A 12-Year-Old Died on an E-Bike. Is the Manufacturer to Blame?
outsideonline.com
outsideonline.com
So, first, why were an 11 and 12 year old allowed to use a powerful ebike unsupervised? On a big hill, no less. Rad says their bikes are for people 18 and up, yet the parents say the bike belonged to one of the kid’s 13 year old sister.
Second, there is a tiny bit of skill involved in properly tightening a quick release; just because it came loose doesn’t rule out human error. Third, disc brakes and a quick release on the front wheel is a known safety hazard? A staggering number of bikes have that setup. If it’s truly as dangerous as the plaintiffs say, literally hundreds of thousands of bikes will need to be taken off the road.
This is a tragic loss for that family, but I’m failing to see how Rad is to blame to the extent they allege.
I mean... OK QR Discs on front wheel is tricky, and was a weird 'elephant in the room' during my time as a shop mechanic. The problem is that forces involved will often result in the quick release mechanism loosening over time. This has been long known/documented [0].
They -can- be more dangerous than Vs or Canti's IMO. I know there was a recall within the last couple years somewhat related to this phenomenon; namely that some QR levers could 'open' too wide and get caught in the rotor. -if- Rad had such a QR, then yes it should not have been on the road. [1]
[0] - https://www.sheldonbrown.com/disc-brakes.html
[1] - https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2015/trek-recalls-bicycles-equi...
If done properly there should be two pieces of metal hooked into the frame on either side of the shaft to ensure that it doesn't accidentally fall out, long before your wheel falls off you should see it go side-to-side and steer erratically if you don't fix it. Plenty of warning there.
And e-bikes should cut off the motor automatically if the person stops pedaling, if it doesn't then it isn't really an e-bike anymore but more of a moped. So I'm not sure what the power issue with the motor was but that sounds like a lever set to provide continuous power even absent pedal input.
As for that bike: it is't street legal where I live (and was used off road as far as I understand the article), clearly had a maintenance issue rather than a structural defect and the kid that rode it should have never been on it in the first place, these are not kids bikes.
From where I'm sitting it looks like an attempt to assign blame/grab money when blame really should be assigned to whoever let these kids have a bike like that. And if the kids did it without permission then it's on them, which is super sad because of the ending but that's what kids will do.
E-bikes with motors that powerful are not toys, and are not meant to be used by kids. It would be interesting to know if they ever took the front wheel out themselves and maybe forgot to tighten the retainer, or if they self assembled the bike.
Lawyers tend to see problems through a legal lens, and if they can blame the manufacturer they may feel that they have absolved themselves of responsibility, but in my opinion that doesn't really change anything.
Lastly, bikes are always risky. You need to keep your bikes in top condition to be safe (and that can be quite expensive compared to the same number of miles driven with a car) and you need to have some mechanical ability to spot problems. As a (hopefully responsible) parent I always look for trouble on my kids bikes and teach them about it by fixing things together. So far only one of them has fallen and that ended with a couple of scrapes (damage in the schoolyard caused a fender to come loose on the homebound trip). Ironically the person that had the worst biking accident in my extended family is me.
Finally: the bike I ride is heavy and fast enough that I looked for one with a front axle that goes through the frame rather than a dropout. This is not because I'm afraid my front wheel will drop out of the frame on its own accord but simply for reasons of strength, a shaft going through the frame is a much stronger setup than a dropout because it allows for a larger diameter shaft and symmetrically tightens up the retainer nut.
In any case, a 12 year old on such a powerful bike should be illegal and we'll probably see more cases until the legislation catches up
It links to this useful diagram: https://ibb.co/HP0HxVV
I'm not a bike expert, but I do notice that in comparison to my bike (which also has QR and disk breaks), the RadRunner 2's dropouts are more downward-facing.
The lawsuit is dubious for a lot of reasons, but the point about quick release is more interesting than I expected.
It goes around the skewer into an additional small hole on the bike with the intent that it will hold if the QR is slightly loose. I don't think it would save you, but it is there.
Check your wheel tightness once in a while, everybody.
I don't know if that is the case on the RadRunner 2, but it's the case on most road bikes with vertical dropouts.
Look at figures 3 and 4 on this article: https://cyclingtips.com/2015/10/road-bikes-are-headed-toward...
What is needed is the dropout not aligning with the direction the axle is forced when the brake is applied.
Bikes with rim brakes aren't immune to this either, but disc pads seem in a more optimal place to cause it, ad might grab more quickly ( jerk force).
We should start taking responsibility for our inability or recklessness when using potentially dangerous products.
