As a district councillor I have had direct experience of the corrosive effect illegal electric mopeds are having on the general public’s perception of cycling in general.
We’ve been trying to get some barriers removed from a local cycling cut through as they were preventing those with cargo bikes or adaptive cycles from getting through.
The flurry of letters we recieved from nearby residents were full-on “there will be deaths and their blood will be on your hands” type missives. A bit much when most of the riders using the route are kids on their way to the local secondary school.
Talking to the residents and digging a bit deeper it became clear that it wasn’t actual cyclists that had these people up in arms, it was delivery riders in illegal electric mopeds, every single one of the negative experiences that came up was with one of these, riding like muppets, no lights, on pavements etc etc.
We are forming an active travel group on the council which I intend to join to push for better and more connected safe cycle infrastructure in my city. We are going to be fought every step of the way and the illegal mopeds and the way the public conflate them with cyclists is going to be major factor in the opposition we will see.
We are also already seeing bike shops closing because the panic about battery fires from ali express specials has jacked up insurance premiums to a ridiculous level, even for shops who never touch the dodgy stuff.
If the police enforced existing laws and Deliveroo and Co were held financially responsible for any fines etc whenever one of their riders gets collared this problem would dissappear fairly quickly.
