Han Ximin ximhan@1216.com SHENZHEN police will expand a real-name registration and licensing program for electric bikes next week to Longhua, Longgang, Pingshan districts and Dapeng New Area after a two-month trial in Bao’an and Guangming districts. The registration and licensing proved to be effective in reducing traffic accidents, injuries and fatalities. In Bao’an and Guangming districts, police received 195 complaints about e-bike violations in two months, down by 11.4 percent year on year. The accidents relating to e-bikes, 4,017 in total, decreased by 9.5 percent, while thefts involving e-bikes dropped by 961, or 10.9 percent. So far this year, the city has reported 90 e-bike-related accidents that resulted in 19 deaths and 82 injuries, decreases of 33 percent, 10 percent and 43 percent respectively. There were no deaths or injuries reported of registered drivers. In Bao’an and Guangming, 956,600 e-bike drivers had registered through the online system and police had issued 792,400 licenses. At e-bike shops in Bao’an, buyers can purchase e-bikes that have been pre-registered on the police databank after facial recognition and input of their personal information. “Our sales have increased by one-third after we started to sell the e-bikes that had received licenses from police,” a shop owner surnamed Li said. Buyers need to go through necessary online training when they purchase the e-bikes because improvement of safety awareness helps reduce traffic accidents, said Cai Fan, vice head of the Bao’an District Government. At Guangming Community Work Station, employees were busy with the registration of transitional licenses for e-bikes that fail standards as the deadline of June 15 is approaching. “We have completed registrations and given licenses to more than 10,000 e-bike drivers who have passed online and offline training,” Huang Zitao, an official with the work station, said. |