One day my European neighbour went out for a jog by a canal that leads to Beijing's Summer Palace. He didn't know it but he was about to get hit by one of China's “silent killers”, an electric bicycle.

BAM!

When he came to a few moments later, his face throbbed with pain and he could feel blood dripping off his chin, the red fluid splattering the ground repeatedly like a leaking faucet. One of his central incisors lay on the ground in front of him and a terrified young man straddling an electric bike stared in shock from above.

Luckily, the young man had a sense of responsibility; he dismounted, apologised profusely and made sure my neighbour got to the hospital. The electric bike was so quiet my neighbour never heard it coming. All it took was one step to the right, to avoid a break in the concrete, for him to have a close encounter of the electric bicycle kind.

Electric bikes are all the rage in China today. According to some reports there are as many as 120 million of them zooming around on Chinese streets compared to roughly 50,000 a decade ago. They have gotten so big even Yao Ming wants part of the action.

Earlier this year the Chinese giant became the pitchman for Gamma (Jie Ma) electric bikes. In one commercial he plays basketball with a bike, on Gamma's website he touts the bikes are, “worth your trust” (ni zhi de xin lai).  

If Yao Ming says it, then it has to be true. Electric bikes are worth our trust, and by trust I mean that you trust one day one of them will slam into you like a bat out of hell.

Just last week while I was riding my non-electric bicycle to work. I checked my blind spot before trying to go around a puddle of muddy water. Before I knew it an electric bike came out of the blue and clipped me. The male driver stopped and looked at me like it was my fault. I just gave him the 'crazy eye' and let a few unsavoury sentences fly. The man just remounted his silent-death-mobile and zoomed off without a sound. I was lucky, I just had a small bruise and a muddy shoe.

My wife, like my European neighbour, wasn't so lucky. A few years ago she was clipped by one as she came out of the gate of a university in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. She fell, hit her head and had a ringing in her ears for weeks.

The end of the death mobiles?

According to a Wall Street Journal report there were nearly 2,500 traffic deaths from electric bikes in 2007, up from a mere 34 in 2001. I would hate to see the numbers this year, but it is completely reasonable to understand why some have dubbed the electric bike China's “silent killer”.

Last year the Northern city of Shenyang implemented a partial ban on electric bikes, but this year the Southern metropolis of Shenzhen has taken it one step further and has instituted a six month trial ban on electric bikes.

According to statistics from Shenzhen's traffic police bureau, 64 people were killed in the city because of electric bikes in 2010.

Shenzhen's ban has caused a heated debate. After all, there are an estimated 500,000 electric bikes in Shenzhen alone where affordable prices have made them the choice mode of transportation for Chinese not wealthy enough to own a car.

Class debates aside, Shenzhen's decision seems to be based on firm rational ground. Sun Wei, a traffic management assistant in Shenzhen's Luohu district told China Daily, “The [electric] bicycles are capable of high speeds and there is no registration requirement.”

I think that hits the nail pretty much on the head. With no registration there is no requirement or testing of operational skill and with no testing people are going to ride their electric bikes just like they were normal bicycles. In particular that means that they won't pay very close attention to traffic rules. They will zoom around at speeds only drug-induced cyclists can dream of and with a momentum much greater than even an old rusty steel Flying Pigeon bicycle can amass. Hence the traffic deaths and moniker.

Inwardly, due to my own experiences, I support Shenzhen's bold plan to eliminate the electric bike menace, but practically I have to concede that electric bikes are a bit of a catch-22 in China.

Is the ban really the way to go?

Not everyone will be able to have a car (for god's sake imagine if everyone did have a car!) and with more environmentally safe batteries (like lithium-ion batteries) electric bikes seem to be a plausible green alternative for personal transportation.

I guess that is what Yao Ming was banking on when he chose to endorse Gamma electric bikes. After all, if you visit Gamma's website all the company seems to do is laud the “green” nature of its electric bike lines with fresh green fields and a smiling nuclear family that of course uses Gamma electric bikes.

In the end maybe the problems with electric bikes are part of a bigger trend like with many things in China; a meteoric rise followed by dealing with the issues and problems that meteoric rise created. Whether it is housing prices, cars or electric bikes, they all shot through the clouds but now China has to deal with a property bubble, jam-packed streets and idiots swerving through traffic on electric bikes like the road is their own personal video game.

If the test ban in Shenzhen works out it just might be game over for electric bikes in China, but hey I won't be complaining.
 

Related Links
Electric Bikes Banned in Shenzhen Starting June 6th: Violators Face 200 RMB Fine
Bicycle Accidents Kill 49 in Guangzhou from January to May
How to: Get a Driver’s License in China

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: electric bikes China silent killers China Shenzhen electric bike ban traffic accidents China