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Ride e-bikes with helmets: police

Writer:   | Editor: Lily A  | From:  | Updated: 2018-05-17

A city action was launched yesterday to ensure smooth traffic in the city by focusing on violations by food, water and gas delivery persons and couriers, such as driving in the wrong direction, using motorist lanes and failing to wear helmets.

Of the 491 helmet violations, 365 were related to food, water and gas delivery persons and 63 were related to couriers.

At 10:30 a.m., a cylinder gas delivery person was intercepted by officers at the intersection of Nanyuan Road and Songling Road in Futian District for not wearing a helmet.

The delivery person was fined 2,000 yuan (US$313) and had his e-bike temporarily impounded. The driver explained that he hadn’t worn a helmet because of the hot weather and promised to correct his behavior to ensure safety.

The action was launched one week after Shenzhen’s traffic police authority signed an agreement with the city’s food and e-bike associations to jointly carry out the management of e-bikes as part of efforts to reduce e-bike-related accidents.

Earlier in April, police installed a facial-recognition system to punish e-bike riders who run red lights and illegally use motorist lanes. If a delivery person who commits a violation can’t be facially identified due to wearing a helmet, the police will send the vehicle information to the food delivery service platform to impose punishment.

Between January and April this year, Shenzhen saw a reported 136 e-bike-related accidents that killed 35 people, accounting for 38 percent of the total fatal accidents. In the food delivery sector, four people were killed and three were injured in seven accidents. Police checked a total of 35,164 traffic violations related to food delivery employees, accounting for 9.8 percent of the total e-bike violations.

Among the 35 deaths, 27 people died of brain damage.

If an e-bike is running at a speed of 25 kilometers per hour and is involved in an accident, the driver could easily be hurt in the head and brain.

Statistics show that helmets can absorb most of the impact force in an accident and work as a cushion to prevent head damage. Wearing a helmet can prevent brain damage by 85 percent, according to police. The number of injuries and deaths resulting from not wearing a helmet is 2.5 times and 1.5 times more than that of wearing a helmet, respectively.

At present, there are a total of 20,000 food delivery people working for seven major food delivery service platforms in the city, such as meituan.com and ele.me.

The police databank has so far collected 50,000 pieces of vehicle information related to employees working in the courier and delivery industry.

Within a year, a food delivery person will be suspended from engaging in delivery service for a week for the first violation, and the suspension will be extended to a month if the violator is caught for a second offense. The violator will be blacklisted and disqualified from the service for a year for a third violation.