PETER HITCHENS: Blood still spatters the path from an e-bike collision my wife witnessed. Why is the Government so deaf to their danger? By Peter Hitchens for The Daily Mail Published: 01:56, 29 August 2024 | Updated: 01:57, 29 August 2024 e-mail View comments There was blood on the track as I made my way to work yesterday morning. Yes, actual human blood, a substantial patch of gore, slowly drying on the bonded gravel surface of a busy cycle path.
It was, I happen to know, the blood of a cyclist, involved in what I must call a ‘collision’ with a far faster, far heavier electric bike. This took place on Sunday. My wife, Eve, saw the horrible aftermath, but not the crash, and arrived home soon afterwards, white-faced and shocked, saying: ‘It could have been me.
’ Mrs Hitchens is no softie. She has seen some pretty awful things, especially when we lived in Moscow where traffic victims could be left for long periods by the roadside and the Soviet-era ambulances were often streaked with blood that nobody bothered to wash off. But that was savage, raw, semi-civilised Soviet Moscow.
This was beautiful, ultra-civilised, gentle Oxford. On this occasion, she saw a small group of people gathered round an unconscious fellow-creature, bleeding from his head, pale and still. This being Oxford, one of those at hand was a doctor, who briskly told the 999 operator that the case looked pretty serious, and an ambulance must come.
It did, though the paramedics had to reach the scene on foot from 300 yards away. The e-bike rider was long gone. I have for some years been puzzled by what seemed to be a government policy of encouraging e-bikes and e-scooters (File image) It could have been me, too.
I often use this path, an immensely busy trunk route for cyclists in Oxford, a city where many thousands ride pushbikes, pretty much on principle. We think it is good for us, and good for our neighbours, and good for the world. For many years it was very safe, though it is no longer as e-bikes multiply.
But if it weren’t for me, you’d never know this had happened, and I have grave doubts about whether it will ever find its way into official statistics. Which is a big, bad problem. My thanks to the local ambulance people who confirmed it, saying interestingly: ‘We don’t normally provide information on these types of historical[!] incidents but this one seems to have generated more media interest than would normally be expected, so I’m happy to provide you with the following statement.
’ It read: ‘We received a 999 call at 17:19 on Sunday, 25 August, with the caller reporting a collision on the Marston cycle path ...
leaving one cyclist seriously injured. ‘We sent two ambulances and a rapid response vehicle to the incident. The team treated an approximately 60-year-old male for head and facial injuries at the scene before transporting them to the John Radcliffe Hospital.
’ As I write this, Thames Valley Police are officially unaware the event took place, even though I have told them. The local hospital, Oxford’s mighty John Radcliffe, loftily refuses to comment on the victim’s condition. It is only thanks to the South Central Ambulance Service that any record exists.
So why am I so exercised about this? It matters. The whole country is rapidly being changed for the worse by an avoidable, reversible mistake, for which here is hard, painful evidence. I have for some years been puzzled by what seemed to be a government policy of encouraging e-bikes and e-scooters.
Most normal human beings hate them, though a few funky urbanites think they are the future, such as the metropolitan journalist Janice Turner who wrote recently: ‘Unlocking a Lime bike makes me feel like a citizen of the future! Leaving a restaurant alone, there’s something swashbuckling about jumping on one and heading into the night. ‘You might bag a particularly peppy bike, one that flies up hills without the need for much pedalling, so you feel like Flashman galloping home on a fast horse.’ Why, when our road safety policy has been strikingly successful in saving lives, has the Department for Transport abandoned it for electric bikes? (File image) And – crucially – she also explained that: ‘My bit of south London is a transport black hole .
.. There’s no Tube, just ill-spaced, unreliable trains.
LTNs [low traffic neighbourhoods] have made driving impossible and bus routes sclerotic.’ She has a – sort of – good point, which I’ll come to. The whole foundation of this country’s road safety policy has been that drivers and riders of motor vehicles should hold licences and pass tests, and that vehicles should be registered and carry number plates.
By these simple rules, the police and courts could deter and punish dangerous driving and easily identify the culprits. Number plates were introduced in 1904, and driving tests in 1934-35, as were zebra crossings and the first 30 mph speed limits. These measures were brought in to deal with terrible carnage on British roads, which was then far worse than it is now – even though there are so many more motor vehicles (41 million such vehicles now, compared to 2.
5 million in 1934). Between 1926 and 1933, 50,000 died on our roads and 1.42 million were injured (roughly 7,000 deaths a year, and about 200,000 injured each year).
In contrast, road deaths for 2022 were 1,711 and 136,000 injured. So why, when our road safety policy has been strikingly successful in saving lives, has the Department for Transport abandoned it for electric bikes? These powerful motor vehicles can now be ridden on our roads and bike tracks, without the rider needing a licence, or the vehicle needing a number plate. Read More PETER HITCHENS: I'm a cyclist but I can't stand them.
.. and I now fully expect that one of those hunched morons dressed in Lycra will one day kill me E-bikes slipped into legality, thanks to an EU change in regulations in 2016.
Their annoying cousins, rented e-scooters, followed soon afterwards, though it is still officially illegal to ride privately-owned versions on public roads, pavements or bike lanes. Don’t listen to the public relations spin that e-bikes help your poor old granny ride up the steep hills of Cornwall or Cumbria. If there are such grannies, I’m sure they have driving licences.
Anyone can see that e-bikes are mostly used by tough food delivery riders, or by fit young urbanites who can’t be bothered to pedal a real bike. Those who witnessed the Oxford accident on Sunday describe a horrible scene with the e-bike rider shouting crazily as he approached the pedal-cyclist from behind at a terrifying speed. For this is the other myth.
Officially e-bikes are limited to 15.5 mph. But it is astoundingly easy to bypass the limiters.
A few weeks ago, I was on the same path when I became aware of an angry whirring behind me. I pulled in, stopped and watched as an electric bike travelling at a minimum of 25mph and probably faster, sped past me, swerving violently as it took the bend. The rider was (as they often are) masked like a bandit.
Fortunately, nobody was walking a dog and there were no small children, as there often are on this path. Had there been, I hate to think what might have happened. But would it have been recorded? Or would it have slipped by unreported, as Sunday’s crash almost did? On Monday, I spoke to an official at the Department of Transport and put in a request for annual figures on reported casualties in accidents and collisions involving electric bicycles, beginning in 2018.
But after two business days, all they could confirm was that they do not hold such figures, but leave it to individual police forces to record. Could it be that the DFT have in fact given up on public transport, and decided that allowing mass use of unlicensed electric bikes and scooters will fill the gap? So best keep quiet about the risks. Can anyone give me a better explanation? Share or comment on this article: PETER HITCHENS: Blood still spatters the path from an e-bike collision my wife witnessed.
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