I’m glad that he gave me his number,” he said. However, he added, “I don’t know why he would be going the wrong way.”
“I’m just so glad that I didn’t fall and hit my head and get more seriously injured,” he reflected.
As for the cyclist, Bucey said he “kind of got pushed off” his bike but wasn’t hurt.
“Someone on the street said to him, ‘Are you O.K.?’ He said, ‘Yes, I think my bike took the brunt of it.'”
Bucey, who has been at Judson since 2010, was named the historic Greenwich Village Baptist church’s senior minister on June 1.
As a forgiving person, he initially wondered if, in fact, he himself was to blame for the devastating collision.
“I try to be generous and give people the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “I’m far better at blaming myself than to say that someone else is to blame.”
As for how fast the cyclist was going, Bucey said, “I don’t know — but fast enough to break my tibia.”
Zoomo bikes typically weigh around 55 pounds — twice as heavy as pedal-powered bikes —and can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour.

Bucey was left with a nearly one-quarter-inch fracture down his tibia (the leg bone below the knee), as well as a depression in the part of the tibia where it connects to the knee.
“The surgeon said there was a lot of damage,” he noted.
Fortunately, Bucey had a top surgeon, the head of orthopedics at Mount Sinai Hospital. The man of faith said he has learned that while tibial plateau fractures make up just 1 percent of orthopedic surgeries each year, they are quite common in people hit by cars and bicycles — since it’s where a car bumper or bike tire usually hits pedestrians.
Micah Bucey greeted Lois Rakoff, who organized last year’s Doris Diether memorial bench event. (Photo by Zella Jones)
Bucey currently has to wear an immobilizer to keep his leg straight, at least during the initial stage of the recovery. As time goes on, the immobilizer will periodically be adjusted to allow an increasingly greater range of motion for his knee.
“It has completely disrupted my life, my husband’s life,” he said of the injury.
His mother has come to New York City and is currently living with them to help during Bucey’s recovery process.
“I’m hobbled,” the pastor said. “I can’t even put my underwear on by myself. It is very, very painful.”
The injury is also causing another kind of pain — namely, in the preacher’s pocket.
“The expense of this is going to be a hindrance to me,” Bucey said, though adding, “It’s not disastrous to me. The city is full of people for who this would be disastrous.”
As for the cyclist who hit him, Bucey said, “He leases the bike from Zoomo. He has no license to ride it, and he has no insurance.”
In short, the cyclist — though seemingly clearly at fault — will not be helping defray any of Bucey’s medical costs.
“I love the idea of turning New York into a city where life is not dominated by cars — but not with no accountability,” he said. “If we’re going to have these [e-bikes] on the streets, we’ve got make sure that the motorists on them need to appreciate the gravity that they have heavier, faster vehicles. I think requiring licenses and for there to be some kind of insurance would at least make people think twice about not following traffic laws and about maybe not having an e-bike versus a bicycle.”

Bucey personally doesn’t even comprehend the need for e-bikes in a city like New York in the first place.
“This is a city clogged with people and vehicles,” he said, “and I don’t know why these people would need to go as fast as these e-bikes go.”
As he continues to recover, among the things he misses most is the simple joy of his walk to his job at Judson. But he will be laid up for two months — and his leg really hurts.
“I love walking in the city,” he said. “It’s like a 25-minute walk [to Judson]. It’s kind of the perfect walk. I am really sad that I can’t walk. It’s really painful — and I’m pretty nervous, too. I’m still a bit shaken — just by it’s happening.”
In the meantime, he’s appreciating all the well wishes he’s been getting from church members and others.
“I’m soaking up all the good energy I can,” he said.
Bucey will be installed as Judson Memorial Church’s senior minister on Sun., Oct. 22, at 3 p.m. Donna Schaper, the church’s previous senior minister, retired from Judson in 2021.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

The City That Never Sleeps … or Shops in Person​

By Sonja Anderson
Ms. Anderson is a freelance writer in Brooklyn.
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Walking through New York City — America’s great harborer of people, culture and activity — can feel like strolling the world’s largest outdoor mall. Opportunities to acquire are everywhere, waiting either around the corner or at the end of a subway ride: exotic foods, knickknacks, records, books, medicine, tents, computers, sunglasses and everything else. It’s difficult to imagine a product one can’t buy in Manhattan, let alone the boroughs.
So why, oh, why are over 2.4 million packages delivered in this city every single weekday?
If those packages were people, they’d be metropolitan Austin, Texas. If they were stone blocks, they’d top the Great Pyramid of Giza. Even if each of those packages were as thin as the Postal Service’s smallest priority shipping box — an inch and three-quarters thick — when stacked like books, the daily pile would be as tall as 241 Empire State Buildings, one atop the other.
Since 2009, New Yorkers have been increasing their number of daily household deliveries like a rash. By 2017, it had tripled to more than 1.1 million. The figure swelled to 1.5 million by 2019. Then, within the four following years — even as deliveries decreased nationwide — the daily number grew by 60 percent.
This city isn’t equipped to accommodate the delivery trucks, cars and motorbikes needed to move such an amount — not without cost. Our traffic, pedestrians and already precarious air quality are suffering, and neither a measly monopoly lawsuit against Amazon nor government-authorized delivery bikes will be of much help. The package flood can be dammed only by its sources: lazy, track-pad-happy New Yorkers.