Unless the product was faulty in some way, which it doesn't seem it was, trying to extort millions from manufactures can't be seen as an act of progress.
Also did you even read the article? They argue the brake failed because of the design of the bike.
"The suit goes on to argue that the quick release came loose as Steinsapir’s friend was applying the front brake, which allegedly caused the wheel to wobble and ultimately caused the crash. The plaintiffs also say that the surviving girl—who we’re not naming because she’s a minor—attempted to turn off the bike, but that the electrical power failed to shut down."
That's because most other first world relatively wealthy countries have much more interventionist governments when it comes to things like product safety. The US approach is more to let companies try pretty much anything that isn't actually malicious and if it turns out to be a bad idea, but not bad enough that it isn't profitable enough to keep making after the lawsuits, maybe step in and regulate.
That necessarily means the US will have a lot more lawsuits, both reasonable and unreasonable.
BTW, that's also one of the big reasons that we don't have "loser pays" as the default in civil suits in the US, unlike much of the rest of the world. In the US we use civil suits by the aggrieved party to enforce a lot of civil rights laws. There's almost always some risk of losing even if you have a pretty strong case that you were, say, turned down for housing or a promotion because of your race, sex, religion, etc., and loser pays for such suits would discourage a lot of people who were in fact discriminated against from suing due to that risk.
Much of the rest of world relies primarily on government agencies to enforce such laws. They civil court cases are mostly just truly private disputes like breaches of contract or torts.
> We should start taking responsibility for our inability or recklessness when using potentially dangerous products.
> Unless the product was faulty in some way, which it doesn't seem it was, trying to extort millions from manufactures can't be seen as an act of progress.
It's interesting when you look at that from an economic efficiency point of view. Most of us use a ton of products that are potentially dangerous. We could make it so that it is entirely our responsibility to deal with the danger.
So for each product, we would need to evaluate the risk and figure out how to deal with it. In most cases the way to deal with it, if we decide not to ignore it, would be to buy insurance to cover the damages if the product harms us.
An efficient way to do that is to make the product manufacturers strictly liable for the harms involving their products, regardless of whether it is due to some flaw in the product or the occasional careless, reckless, or stupid user.
That funnels all the data about the injury rates and costs from those products to the manufacturers, which can combine that with their sales data, which puts them in the best position to figure out how much insurance is needed to cover the injuries. The cost of that insurance gets priced into the cost of the product.
Handling it closer to the consumer involves more duplicated effort as more parties need to make independent evaluations, and those parties have less data. Besides being inefficient that is probably more expensive because underinsured people can still get expensive injuries and run up emergency room bills that they can't pay--and then the public ends up paying instead.
The bike isn't marketed towards children specifically; the parents could not have predicted the front wheel coming apart, maybe it was the 100th ride the kids went on that bike.
> The suit goes on to argue that the quick release came loose as Steinsapir’s friend was applying the front brake, which allegedly caused the wheel to wobble and ultimately caused the crash.
But what this reads like to me is the quick release was not tightened adequately or perhaps the quick release was not tightened or checked recently. This seems even more likely if it was the 100th ride. And that easily could've been a parent's mistake for not tightening the quick release adequately.
So yeah, too many question marks for me to pass judgment here. I'll leave it to the professionals and hope that Rad doesn't get put out of business unjustly.
There's potentially merit in the first one, but it seems like the front wheel didn't actually loosen or eject the hub, so it doesn't seem at fault for the wreck here. As a Rad Power bike owner myself, I don't buy the second claim either. The most likely cause here would be user error, with the girl operating the bike continuing to pedal on the downhill, causing the hub motor to engage up until the governor's 20mph limit. (She also could have been engaging the throttle, but if she was breaking, that would be VERY difficult for an 11-year-old's hands to do on a Rad Power. Keeping the throttle engaged while also braking is not exactly easy for a full-grown hand to do given the design. I don't see a kid doing it.)
> The suit claims that the bike’s design made it hard for the girls to control their speed as they sped downhill, specifically because of where the steering axis is placed in relation to the front wheel. As the suit lays out, the bike in question—the RadRunner—has “disc brakes in conjunction with a quick-release mechanism for detaching the front wheel.” This setup is common on a wide range of bikes, and the Steinsapirs claim that it is “a known safety hazard in the industry.” The suit goes on to argue that the quick release came loose as Steinsapir’s friend was applying the front brake, which allegedly caused the wheel to wobble and ultimately caused the crash.
I don't know if what they're saying is true, but if it is it's certainly something that's very reasonable to sue over.
