Isn’t it obvious by now? Don’t look at your phone while driving. Don’t look at your phone while walking down stairs. And don’t look at your phone while riding your e-bike. Three… golden… rules. Especially when you’re headed right toward a… police car.
Of course, in many ways, it’s surprising this hasn’t happened until now. Or at least, if it has, this is the first time media has picked up on it.
But it did, and right here in our very own Jiangsu Province, in the city of Huai’an to be exact, as The Paper reveals in a video report which which shows the encounter.
On 17 November, a man riding an e-bike in Huai’an crashed into a police car in front of him while using his mobile phone, knocking a hole in the rear of the law-enforcement vehicle.
“We were all surprised to be rear ended”, said officer, Zhang Fengming, of the Huaihai Lu Police Station in Huai’an. That’s especially so given that the first responder’s car had its emergency lights flashing at the time.
The man responsible, surnamed Jing, did at least take the initiative to admit his mistake and say he was willing to bear the maintenance cost to the police vehicle.
Eyes rolling aside, the antics of e-bike riders have been a headache for law enforcement for many years now.
Their top two crimes? Riding on the wrong side of the road and not wearing a helmet. And sometimes both at the same time. There are many, many more that we won’t dwell on here (like where riders decide to leave their bikes).
But a law put into force in 2020 brought a change to quite a bit of that. When the mandatory helmet-wearing law came into effect on 1 June of that year, only 30 percent of e-biker riders nationally were wearing helmets. By August, Nanjing e-bike riders were toeing the line to the tune of 90 percent.
While that made a few people in the helmet-manufacturing business very rich, in Huai’an, there today remains just one very embarrassed Mr. Jing.
