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Robert Fitzer watched news footage showing New York City firefighters rescuing other people from a burning building in Manhattan, a fire started by a lithium-ion battery in an electric bicycle.
Fitzer, associate vice president for public protection at Fordham University in New York, revised the timeline. It was the end of 2022. With winter break approaching, and the most important gift-giving season of the year, it was imaginable that students would be heading back to campus in January with their own battery-powered transportation devices. Fearing that the same kind of fireplace could occur in a dormitory, Fitzer developed a policy to ban bicycles not only from Fordham’s campus buildings in the Bronx, but even on university grounds, an option made imaginable through the gates that demarcate its perimeter.
Since it only takes 10 minutes to walk to the Bronx campus, he said, there’s little justification for needing an e-bike to ride it.
The kind of fire that prompted Fitzer to act has happened many times across the country and in New York City, and was added on Feb. 23 in an apartment building in Harlem where Hechinger Report reporter Fazil Khan lived.
This Khan his life.
Fordham, other universities and some cities, in addition to New York and San Francisco, are crafting policies to ban e-bikes and their sisters, electric scooters and similar battery-powered hoverboards, in the absence of federal or state legislation.
Discussions about establishing criteria for bicycles, or more particularly for the batteries that force them, are stalled by law in Congress. Lithium-ion batteries in e-bikes can catch fire if damaged, overcharged, or overheated, according to the National Fire Department. Protection Association, a non-profit organization that provides education and criteria on chimney protection. Bicycle-started fires can produce poisonous gases and burn so hot that it can be difficult to put out.
The federal firm that can limit itself to e-bikes, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, is pushing corporations to adhere to voluntary criteria for e-bikes and their batteries, such as those set forth through the UL standards.
At the University of Connecticut, a rule went into effect early in the fall semester related to what it calls private transportation motor vehicles: They enter any building on campus.
The chimney hazard of an electric motorcycle or scooter is “a ticking clock,” said Christopher Renshaw, the university’s deputy director of chimneys.
This threat is serious when cars aren’t properly maintained, Renshaw said, or when the battery type is inserted or a charging cable is changed. An outlet may not reach the score needed to qualify the battery. However, students “see one and I still think the two are compatible,” he said. “Possibly they wouldn’t be. ”
In New York, where firefighters have said batteries are the leading cause of fires in the region, a law that went into effect last September requires any mobility device sold or leased that uses lithium-ion batteries to meet UL standards. won a $25 million grant from the federal Department of Transportation to install some 200 outdoor e-bike charging stations and more than 50 e-bike garages.
“Most lithium-ion batteries and chargers are safe, and we want to inspire the use of more sustainable transportation opportunities in the future,” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said at a press conference last year about the grant. “But we also want to make sure those micromobility vehicles are stored and charged safely, so that faulty or poorly manufactured batteries don’t put other people at risk. “
Storage and recharging, especially in homes, cause many fire hazards. In San Francisco, where 58 fireplaces were powered by lithium-ion batteries last year, a new law sets limits on the number of scooters and motorcycles powered by those batteries that can be charged in apartments and also requires them to have qualified batteries.
It is in this landscape that some universities are forging their path.
Yale and Boston College limit the use of bicycles, as well as how and where they are charged. Some items, such as electric scooters, are prohibited. Quinnipiac University in Connecticut bars them from entering its dormitories, said Mark DeVilbiss, director of housing.
“We’re definitely restricting any type of item that has a lithium-ion battery,” DeVilbiss said. With 4,500 students living in school housing, his institution’s protection committee discusses with his threat control and insurance company, United Educators, what changes they want to implement. Be aware of what is and is rarely allowed in the dormitories.
When fryers, for example, became a popular new appliance, the committee consulted with the company and decided that they are only allowed in apartment-style homes with kitchens stressed by appliances.
With restrictions on e-bikes, academics didn’t protest much, DeVilbiss recalled, because one man insisted that his e-bike was a must-have for traveling between the university’s two campuses, which are about 800 yards apart. To academics, the university refused to manufacture an ion.
“Sure enough, they brought it in, plugged it in and left for spring break,” DeVilbiss said. It was confiscated and returned to the student to take home.
Educadores Unidos, which works exclusively with educational establishments, including elementary and graduate schools, schools and universities, advises some of its 1,600 clients on how to reduce risk, so they do not want to hotel their insurance policies. In 2020, he presented advice on the problems that institutions deserve when it comes to proposing policies related to electric scooters. At that time, the biggest fear was accidents. United Educators recommended that schools adopt regulations related to helmet wearing, parking, and driving cars under the influence.
“Indoor charging was not an issue,” said Christine McHugh, senior control advisor for United Educators.
Accidents are still a fear, but batteries and the fires they can cause are now the most sensible fear for some school administrators.
However, the liability insurance company sticks to the universities’ policies on the matter. “Every year we see new things, from drones to production spaces to tech toys,” McHugh said. “So schools want to ask, ‘What do we do, what do we do with those things on our campuses?'”
This story about e-bikes on school campuses was produced through The Hechinger Report, an independent nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to our higher education newsletter. Listen to our podcast on higher education.
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