For a while, the pandemic was a valid excuse for buying online. To avoid spreading the virus, housebound Americans inflamed their long-growing dependency on e-commerce, with online sales increasing by 43 percent in 2020. Now, New York, like everywhere else, has moved on from social distancing: Subway ridership is up and mostly unmasked, and tourism’s certainly back. But our retail sector’s recovery lags the nation’s. New Yorkers — though largely stuck in small apartments you’d think they’d love to escape — have become too accustomed to the convenience of sedentary buying. Online shopping remains the default.
The Manhattan borough president, Mark Levine, put out a report last fall about the delivery surge, which “exacerbates congestion, road safety issues, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, package waste and a variety of other quality-of-life concerns in Manhattan and throughout the city.” The main problem here is last mile delivery, the last step in the journey a package takes from a warehouse to a customer’s doorstep.

It’s that last mile that stuffs the streets with carriers’ trucks, vans and motorbikes, all of which dose the air with carbon dioxide, with large delivery vehicles contributing the most dangerous particulate matter. They worsen already high concentrations of traffic-related pollution in poor neighborhoods, which suffer the most. The trucks often park on sidewalks and in bike lanes or simply double park, plugging up traffic, which means that not only are pedestrians and cyclists inconvenienced or put in danger, but that all vehicles must stay on the road for longer, spitting fumes. If business continues as usual, the World Economic Forum predicts, emissions from delivery traffic in the world’s 100 largest cities will rise 32 percent by 2030, while traffic congestion will increase by more than 21 percent.
The next big thing in New York delivery is the extra-large commercial cargo bike. These are electric bicycles attached to metal storage containers, just bigger than your average golf cart, which over-excited city officials may give the go-ahead to perch on sidewalks, the rationale being that e-bikes are better than cars. I agree. But you know what’s better than e-bikes? Cutting back on the more than 12 million packages delivered every week.

A package enjoying its last mile on an e-bike doesn’t mean it hasn’t been made from plastic in another country, flown or shipped to this one using oil or coal and packaged in a plastic envelope or cardboard box. Waste abounds (even if recyclable, this material rarely finds new life). If we want to do better for the environment, we shouldn’t be taking steps to enable more e-commerce, but instead considering how much we could help ourselves by not buying online.

That seems simple, but our problem runs deep. Americans have been nursing a shopping addiction for a while, and e-commerce has only deepened our problem. The psychologist Joshua Klapow told Time magazine that online shopping is “psychologically so powerful.” It can temporarily lift one’s mood, providing a special type of retail therapy purified by a total lack of effort. E-buyers can bypass the schlep, the dreaded walk-around inside a store, the money handling or grueling Apple Pay tap. The human interaction.
As urban designer David Vega-Barachowitz told MIT Technology Review, New Yorkers’ delivery problem grew from repeated failures to appreciate the opportunities in their own neighborhoods. “We live in a city whose main pitch is the ability to walk out your door, get a carton of milk, go to a bookstore, go to a movie, etc.,” he said, “and convenience culture is threatening all of that.”
And unlike most Americans, who do most of their in-person shopping in eco-unfriendly cars, New Yorkers have access to a huge system of more sustainable public transportation. Our shopping trips can blend into that system without making a splash.

There are a few valid reasons people might choose to order something online. Maybe they are unable to leave their home. Maybe a store doesn’t have a garment in their size. But such motivations apply to a minority of commerce cases.
For most, it’s time to quit the safety blanket. It’s time to relearn the commuter’s detour, the leaving of the house or the simple abstention from an unnecessary online purchase. If you can, try cutting online ordering for a month. Consider the difference between want and need. Buy used things. Save money. Save carbon. Discover what your city has to offer. It’s a dare.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
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[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)]Lithium-ion battery sparked Brooklyn brownstone fire that killed 3: FDNY

By Brian Price [COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)]Published 38 mins ago Updated 38 mins ago[/COLOR]​

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The cause of the fire still remains under investigation. News 4’s Checkey Beckford reports.

A ferocious early morning fire that tore through a Brooklyn brownstone and killed three family members was sparked by a lithium-ion battery, fire marshals determined.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said the fire claimed "three generations of one family who are an integral part" of the Crown Heights community.
The fire tore through the brownstone on Albany Avenue, fully engulfing all floors of the residence before firefighters could get to the scene around 5 a.m. Sunday. Flames could be seen shooting out of several windows.
Fire investigators recovered scooters from the ground floor that they believe belonged to one of the people killed in the inferno.
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Albertha West, 81, Michael West, 58, and Jamiyl West, 33, were discovered on the second and third floors of the brownstone, according to officials.
Once firefighters had the situation under control and all patients had been transported to a hospital or treated at the scene, the total number of people injured stood at 12. Most of those injured suffered from smoke inhalation.

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The “very difficult, dangerous fire operation,” necessitated additional firefighting crews and resources. FDNY Chief of Operations John Esposito said a 3-alarm response was triggered.
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Kavanagh said Sunday's fire brings the number of people killed in the city by lithium-ion battery fires to 17.
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