Fire Codes & Electric Bikes/Scooters

[Jim Cassedy]

The venue I work at, isn't in a super high-crime neighborhood, but it is an area where
you don't want to leave any valuables in your vehicle, and if a customer parks their
bicycle or scooter at an outside bicycle rack, there's a fairly good chance it may not
be there when they return to get it. So, since my venue is 'huge', we've had 'indoor
parking' in one corner of the lobby for people with bikes & scooters. But early this year,
during a fire inspection, we were informed that we could not do that any more because
of the increasing number of e-bikes and scooters bursting into flames due to their lithium
batteries exploding. (yes, I realize that most of the battery fires I've read about seem to
happen when the battery is being charged, and not when the bike or scooter is just
sitting there, but the fire dept here does not make that distinction) We tried putting a
'No E-Bikes Or Scooters" sign on the rack, which was simply ignored by everyone, or,
in one case somebody just chained their bike to a nearby handicapped handrail.
Management tried to work with the FD and find an alternate indoor location, but none
of the proposed places were acceptable. So, last week our bike racks went to the scrap
yard. One of the screening rooms I occasionally work at is located in a building where
they had a very nice, secure, indoor space for occupants of the building to leave their
bikes & scooters, but the landlord there was recently told that he needed to either
install a fire suppression system or otherwise make the room "more fire resistant"
to be in fire code compliance. Both of these solutions would wind up costing thousands,
if not tens-of-thousands of dollars to do. For now, the bike-room is locked until the
landlord can work out what he wants to do. So, i'm just curious if anybody else has
run into this yet, or if, for now, it's just here in 'the big city" ?

[Ryan Gallagher]

I don't think condo codes have caught up to the battery phenomenon yet.... ours has a couple small bike rooms, but no such precautions about resident bikes. Although those rooms have no outlets so anyone wanting to charge has to take them to their unit (which from a fire standpoint i'm sure is actually worse). We have sprinklers at least, but nothing that could put out a lithium fire.

The garage also boasts many parking places with EV chargers installed. Based on the number of car transport ships catching fire with EVs in transit, that seems like the bigger risk IMHO, but honestly "car is king" will always prevail in the US.

I don't know if there is anywhere "outside" the venue... but there are also stand alone "bike lockers" that are a touch more secure than just racks... but they have to be installed on property... you usually see them within parking garages etc.

Does the venue offer a "bike in discount"... lots of business I frequent do, maybe it could/should only apply to the non combustable human powered bikes of yore? That doesn't mean your indoor rack can return, cause non-pedal people will resume abusing it.

[Frank Cox]

I have a bike rack on the lot next to the theatre that's actually provided by the town. (I own the lot, the town brings the rack.)

It works well except for the odd person who for whatever reason either just dumps their bike on the sidewalk in front of the theatre which obstructs the sidewalk, or chains their bike to the lamppost and obstructs the sidewalk that way.

I've never heard a peep about ebike parking here, but since the whole thing is outside I suspect it wouldn't be a problem anyway.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Another approach requires extra staff... Go back to the days of having "coat room attendants" like many museums still do. In addition to coats, bags, helmets, one could receive e-bike/scooter batteries put them in a fire safe container/room/locker, maybe even offer to charge them as a perk? The racks could then return because an attendant would be perhaps be able to monitor and intervene when people attempt to leave battery units at the rack?

I'm not sure all e-bike batteries are even removable these days though. They are probably moving towards planned obsolescence based on battery life, taking that horrible profit motive cue from the cell phone industry.

[Harold Hallikainen]

And this bike battery warning came out yesterday: https://www.cpsc.gov/Warnings/2026/C...njury-or-Death

[Jim Cassedy]

The manufacturer disputes the CPSC warning saying only a small percentage
have caught fire.

lol! That's about as reassuring as a statement put out by the mayor's office here
several years ago in response to complaints about the rising crime rate here in SF.
The response said something like "the crime rate is actually down. . . if you don't
count the homicides"

In my mind I'm picturing e-bike and scooter storage rooms built like the some
of the old nitrate film projection rooms I've worked in, with asbestos-backed
tin walls and concrete floors, and fire doors that slam shut in the event of a
fire. lol

[Ryan Gallagher]

For being so hilly, SF is unusually bike friendly from my memory. Visited more than one bar or beer garden that had on the wall bike racks inside somewhere. But ain’t no one except the strongest lifting up their e-bike vertically for hanging that way.

Maybe that is a thought to discourage it. Make it doable for regular bikes but so awkward for heavier e-bikes people don’t even try.

[Mike Blakesley]

How about bringing back the bike rack with a couple of strategically placed cameras, and some "Smile! You're on camera" signs. I don't know if theives care about that kind of thing or not these days. Probably not considering the number of "porch pirates" there are.

[Ryan Gallagher]

How about bringing back the bike rack with a couple of strategically placed cameras, and some "Smile! You're on camera" signs. I don't know if theives care about that kind of thing or not these days. Probably not considering the number of "porch pirates" there are.

As a lifetime bike commuter, I can testify it's not so much about what the thieves care or don't care about. It's about what types of theft law enforcement is willing to do anything about. Sure file a report, give them a video,... but no resources to do anything with it. A handful of locations have implemented national or trans-national bike registries... and had a bit more luck tracking where all these stolen bikes go. Shipped to other markets to be resold... it's actually nearly organized enough to be considered organized crime by a handful of major operators.

[Frank Cox]

That's the advantage of living in a town like I do.

