ECF are currently involved in an issue that could be a threat to the growth of pedelec use in the EU.

The Motor Vehicle Insurance Directive (MID) ensures that when a vehicle is insured for third party liability in one of the Member States, this cover must apply in the territory of all Member States. ECF very much supports this Directive as a way of ensuring cyclists that are involved in crashes with a motor vehicle will have reliable access to compensation from personal and material damages across the EU.

The European Commission will be reviewing the legislation and, what is particularly interesting for us, with a view to clarifying the scope of the directive will be answering the question “what is a motor vehicle”? One of the possibilities is that the Commission will widen the definition of what a motor vehicle is which will include all pedelecs. Consequently this will mean that all European pedelecs being used on European roads will be illegal unless they have acquired motor vehicle third party liability insurance

Given that in 2016 in Germany that there were zero pedestrian fatalities and 6 serious injuries in crashes with a pedelec (with over 3,000,000 bikes on the roads) we think this is a huge over reaction and would provide an over burdensome regulation and huge costs with negligible benefit.

It will create a barrier to pedelec use which can be great substitute to motor car use, it will criminalise a huge population of pedelec users who are already legitimately covered, and could lead to less safe roads with more motorised vehicles.

The Commission has a consultation that is ongoing until the 20^th October (next Friday), we would therefore ask you to contribute to the consultation, about a 5 minute job, and these are the steps that you can take;

1. Go to the consultation here https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/motor-insurance-2017?surveylanguage=en you can reply in English, German or French (change language in the top right hand corner)
2. Scroll to the bottom click next,
3. fill in your personal information click next
4. Click “yes” to allowing your response to be published (or no if not!) and click next
5. Scroll down almost to the bottom to question B.29 and insert text

“Electric Powered Assisted Bicycles that are not type approved (i.e. under 250 watts of power and the motor cutting out altogether at 25 kmh) should be excluded specifically from the Motor Vehicle Insurance Directive. These bikes are essentially bicycles that give a modest boost to assist riders up hills or into winds and are not motorised vehicles; no pedal no power. Inclusion of Pedelecs/EAPCs within the scope of the Directive could provide additional regulatory burden and would inhibit the growth of these vehicles which have great potential in shifting short and medium length journeys from motor vehicles to an active, healthy, and environmentally friendly mode of transport.”

Or you can add your own words.

1. Click next and then submit

Of course you can be more detailed if you wish and there may be other issues within the consultation that you wish to contribute to, but we will be focussing on the impact of the scope on pedelecs.

Finally ECF has a draft position paper here https://ecf.com/sites/ecf.com/files/Insurance%20Position%20Paper_2017_final%20draft.docx

We would welcome any comments that you have on it

We also have a smaller briefing here

https://ecf.com/sites/ecf.com/files/ECF_Motor%20Vehicle%20Insurance_Explanatory%20document_Final.pdf