E-bikes safety warning

Delivery companies in Shanghai have been urged to ensure their e-bike riders are aware of the potential hazards of the vehicles they use to deliver food and parcels.

The city's work safety administration said 942 fires in Shanghai had been caused by e-bikes, killing 37 people and injuring 34 others. Though that was only accounted for 2.6 percent of all fire accidents, it represented 10 percent of the deaths, a figure that was on the rise in recent years.

The city has around 8 million e-bikes, 10 percent of which are used by deliverymen. 

In the first half of this year, a fire at an express distribution site in Jing’an District caused by an e-bike killed a staff member. Another fire in the Pudong New Area injured two food deliverymen.

The fire department said one of reasons for thefires was the e-bikes were in frequent use and many deliverymen had illegally modofied them. 

Most distribution sites had charging points, but fireproofing was poor and many lacked fire extinguishers or alarms.

Since June, the authorities have inspected almost 90,000 spots around the city, including bike factories, warehouses, residential communities and office buildings, and found 3852 places where e-bikes were improperly parked or charged which could pose a fire hazard.

The Shanghai Postal Administration said that from April next year, unqualified e-bikes among express companies would be filtered out and a designated model distributed.