Electric motorbikes ‘literally an accident waiting to happen’

As a church leader on the Cardiff estate of last week’s fatal crash speaks out, police warn that the ‘must have’ vehicles are becoming a gang favourite
Kyrees Sullivan died on Monday when the electric motorbike he was
riding crashed

Kyrees Sullivan died on Monday when the electric motorbike he was riding crashed

PA
David Collins
Sunday May 28 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

Harvey Evans loved bikes and motorcycles. At 15 he was already an
experienced rider, having gone off-road up the mountains with his father
every week since he was three.

His family indulged his interest with an electric motorcycle as an early
16th birthday present and last Monday he and his friend Kyrees Sullivan,
16, were speeding around their Cardiff housing estate on it.

At one point, with a police van following them, they appear to have reached 28mph. Moments later they crashed. Both died. Their deaths raise serious questions about the safety of the powerful electric motorbikes and mopeds
being bought and used by young people around the country, in some cases,
for criminal purposes.

“There is a trend now, no different to 15 years ago, when everybody on the estates had a petrol-powered pit-bike,” said Jamie Masterman, director of Urban Moto, an electric moped retailer with Ministry of Defence contracts
to supply Britain’s special forces with the vehicles.

“Thieves and criminals are choosing electric mopeds for the same reason special forces use them — they’re lightweight, make no noise, and can accelerate quickly.”

Industry experts examining CCTV footage taken minutes before the crash say
the bike the boys were riding looks similar to a Sur-Ron electric
motorcycle moped, costing £4,495. Weighing just 51kg, they have a top speed
of 30mph, although they can be modified for off-road use. The model and
whether the rider had the correct licence for on-road riding forms part of
a South Wales Police investigation.

On-the-road riders of electric mopeds must be 16 or older, with a
provisional moped licence and Compulsory Basic Training certificate (CBT).

Harvey and Kyrees were not wearing helmets at the time of the crash. It was
not clear which of the boys was driving.

“Sadly it was only a matter of time before something like this happened,” said Canon Jan Gould, who has led the Church of Resurrection in Ely for 17 years. “There are just so many of these boys whizzing around the estate on these electric machines now. It was literally an accident waiting to
happen.”

In recent years, police forces in the UK and Ireland have been warning
about such bikes being used by criminal gangs to transport drugs quickly to customers. London has been blighted by masked robbers on e-mopeds and motorbikes.

The Met’s Operation Venice was set up specifically to tackle “motorcycle-enabled crime”, targeting robbery hotspots in central, south and west London, with 180 victims attacked each week. The team is
authorised to use “tactical contact” to bump suspects off mopeds or e-bikes, in a game of cat and mouse across the capital.

“These Sur-Ron e-bikes are difficult to target,” Detective Inspector Treasa O’Donoghue has previously said. “They can go through red lights, with or against the flow of traffic, carrying out phone snatches along the way.”

Outside London, Sur-Ron bikes have been used in at least two fatal
shootings on Merseyside in 2021. Patrick Boyle, 26, was shot twice in the
chest in Huyton by a gunman on a black Sur-Ron electric bike.

In May last year, a 17-year-old from Lancashire died riding a Sur-Ron bike without a helmet. He had borrowed the bike from a friend.

There were riots in Ely, the part of Cardiff where the boys lived, after Monday’s crash. Cars were torched and police officers were pelted with missiles after it emerged a police vehicle had followed the boys.

“The vast majority in Ely are good, decent people,” Canon Gould said. “They’d give you their last penny. But there’s also this other section of the community, less than five per cent, I’d say, who are lawless and they look for trouble in everything, and we saw this the other night. They will latch on to any chance to have a go at the police.”

Another leader in the community, Kevin Williams, used to run the 47th St Francis Scout group in Ely until it was disbanded because of cost
pressures. “Since we were forced to disband a couple of years ago, I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in antisocial behaviour among that age group,”
he said. “Drugs are an increasing problem too. They’re being couriered around the estate by these kids on electric bikes. You see it all the
time.” There is no evidence Harvey and Kyrees were involved in such
criminal activity.

On Friday night, 800 friends, relatives and members of the community held a vigil for the dead boys in Ely. Harvey’s aunt, Hayley Murphy, told the BBC: “His dad used to take him off-road biking up the mountains every week since he was three years old. It still doesn’t seem real that we’re here for Harvey and Kyrees.”

Harvey’s grandmother, Dawn Rees, said the boys “did everything together, they loved each other like brothers. [Kyrees] was lovely. If I needed milk,
he went to the shop for me, always asking if I needed anything. A lovely boy.”

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has intensified its
monitoring of the sales of powerful electric bikes in the UK. Last year the DVSA brought a prosecution against a London-based company for illegally supplying a different type of dangerously powerful electric bike.

Hi-Fi Confidential Bike UK pleaded guilty at Highbury magistrates court in London and was fined £3,864 for fitting electric pedal bikes with motors powered to 750 watts, three times over the legal limit, capable of speeds
of 32 mph. It was only the second case of its kind in the UK and the first
to prove the company was advertising the powerful e-bikes for use on the
road, despite them being legal for off-road use only.

The DVSA now has a marketing intelligence unit that scans electric bike websites for how they are being advertised. “High-powered electric bikes
that are supplied for use illegally and have not had their design and construction properly approved pose a great risk to road safety, and
endanger their riders and other road users,” a DVSA source said.

Masterman does not think the answer lies simply in banning certain types of bike. “If they weren’t on that brand they would be on something else — or a
faster e-bike,” he said. The number of racetracks for petrol off-road bikes dropped dramatically in the past five years, leaving youngsters with
nowhere to ride. “This is about part educating young people, and part
having enough facilities for people to ride in,” he said.

The DVSA’s market surveillance investigator, Sadie Clarke, said: “[We] will continue to make sure the growing electric bicycle market is safe for
everyone by ensuring they have had their design and construction properly approved.”

South Wales Police said it could not comment on the make and model of the electric bike being ridden by Evans and Sullivan at the time of their
deaths as it formed part of continuing investigations.

Sur-Ron’s UK dealer was contacted for comment.

<https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6514d6a8-fc98-11ed-aa31-73394e195d29?shareToken=956b235f9a85bd02d4471465785f7e85>

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