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Lyft Removes Faulty Electric Bicycles From Three Cities

posted by chromas on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:23AM   
from the I've-never-had-functioning-brakes,-I-don't-oil-my-chain-and-my-derailleur's-out-of-adjustment dept.

takyon writes:

Brakes that are too effective have led Lyft to remove thousands of its electric pedal-assist bicycles from New York City (Citi Bike), San Francisco (Ford GoBike), and Washington, D.C. (Capital Bikeshare):

A month ago, Jordan Wyckoff was riding an electric Citi Bike to work in Brooklyn when he slammed on the brakes to avoid a minivan that swerved in the bike lane. But when he hit the brakes, the front wheel locked up, sending Mr. Wyckoff over the front of the handlebars and onto the pavement.

The same thing happened to Dominik Glodzik when he tried to brake before a stop sign in Astoria, Queens about two months ago.

William Turton flipped over the front of an electric Citi Bike while trying to brake before an intersection on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

In recent months, dozens of riders have reported injuries while riding electric Citi Bikes, prompting the company on Sunday to pull all of the approximately 1,000 electric bicycles from New York City's streets amid safety concerns about the brakes. Lyft, which owns Citi Bike, took similar precautions with its other bike-sharing services in Washington and San Francisco.

Motivate, a subsidiary of Lyft since 2018, operates bicycle sharing systems in several cities.

Also at BBC and Engadget.

Previously: Uber May Try to Buy Citi Bike Parent Company Motivate
Lyft Acquires America's Largest Bike-Sharing Company, Motivate

Related: New Electric Bikes, Scooters, and Dockless Bicycles Hitting U.S. Streets
Uber Buys Electric Bicycle-Sharing Startup JUMP Bikes

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Original Submission

• Re:Like shortscreen said above. Re:Like shortscreen said above. (Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Tuesday April 16 2019, @12:21PM (1 child)

  by Nuke (3162) on Tuesday April 16 2019, @12:21PM (#830370)

  FatPhil wrote :-

  Brake balance on a motorbike should be clear majority front. You'll unload the rear tyres in the process, and they won't even be able to contribute much to the braking. The centre of gravity is incomparable between pedal bikes and motorbikes, and this is *all* about centre of gravity. And therefore the braking principles are also incomparable.

  I don't agree they are incomparable. Most of these other posters are talking about slow-ish workaday utility pedal-bike riding, but what you say corresponds exactly with my experience of pedal bike riding which includes several seasons of road racing at a top level. As you say, in extreme braking the rear wheel is almost lifting and is therefore contributing little to the braking effect. Part of the skill of handling a pedal bike at higher speeds is to be able to judge this, sliding your weight back to counteract the tendency of the rear to lift, but keeping the bike close to the point at which it does, using principally the front brake judiciously.

  Because the rear has less effective weight on it during braking it is more likely to lock, and the moment it does it the bike will whip round and you will be on the ground. So contrary to some other advice here, a skilled faster cyclist will be very cautious with the rear brake. If you are riding a bike more slowly you will be stopped before this develops, hence I suppose the advice in some other comments to use the rear brake.

  A problem with the hire bikes is probably that many people assume bike brakes are very poor and therefore pull them on as hard as possible when needed. That will lock the front brake on a properly maintained bike and send you over the handlebars, even at relatively slow speeds.

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• Re:Like shortscreen said above. (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 16 2019, @01:44PM

  by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Tuesday April 16 2019, @01:44PM (#830386) Homepage

  You're right that the majority of the braking will be through the front wheel in both cases, if done properly, which is a non-negligible if. In my defence, if you're not so familiar with the vehicle that it's almost an extension of your body, how you achieve that is quite different - just a delicate touch of front will turn into all the front you need on a pedal bike. Everything conspires to turn front wheel braking catastrophic unless you have the feel of the brakes - your CoM is already high, you get pushed forwards too (the exact opposite of what someone who knows in advance what they're doing undergoes, for the reason you state), and the time it takes to be too late to do anything about a mistake is near instantanious. The catastrophic case for back-wheel braking shouldn't kick in for joe-schmoes on crappy rental bikes, I've never had more than a bit of fishtailing even when I've been deliberately dicking about. No matter how idiotic I was on my motorbike (less idiotic than my pedal bike, it will be noted, I was older), the front brakes always had more to give.
  
  Perhaps the best advice is to simply behave in such a way that you least often need to use your brakes, and if you do, only gentle braking will do. Pedestroids on their mobiles are fair game - run'em down if you have to, but you get the special move bonus if you can clip them just so that it knocks their imDumb out of their hands.

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