Go look at the road bikes people are out riding on a Saturday morning. At least half of them will be disc brakes with quick release skewers. And these are bikes that people are putting thousands of miles on and ripping down mountain descents.
I don't have any information on this bike in particular, but that setup is common and widely used.
My wife spends hours upon hours researching product safety before selecting a bicycle, scooter, shoes, moisturizer, dishware, and other products for use by our family, especially for use by our child. She does this because she believes it is her job as a parent.
The Latin phrase Caveat Emptor, "let the buyer beware" comes to us from the Romans more than two thousand years ago.
Today there are forums, reviews, lists... when there are safety complaints about a design or a product, it is easier than ever to become aware of these kinds of problems.
Companies providing products have a responsibility to provide their products in good faith. This is similar to traffic rules that govern who has a responsibility to yield at an intersection. Assuming you have "right of way" won't help you avoid an accident. That's an assumption of someone else's adherence to the rules. In the same way that you freaking check that the other driver has yielded before making your turn or driving through, you check that a product is safe for your child to use.
For this specific instance, why would you deprive a 12 year old child of the exercise they need to grow properly by buying them a motorized bicycle?
If you think the blame falls upon the parents (say, the friend's parents), should you extend that same logic to other cases? What about baby powder talc, thalidomide, and plastic with BPA? Where is the line I think the way we draw that line now is good. Companies have an obligation to provide products that are as safe as reasonably possible and to inform consumers of safety risks when they cannot be avoided. People can be compensated for the harm caused to them when companies fail to do that.
The extreme other end, where people have to research product safety for everything they use in order to avoid snake oil and death traps, seems like a huge waste of everyone's time. I would do the same for my child if I had one, and tremendous respect to your wife for doing that for your kid, but I hope that technology and society reach a place where available goods are generally as safe as you would expect them to be. I hope that if someone dies because they run their well-made E-bike into a wall, that's on them, but that no one ever dies because their E-bike has a faulty component. The latter case is what's claimed here and I think that, if that claim is true, that means the parents here should win the case.
But as to the discussion of who's at fault in terms of preventing the accident, yes, it's the friend's sister's parents. The friend's sister was still too young (13) for that e-bike which the company rated for age 18 and up. I'm not speaking from the standpoint of how the law ought to work. I agree that companies ought to provide products fit for use and fit for purpose. I agree the parents should be able to sue if the product isn't.
The helmet being defective is a much worse problem, if that's true.
If we're talking about whose job it is to prevent children from getting involved in an accident of this sort in the first place, however; that's on parents.
You mean like Johnson & Johnson including asbestos in their talc for decades and paying huge civil penalties for it?
> I hope that technology and society reach a place where available goods are generally as safe as you would expect them to be
This can’t happen when maximizing profit is the incentive. Think about it.
Yes.
>This can’t happen when maximizing profit is the incentive. Think about it.
Yes.
In a country where you can have your child seized by the authorities for letting him walk down a flat, quiet suburban sidestreet without adult escort - these parents should be in jail for reckless child endangerment resulting in death. And the required design change for the bikes should be "If {computerized safety mechanism} is not aware of a legally adult human rider, and speed is greater than {limit}, then immediately call 911 and the Child Welfare authorities."
(Yes, obviously, that ain't gonna happen. Arguing over "which straw" and blaming $Corporation feels cool, sounds good, and does not upset anyone in the jurisdiction who has much social status. Those are the things which really matter here.)
Do you have children?
That said, I think the parents should look up the term "lawyer tabs"[1] and realize not everything can be solved with a lawsuit. Unless they expect the tabs to be made even bigger and more infuriating.
So... replace them with hydraulic ones? Have your bike shop do it? If you're not happy with the braking, the right answer is to find a way to fix it.
I went through several different types of brakes on my Seattle ebike commuter builds, before settling on some fairly high end dual piston hydraulic brakes with the "ebike" pad compound (a higher temperature compound). The mechanical ones didn't work as well as I liked on hills and the feel was awful, so I found some that worked better, and when they suffered heat fade on some of the quite steep hills, I played with brake pad compounds until I found some that worked well.
Imagine a Corvette with the brakes of a Malibu. Would chevy would be torched for creating an unsafe vehicle? Kinda the same theory here...If you're selling a package make sure all the components are sized to work appropriately together.
<thinks about every American car I've ever driven>
A Corvette with any sort of brakes would be an improvement.
Blind hills with left turns just past the crest are no joke.
