Source : the age
An electric bike involved in a collision that left a man dead had been illegally modified to travel at speeds of up to 90 kilometres an hour, police say.
The 69-year-old was the 11th person to die in four days on Victorian roads.
The e-bike, which hit the man while he was walking across a busy Mornington Peninsula road on Monday night, had a battery that was held together by duct tape and cable ties, police said.
Business owners said they heard screams from the collision, which occurred on Frankston-Flinders Road in Hastings about 6.40pm. Police arrived to find the local man with life-threatening upper and lower body injuries.
The 69-year-old was walking home from the shops, police said.
He was flown to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where he died on Tuesday.
A 24-year-old Hastings man, who police allege was riding the illegally modified e-bike, was driven to The Alfred with serious upper and lower body injuries.
He remained in a stable condition on Tuesday, but police said his injuries were likely to be “life-changing”.
On Tuesday afternoon, Inspector Craig McEvoy said police were still waiting to speak to the rider.
McEvoy said the e-bike had been modified to go faster.
The bike after the collision at Hastings on Monday.Credit: Nine News
“The battery has [been] increased in size,” he said. “It’s been held together with duct tape and cable ties to increase the speed and the capacity, the power outage, of the actual bike.”
“Anything that increases the power to the bike, the speed of the bike [is illegal]. If you’re riding bikes at night, we encourage [you to] have all the safety modifications, such as lighting, helmets … so that you are visible as a cyclist.”
It is not known how fast the e-bike was travelling at the time of the collision, or whether the retrofitted lighting was on.
Under Victorian law, an e-bike modified to produce speeds of higher than 25km/h or continuous power output of more than 200 watts is legally considered a motorcycle.
Detectives combed the scene for evidence as both men were hospitalised.Credit: Nine News
E-bikes don’t need to be registered and riders don’t need to be licensed, provided they meet legal requirements.
Last week on 3AW, former Queensland Police Superintendent Jim Keogh said “It’s inevitable there’s going to be a fatality as a result of these ebikes”. There have been reports Queensland police have begun fining parents for buying their children e-bikes.
‘We could hear him screaming’
Police believe the bike was travelling in the left-hand lane at the time and hit the pedestrian when he tried to cross the road under some street lighting.
The bike lay crumpled off to the side of the road on bark in the aftermath of the collision, as police set up traffic cones and evidence markers. A helmet was in the dirt next to it.
One of the business owners, Jane Evans from MarShere Dance Studios, said students were just arriving for their adult social dance class on Monday evening when they heard the commotion.
“We had a massive line-up of cars,” Evans told The Age. “[One of] the gentlemen was in quite a bit of pain. We could hear him screaming about his arm.
“[He was screaming], ‘It’s my arm, it’s my arm’.”
Bellsouth co-owner Leanne Davies said she initially dismissed the screams as teenagers or people fighting in the street, before she went to lock up and saw emergency vehicles.
“I heard screams, somebody going, ‘Ahh, ahh, ahh’,” she said. “It went on for a minute or so and then there was a bit more a bit later.”
‘Flabbergasted’
The collision followed a horror few days on Victoria’s roads, with six people dying in four separate crashes on Monday, and another three people dying over the Mother’s Day weekend.
Eight of the deaths occurred after the start of National Road Safety Week on Sunday.
A Dandenong North mother was among those who died after her family’s car rolled down an embankment on Mother’s Day.
The condition of a 52-year-old man driving that car had improved to stable by Tuesday afternoon.
On Tuesday, there was another fatal crash at Wangaratta South about 12.30am, when a driver – the sole occupant of their vehicle – left the road and crashed into trees. The driver died at the scene.
McEvoy said police were “flabbergasted” by the current rate of road trauma.
“We’ve had nine collisions with 11 [deaths] and five people still in hospital in critical conditions,” he said.
“Our members are resilient, but it’s still exposing them to some graphic scenes and some difficult conversations with families, with victims, with witnesses, with anybody who’s involved.”
Police urged anyone with footage of the Hastings collision to come forward.
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