Popular pedelec: “Tour de Freude” campaign against accidents
Bicycles with electric motors are popular: every fifth person over the age of 55 owns a pedelec. This is the result of a recent representative survey conducted by the opinion research institute Kantar Public on behalf of the German Road Safety Council (DVR). “The pedelec has become part of everyday life for older road users: 71 percent of over 55-year-olds ride their electric bike at least once a week,” says DVR President Manfred Wirsch.
“Tour de Freude – sicher unterwegs mit dem Pedelec” – this is the name of the DVR’s nationwide prevention campaign to prevent accidents involving pedelecs. It draws attention to the special features and challenges of using electric bikes. Only just over half (56 percent) of those surveyed were familiar with the term pedelec, which is often incorrectly referred to as an e-bike. Accident figures have risen with the increasing spread of electric bikes: According to the Federal Statistical Office, 17,045 people had an accident on a pedelec in 2021, 131 of which were fatal. In relation to 1,000 pedelec accidents with personal injury, an average of 7.6 riders lost their lives in 2021, compared to 3.5 for conventional bikes.
Pedelec riders predominantly consider situations in which they could lose control of the vehicle to be dangerous, for example due to weather conditions on slippery roads (61 percent), by underestimating their speed on bends (47 percent) and generally due to the higher speeds that can be reached with a pedelec thanks to the electric pedal assistance (35 percent).