It's really silly to throw blame around for such a tragic event, but a loose quick release skewer cannot be attributed to anything except user error.
What are you doing with the bike, and under what conditions are you riding it?
Riding an ebike in the midwest flatlands is very different from bombing around Seattle or San Francisco or your random mountain trail. In the midwest, 250W on the front motor is... if not enjoyable, quite adequate. In Seattle, that's an accident looking for a place to happen (front wheel motors are really darty climbing hills, and if you hit a wet, slick spot, they'll spin the wheel up and dump you).
And the 1500W geared hub motor and hydraulic brakes built to pound around Seattle, year round, for commuting, is excessively overkill in the midwest flats. It works fine, you're just wasting money for no useful gain in capability.
I test rode a bunch of Rad's earlier bikes, and I never felt the brakes were lacking, but neither was I taking them up and down mountains. If I were, I'd probably have upgraded them.
And I would suggest that most stock Corvettes do have inadequate brakes if you're tracking them. They're (I'd hope...) decent enough on the street, but I would expect them to fade to oblivion in a hurry on a track if you didn't make some pad material and perhaps rotor changes. They're not built for track days, and, if you've never had the displeasure of driving "track brakes" on the street, there's a reason for that.
> My main complaint about the RadWagon is that it doesn’t have hydraulic disc brakes, instead using a less effective mechanical version, which don’t have the stopping power that their more complicated counterparts do
That part is bollocks. Sure, mechanical disk brakes are inferior to hydraulic brakes, but despite having less stopping power, properly maintained mechanical disk brakes can easily lock your wheels in any situation, including with road tires on dry asphalt (where you have the most grip). Note that I talk about first-hand experience.
The limit to the stopping power for any disk brakes is generally going to be your tires, not the actual brake.
Apparently not because newer disk-brake bikes now have thru-axles where the wheel can't pop out at all unless the axle is physically removed from the side.
It would appear that having a heavy, powerful e-bike would benefit from having the best possible braking/wheel retention system available. But still, whatever happened to responsible use? If a 10 year old gets hold of the car keys and goes for a joyride, sue the car maker?
Having said that, the argument that without the motor the girls wouldn’t have been able to climb the hill and therefore the bike is bad is a terrible argument. After all, that’s why you buy e-bikes to take you where you normally can’t go. Don’t we buy a normal bikes to be able to travel at speeds you normally couldn’t on foot?
The kids were under the recommended minimum age for the bike set by the manufacturer.
I think it is a good argument. There is a difference between powered and unpowered vehicles.
Unpowered vehicles are safer for you and for others since you are limited by your own body and it serves as a natural barrier.
As soon as you add an engine into the mix to remove that limit, vehicle and the rider should be subject to very different rules and regulations out of concern for public safety.
This is not happening because they are electric bikes, which is good for someone's OKRs. Use of electricity prompts many municipalities turn the blind eye to the fact that it has a motor, like a motorcycle, with corresponding problems.
Parents buy their kids dirt bikes to do jumps they couldn’t normally do, but they don’t sue Kawasaki because they broke their arm.
I understand there are nuances to this, but there has to be some form of responsibility on the parents for buying their kids and knowingly letting them ride a bike that they knew had an engine in it.
Disclaimer, I’m only addressing the part about the bike having an engine and that supposedly being a problem. Not any of their other arguments.
I don't know, imagining myself in their place I probably wouldn't. Part of the responsibility may be with parents but still, an electric bicycle shouldn't get a free pass just because it's electric and it allows some official to brag about being "green". It's dangerous to pedestrians and riders, annoying and reduces city walkability. It's a motorcycle--a bike with a motor--and like any other motorcycle it should be regulated and if roads cannot accommodate them they shouldn't be allowed to roam the sidewalks.
> Parents buy their kids dirt bikes to do jumps they couldn’t normally do, but they don’t sue Kawasaki because they broke their arm.
I believe if you are a child riding a dirt bike without a license plate and without a driver's license somewhere off public streets you are probably doing it under supervision. In this case, however, it was apparently marketed for normal commute not extreme sports.
> I think it is a good argument. There is a difference between powered and unpowered vehicles.
I don't know about the hill in question, but when I was young (possibly 12), the neighborhood kids and I would climb hills on bicycles to ride down fast. If we couldn't make it then we would push the bicycles up the rest of the hill, after seeing who could make it the farthest. Electric bicycles would have helped us up the hills but the lack of them certainly didn't stop us even on the biggest hills, whether they be on road or off. So I don't think it's a great argument either, because I see no reason why the girls wouldn't have done the same thing if it were a regular bicycle.
