Cycling as a hobby is associated with affluent white people which skews the perception. But the last time I looked into this for my own country, a huge portion of bike users were basically immigrants riding it a couple miles though a city on a daily basis to their low wage, possibly undocumented, jobs.
I'm not saying these items are good in any material way, or that these people shouldn't have better options. But pushing up the minimum price of bikes could be damaging for people who use it as a necessary transport, rather than a hobby or exercise.
I didn't say "it's the preserve of" I said "is associated with." Maybe where you live is different but where I live if you talk about cycling most people are going to picture someone in lycra on a road bike riding recreationally, not a concrete worker riding to the job in jeans.
This perception skews the conversation about bikes, and the understanding of what needs people have for them and how they use them.
And again different areas are different but where I live there's not really a very cheap secondhand bike market. The lowest prices you ever see, if you look for them, are willing to wait and travel, are right around the price of a shitty bike you can get from any big box store 24/7 in dozens of locations around the city.
Those shitty bikes unfortunately seem to fulfill a real need, and it's not clear to me that it would be met if you simply removed them.
This could be addressed in a whole bunch of ways, most simply with just a straightforward commuter bike subsidy. But that doesn't seem to be on the table do I don't think deleting these bikes should be either.
Maybe that’s true but the sense I got from the linked articles was just that they are cheap bikes sold at supermarkets. In that context, they are advocating that you should spend 250£ on a bike, with parent suggesting that these 70£ bikes be banned.
Why should we ban shitty bikes that poor people can afford? Why should we ban “fake mountain bikes”? Certainly if they are actually dangerous, but there’s existing consumer law to handle that case.
(Also, I laughed when the authors wondered “if it’s such a rare flaw why do we see it all the time?” Like you’re a bike repair shop, pal. Of course you see the ones that are busted. That doesn’t tell you much about the rate of failure.)
I'm not saying these items are good in any material way, or that these people shouldn't have better options. But pushing up the minimum price of bikes could be damaging for people who use it as a necessary transport, rather than a hobby or exercise.