Rider error on my end, coming from inexperience on the bike and not-so-good judgement, was definitely a big part of why I crashed. I'm not trying to deny this, nor am I trying to shift blame from myself to the bike.
I am trying to make the point that what Zero did - having an electric bike this powerful without traction control, or any type of software assistance to deliver torque more safely on full throttle - is particularly dangerous. More so than people might think. I think that this is an important conversation to have, and important for people riding / considering electric bikes to be well aware of, as unfortunately I wasn't.
Sure I'm exaggerating when I call zeroes "death traps." But it does make sense to say that TC (or some degree of software assistance on the throttle) on high-torque electric bikes is especially important, and more so than gas bikes because of the nature of these vehicles. Rear-wheel slides from throttle is a common cause of crashes on electric as has been pointed out, and TC would no doubt save many riders of these bikes from crashes, injury, and death.
Like I said - I wasn't even cornering when I crashed, and the pavement was dry and seemingly free of debris. It simply happened because I asked for full throttle. It just doesn't seem to make sense to me to have a bike that can't handle the power of its own throttle.
It's fair to mention that having a bike with high torque across the RPM range, a direct throttle, and no TC is going to have more risk of a tire braking loose than other bikes, and this is a danger to be aware of when riding. To me this doesn't make the bike more inherantly dangerous, but it does make the action of yanking on the throttle in the way you did more dangerous, and riders should understand that.
Riders should know that the zero's throttle is torque-control, not simply speed control.
The bike can handle full throttle, but it needs to be applied with finesse and understanding how it works. It's not building power when you pull the throttle like an ICE bike, the power is there. So you asked it to apply full torque immediately, it listened, and you went down. The bike just listens to your input, and you assumed either through ignorance of how the zero throttle works, or from experience with ice bikes, or both, that it would behave differently than it does.
The bike listening to the riders input is not, IMO, a glaring safety issue as much as the owner not understanding how the bike works, and this is where to me things get trickier. Zero should explicitly state how their throttle works, and the dealer should warn you as well. But of course, they're both in the business of selling bikes, we all know that bikes are dangerous, so they're not incentivized to focus on the dangers of their products.
This is where I do take issue with the marketing material for how easy to ride e-motos are. "Just twist and go!" is technically true but also an inadequate amount of information. If a sales rep was to explain to you the nuances of the way a zero's throttle differs from your ice bike, you would have had more correct assumptions about how your bike works and potentially not put yourself in the same situation.
There is definitely a big gulf of knowledge when it comes to your average rider and how e-motos work. I know plenty of people that will hapilly tell you about different engine types and their characteristics but will look at you with a deer-in-the-headlights look if you say something like PWM. We could be better at describing these differences so people understood their e-motos more as the machine they are and less of a magic box where you just twist the throttle to go.
But in the end to me it still comes down to understanding the bike and the power it has. For the 5-6 examples here of people breaking rear traction with their zero, there are hundreds of stories of inexperienced riders on powerful ICE bikes giving too much throttle and paying the price for it. The details are different but the story is the same. If you get on a powerful bike you do not have experience with and give it the wrong input, it will bite you.
ABS outperforms nearly all riders on pavement and always does on wet pavement.
It only doesn't when on something like gravel. Because ABS doesn't know what kind of surface you're on, if it did, it could outperform humans even then.
-Crissa
I wonder what kind of sensors and software it would take to make and ABS system that knows the type of surface it's on. It would have to be able to either use simpler sensors and lots of training data to know what a surface looks like or have some more advanced sensors that can figure out how tough the material it is and how loose the particles are. But then it would also have to work even if the sensors are obscured by mud or grime. Quite the engineering challenge.
Author
Topic: WARNING - Zero lack of traction control makes it dangerous (Read 2365 times)