If I called in with a report of a stolen bicycle (or anything else) one of our local police officers would come around to take a report and it would be added to their "keep an eye out for..." list.

Nobody was ever caught after my break-in here a while back, but that wasn't due to a lack of effort on their part either.

[Leo Enticknap]

The manufacturer disputes the CPSC warning saying only a small percentage have caught fire.

Reminds me of the FedEx spokeshole who protested in the aftermath of the Louisville crash that only a small number (I can't remember the exact words, but they were to that effefct) of MD-11s have been involved in accidents, and that therefore the plane is acceptably safe. I looked up the stats: 11 out of the 200 built ended up in fatality crashes, all of which were caused at least in part by design flaws. A smidge over 5% might qualify as "a small percentage," but it's still an unacceptably high one, IMHO. According to one leading risk management statistician, once you strip out causes other than design or manufacturing flaws (i.e. human error in operation or maintenance, criminal activity, and natural disasters), of all the airliners ever to enter serial production, only the Latécoère 631 has a worse safety record. That is hardly a ringing safety endorsement for the MD-11, especially if you happen to live under the arrival or departure flightpath of them (which I do - UPS has several based in Ontario, CA, and the fact that they're now grounded, hopefully for good, enables me to sleep a little easier at night).

Given that rather more e-bikes have been made than MD-11s, "only a small percentage" spontaneously igniting still adds up to a major safety problem.

[Randy Stankey]

I think that the problem with the Louisville crash is that the exact, same scenario happened before, although slightly different circumstances. The engine "just fell off!" That happened in the 1979 crash, too. The engine JUST FELL OFF!

People said that the original cause was faulty maintenance procedures but, now that has been disproved.

Now, the public thinks (somewhat rightly) that we've had planes flying around for fifty years when the engines could "just fall off" at any moment. Faulty design, poor maintenance, it doesn't matter. In the public eye, those planes can fall out of the sky at any moment. Whether that holds up to rational scrutiny is up for debate but, for the reputation of the airline industry, this is really, really bad!

For Lithium batteries, that isn't the case. Yes, they MIGHT catch on fire but we are pretty well aware of the reasons why they might. We know how to prevent it with reasonable certainty. We are working to develop better batteries that don't catch on fire.

With the DC-10 and the MD-11, people KNEW what could happen but they either swept it under the rug or just lied about it. (We may never know the truth.)

With batteries, the cards are on the table for everybody to see.

[Leo Enticknap]

The DC-10 that crashed in 1979 was almost brand new, and if my memory of reading about the accident is correct, the investigation established to everyone's satisfaction that a maintenance shortcut (removing the engine and pylon as a single assembly, rather than separating the engine from the pylon) started the stress cracking that eventually caused the pylon to separate from the wing. There has been no suggestion that this shortcut was ever used on the Louisville MD-11: if so, the obvious conclusion would be that three decades of takeoff and landing cycles had the same effect on the aft pylon mount as the forklift workaround did in the 1970s, but a lot more quickly. Either way, it looks like this is not fixable in anything like a cost effective way, given that there were only 20-30 MD-11s left in service at the time of the grounding, all of which are of a similar age to the accident aircraft. My guess is that they'll all be scrapped in situ, which, IMHO, is what needs to happen. I would seriously not like to be either in or under one if it ever flies again, unless a redesign and/or existing design replacement of the pylon mount is done first; and I suspect that this will simply be too expensive to justify to get 30 planes back into operation, which will now be worth more in scrap and recycled parts than as operational airplanes.

The funny thing is that from about 2001 to 2007 I was flying back and forth across the Atlantic on Northwest's 30-year old DC-10s three or four times a year, blissfully unaware that they had that ticking time bomb hanging from their wings.

Agreed to a certain extent on lithium batteries in e-bikes, but as with aviation safety regulation, there will need to be serious regulation and (legally enforced) quality control in the manufacture and use of lithium ion and li-poly batteries used for transportation motive power (EVs and e-bikes, but with battery powered trains and planes also on the horizon), in order for those cards on the table actually to be seen and understood.

[Randy Stankey]

... with battery powered trains and planes also on the horizon...

For small planes, maybe. There are already a few models in existence. For airliners, not in our lifetimes. The energy density of batteries would need to increase by two orders of magnitude in order to even be viable. I'd say the big problem is that, as a jet flies, it get lighter because the fuel burns off. That makes the cost to fly go down, the longer the plane flies. (Assuming it doesn't run out of gas!) Transcontinental or transoceanic flights would not be economically feasible using batteries because the plane would always be the same weight.

Battery powered airliners are not even in the next galaxy, let alone on the horizon.

[Dave Macaulay]

Actually the DC10 was about my favorite plane when I was flying pretty much multiple times weekly. I was on AA if possible (million mile+ AAdvantage member) and they had the DC10 on DFW-YYZ and man I did that run a lot. Never had any issues (may be obvious as I am still alive).
There have been a few ebike battery fires around Toronto but not an epidemic. The problem seems to be with the cheapest ones, and they light up even when not charging. It's no joke, go off like a flamethrower then a bomb. Massive amounts of very toxic fumes and smoke. Chinese electric cars are banned or tariffed out of competitiveness here and that's a bonus. Domestic EVs have better records but there have been a few very scary events. China really kills any stories of the EV fires there, but BYD meaning "burn your driveway" is no joke.
Insurance is clamping down I think, if you store/charge an Ebike inside you may have no coverage if it burns the place down. Condos with EV spaces may have premiums explode.