It takes effort to lug your own mass and a bicycle up a hill. If you manage it, you are likely in okay shape, alert and sharp--since you wouldn't be capable or motivated to do it otherwise. All of these conditions reduce chances of an accident. Powered transport removes this barrier. Sometimes lowered approachability is a feature.
Some older mountain bikes have a QR in the rear too.
You just need to make sure these are tight enough.
On higher end bikes, 'thru axle' designs that eliminate this potential failure mode are increasingly popular.
http://www.bikeroar.com/articles/bicycle-industry-issues-its...
However the commenter above was saying that there is not a known issue with quick release levers and disk brakes which is untrue. This was the largest bike recall ever.
http://www.bikeroar.com/articles/bicycle-industry-issues-its...
Not saying I agree, but I think this is was is being alleged as an argument
Sue-ing the manufacturer is insane in my eyes.
Yeah, I know it's a tradition.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0799/9645/files/om_run20s1...
I agree with the assessment other people have made. This is a tragic situation and it seems like the parents are trying to deal with their grief by finding a bad guy other than their daughter’s best friend.
However, looking back on that, it was pretty dangerous for a 10-year-old to be in a go cart. And I think it’s dangerous for 12 year old to be using an electric bicycle.
I’m conflicted between a child doing something maybe they shouldn’t be doing, and being injured, versus an actual defect with the product. If there is a defect with the steering, then the company is liable.
However, if there is no defect, and the company acted in good faith and produced a good product that led to an unfortunate death, then I would have a difficult time blaming it all on the company.
That is HALF of all ATVs bought getting into accidents each year.
Bikes are MUCH safer. 96% of bicycle fatalities involve a car hitting a bike. The number of bike accidents are around the same as ATV (600-1000 on average) and the number of injuries is similar (about 130,000), but the number of bikes sold per year is about 20,000,000 units or almost 70x higher.
Not every bike does well.
Don't know about the bike in question. I do remember the hill.
Anyway the manufacturer's lawyers will point out that the bike was not properly assembled (and I bet there's plenty of lawyer approved language about securing the wheels). The other kid's parents will be joined to the lawsuit for improper assembly and supervision.
I remember school safety lessons telling us never to ride with another kid on the bike.
The extra weight combined with the lack of strength (to control and apply brakes) in the kid driving the bike put the situation beyond the kid's capabilities.
An average motorcycle will have a contact patch with the ground that is many times larger than the contact patch of a bike. Even at high speeds, completely locking up a bike wheel with mechanical disk brakes is not very hard.
The biggest issue is putting a 12 year old kid on an e-bike rated for adults with zero supervision and thinking nothing bad could possibly happen.
In my opinion, these parents are suing because they can't stand the idea that their poor decision led to the death of their child.
It is however a common excuse used by companies that want to move their manufacturing outside the US to save on labor, because saying "We were forced to because of frivolous lawsuits!" goes over a lot better than "We can make more money if we only have to pay a couple dollars an hour for labor".
I see it in my field at least (moving atoms instead of information), if you make anything and have any money, there is a target on your back if any mistake is made.
QR axles use a cam lever to apply high clamping force to hold the wheel in place.
It's not unheard of for inexperienced users to just turn the lever tight without using the cam which doesn't apply enough clamping force causing the wheel to come loose.
If all you have (for both worldview & skills) is a hammer...
> One of the arguments the case makes is that, without the motor, the girls wouldn’t have been on the top of the hill in the first place.
If you don't believe that kids (ages 11 & 12) can get a bike to the top of a hill, with the thrill of a fast (exciting, dangerous) ride down the hill as inducement - then maybe you should not be allowed to be a parent. And it's not like the parents involved were magically ignorant of the existence of a steep hill in the area.
Now the city posts tobogganing hills when they're too icy.
Yup, it's a fishing expedition:
> arguing that the helmet Molly wore was defective
Really the bike and the helmet? what else is to blame, the hill?
They may or may not have had any awareness their kid was going to ride on a friends e-bike - but this is the real issue, e-bikes are not much different to small motorbikes, powered cycles are one of the most dangerous modes of transport, society needs to start appropriately considering them as such.
All too true. Law school was very eye opening in this regard. I can't count the number of times that other students were baffled by technical aspects related to the internet or cybersecurity. All to often, in response to their ignorance, one student would raise their hand to insist we pass legislation requiring anyone working in the technical field to be subject to the decisions of a committee of legislators or propose some quasi products liability statute to make the workers do exactly what "the public" wanted.