A total of 13,615 people in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will be temporarily banned from using shared bikes due to traffic violations, according to media reports (in Chinese). This is the first batch of traffic offenders that will be punished according to the new rules on shared bicycle users’ behavior issued by the Shenzhen police. The regulation was trialed for one month and went into effect on July 1st.
Out of the 13,615 traffic violations perpetrated by non-motorized vehicles, 3261 involved violations by bicycle riders. More than half of the violations–1717 in total–were perpetrated users riding bikes from Mobike, ofo, Bluegogo, and other bike-renting companies. The majority of the violators were riding Mobike’s bicycles at the time of the incident.
According to the new rules, violators are forbidden to use bike rental services for at least one week. The police have already notified bike-renting companies to deactivate violators’ user accounts from July 17th to 23rd.
The main reasons for the punishment are driving non-motorized vehicles in the motorized vehicle lane and occupying lanes for other vehicles. Statistics show that most perpetrators were men (71.29%) aged between 20 and 30.
Shenzhen is the first city in China that began implementing rules for rented bikes in December last year. The push for regulation began after several fatal accidents involving bike rental users.
The multitude of rental bikes has also caused headaches for city authorities which have been trying to implement rules for parking bicycles. For illustration, this is how the Shenzhen Bay Park looked like during this year’s Qingming Festival in April when many residents decided to spend their holiday on the beach front.