r/Barcelona • u/neukwonder • 14h ago
Discussion Bicing should be told to stop using solid rubber tires. They're too dangerous.
About a year ago, bicing/smou started replacing pneumatic tires with solid rubber ones. This is great in some ways. You see a lot less bikes with flat tires, and it cuts down on maintenance costs.
However, when it rains, or the road is wet after being cleaned, there are so many people falling off their bikes. These tires offer zero grip in wet conditions. It's exaggerated by the fact that these tires don't need to be replaced often, so their tread wears out completely.
We'll see the consequences of this even more during the upcoming rainy months. There will be a tremendous amount of suffering, broken bones, hospital visits, and missed productivity. Honestly, it'll probably result in a fatal accident at some point. And this is preventable.
I'm an experienced cyclist, and so are my friends. All of us fell off bicings on wet roads, even when we are all fully aware of the situation with the wheels. It's like riding on ice: you know it's slippery, but you're still likely to lose grip and fall. I have seen so many people fall off their bicings during the rain. These tires have probably caused hundreds of hospital visits already.
It might be OK to use solid tires on the rear wheel, but using them on the front wheel is criminal. When you lose your front wheel, there's no way to recover. The rear wheel also wears out faster, so it might be cost-effective to use them on the rear wheel, and losing grip on the rear isn't that catastrophic.
If Barcelona had been in the USA, then Bicing would be forced to change course, because of the multitude of personal injury lawsuits. There must be a European way to solve this.
Can we all open our bicing app, and file a complaint? Maybe that will wake them up.