For two days, the findings of a product segment were exchanged which had received little attention to that date: the speed pedelec. Why that? As these bicycles, i.e. the fast ones, are assumed to hold substantial potential in the future and as findings on the arising higher loads are certainly of good use to appropriately classify other types. Another expert workshop on electric mountain bikes was actually suggested right on the spot.
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Dirk Zedler: CE-marking
On the occasion of the member’s general meeting of the German service and bicycle association (VSF) Dirk Zedler had held a lecture on the CE-marking. For this reason, we will only point out a few further aspects he mentioned in Berlin.
The operating instructions should for example also include the service life of a product as well as indications on how to dispose of the product. The correct interpretation of the term "safe" is no longer of major importance: The fact alone that there is a safer product does not mean that a product is unsafe. The existence of high-quality disc brakes is therefore not evidence for the fact that a HS 33 would be unsafe. In any case, however, a product needs to be marked properly. It must also show the supplier’s contact address; if this is impossible, the address must be indicated on the packaging.
The manufacturer is obliged to conduct spot checks and to maintain a book of complaints. Zedler reported from his experience cases where the service manager, the production manager and the product manager of a company had different knowledge about complaints and who had not found a way to bring their findings together. A simple Excel list where all parties involved would enter the complaints brought to their knowledge would do already. On the basis of such a list it would be possible to discontinue products with a high complaint rate.
Zedler pointed out once again the necessity of a risk analysis. In this connection, it has to be considered among other things that pedelecs ride faster by 5 kmh in the average than standard bicycles and are therefore exposed to higher loads.
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Author: Michael Bollschweiler
