At this rate, we're going to be a country of e-rickshaws! Cut the red tape on e-rickshaw imports!A sign of the times?
A ride that 'just feels safer'
Some cancer patients are using cargo bikes to get round London so that they feel Covid-safe.www.bbc.co.uk
Replacing black cabs with e-rickshaws would be not be bad thing! Probably faster and certainly better for the environment and road congestion.
It'd help a lot of people avoid getting infected. Rickshaws with passengers at the back are very heavy, and it'd be great if existing bikes could be adapted... does anyone know of any ready-made bike carts for front-facing bike passengers, with wheels steered by the bike's front wheel, through a wireless steering system? I wonder what the legal position is, if both the cart and bike were both powered by independent 250W motors? I know that a lot of taxi firms are struggling at the moment. Even extremely unfit ex-black cab drivers, might be able to manage a package like that.
www.mylondon.news
www.mylondon.news
Illegal on two counts, or three counts depending on which form of defence was employed.
My defence is that the ebike and passenger-carrying pedal-assist etrike were not physically connected, but the ebike is controlling the speed and direction of travel of the passenger-carrying (minimally) pedal assisted (by the passenger(s)) etrike via wireless synchronisation, therefore they should be defined as two separate fully legal 250W pedal assisted vehicles. There really would not be much passenger pedalling at all - despite not being physically connected, the passenger vehicle would nonetheless be pushed along by the ebike, by what we can refer to for now, as "Magic". The passenger's pedal assist would have zero influence on the travelling speed of the unconnected vehicles (while unconnectedly connected by "Magic", but when totally unconnected - the passenger etrike would function as an actual etrike): merely a token to achieve legality and nothing more.
Rickshaws are extremely heavy, of course they'll try and get away with installing massive motors! It always amazes me that such scrawny looking stick-like richshaw drivers in Thailand, India and other countries manage to move them at all.Good in principle for those who stay legit but but the London rickshaws that operated before last year got a really bad reputation as the shoddy providers take advantage of the opportunity.
Police seize 65 rickshaws with illegal motors added to make them go faster
Modified rickshaws count as motor vehicles and are illegal without insurance and a driving licence
Is the 'appalling reputation' of London's rickshaw drivers justified?
There are calls for more to be done to stop some drivers ripping off tourists and riding on footpaths
E rickshaws causing problems in India. Apparently human only (ie non cycle) drawn rickshaws were banned in the early 1950s.
www.independent.co.uk
Not so, the e-bike doing th controlling means it is one vehicle and not a legal one. Uniquely in British law all motorised vehicles are banned from public roads unless specifically permitted for each classified type. That permission is obtained by either type approval or an exemption under type approval law. Our pedelecs operate under such an exemption provides they comply with the terms of that exemption. Your design could not be type approved or exempted on safety grounds due to the overall laws governing pedelc design.
Oncee again illegal at present since there is no permission for a powered trailer pushing or following pedelec. In fact there's are a tiny number such vehicles in Britain and the Netherlands operating under "under the radar" at users risk due to there being so little policing of pedelcs. Once again no chance of type approval without parliament passing new law first, though a short time limited trial might be permitted akin to the very restricted one for scooters at present.
I wonder how many of those 65 seized bikes were in the same situation as the case I was involved in recently, where the police meaured the peak power from the battery instead of checking the continuous rated power of the motor. As it's impossible to measure the continuous rated power, I suspect all of them unless some of those rickshaw drivers were stupid enough to leave a label on their motor that said 1000W.Good in principle for those who stay legit but but the London rickshaws that operated before last year got a really bad reputation as the shoddy providers take advantage of the opportunity.
Police seize 65 rickshaws with illegal motors added to make them go faster
Modified rickshaws count as motor vehicles and are illegal without insurance and a driving licence
Is the 'appalling reputation' of London's rickshaw drivers justified?
There are calls for more to be done to stop some drivers ripping off tourists and riding on footpaths
..and many using lead-acid batteries?!?! The £1600 price tag for a new e-rickshaw quoted in that article seems like a good deal - likely sans battery, even a lead-acid one.E rickshaws causing problems in India. Apparently human only (ie non cycle) drawn rickshaws were banned in the early 1950s.
How electric rickshaws are proving dangerous on India's crowded streets
Though they provide greater convenience than traditional pedal bikes, a combination of unlicensed drivers, stolen electricity and overheating batteries makes them a high-risk mode of transport, write Saumya Khandelwal, Vindu Goel and Karan Deep Singh
What if the front passenger-carrying etrike (pushed by "Magic Type II"[not strictly necessary]), contained an autonomous AI - not in direct communication or in any way controlled by the ebike's controller - this AI would have learned to maintain a journey compatible position, speed and direction to the ebike behind it. Two completely independent and legal vehicles, your honour... the etrike AI merely has an ebike fetish, and is free to learn new skills if it wishes, get a degree, job, mortgage, house, spawn new (initially, inexplicably) smaller AIs using spares etc. just like the rest of us.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-approval/exemptions-from-vehicle-approval
So the only route to saving black cabbie jobs through use of push trailers, available for hire for use on any (probably black) bicycle, is to create a business plan>Attract massive Silicon Valley vulture capital>Float on stock market as an Initial Public Offering>Short the price of the usual rapid fall in stock value after the IPO>Hide the money made from shorting the IPO in the Canaries>Offer select UK gov officials a shady deal promoting electric push trailers designed to maim or kill fewer pedestrians, riders and drivers than escooters? The Black Cabbies can save their own jobs.
It's still the same EU law, including EN15194. In Autumn 2019 Theresa May's Great Repeal Bill was accepted by both houses of parliament, turning all accepted prior adopted EU law into UK Law, that to easily deal with the impossibility of passing new UK laws for all EU laws accepted over the last 44 years.
No.
You really know your onions flecc! You're not just great at making awesome bike trailers! We'll have to watch out for any new UK legislation.
Whoa... that's onion overload! Thank you, I've stowed all of that away to read carefully later on.
