Homeowners of electric bicycle rental houses also need to be held responsible
On September 20, a fire on the third floor of a residential building in Tongzhou No. 1 community was caused by indoor charging of electric bicycles. The accident caused the death of 5 residents on the fifth floor.
After the incident, the perpetrator of the electric bicycle fire has been taken criminal coercive measures by the Tongzhou police in accordance with the law.
Regarding the issue of responsibility after the accident, a reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily combed through recent judgment documents of similar cases and found that if the fire is caused by the modification of an electric vehicle, it will be severely punished, and the homeowner of the rental house also needs to bear the corresponding legal responsibility.
A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily found that the landlord is often held accountable for fires caused by charging electric bicycles in rented houses.
On August 9, 2019, such a case also occurred in Tongzhou District.
At 19:00 on the 8th, the defendant Liu parked the electric car on the first floor of the stairs for charging, and returned to the rented room on the second floor to rest.
At about 1:40 am the next morning, the electric car had an electrical circuit failure and caused a fire.
After discovering the fire, Liu took his family to escape, and all three were burned during the escape.
After getting the news, the landlord Zhou and his son rushed to the scene for rescue. Tenant Zhang was burned to death on the spot, and part of the property on the scene was burned.
After the incident, the prosecution prosecuted Liu, the owner of the electric bicycle, and Zhou, the landlord.
The court sentenced the landlord Zhou to one year and four months in prison for the crime of fire, and the electric bicycle owner Liu to four months in a year, with a suspended sentence of one year and six months.
After Zhou appealed, the court of second instance upheld the original judgment.
In addition to the aforementioned homeowner Zhou in Tongzhou, in a case in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, the homeowner was also sentenced.
Defendant Lin rented the second to sixth floors of his private building to 22 people and parked electric bicycles on the first floor.
The local police station inspected the building twice and found hidden fire safety hazards such as illegal indoor charging of electric vehicles and no life-saving doors, and issued a rectification notice, but Lin did not make rectification.
On September 18, 2018, the electric line of the No. 6 electric car parked on the first floor caught fire, causing 12 people renting here to burn to varying degrees.
The court found that Lin had violated the fire management regulations and refused to implement the improvement measures notified by the fire supervision agency, causing serious consequences. Lin actively compensated the injured for losses and was forgiven by the injured, and assumed 60% of the civil liability for compensation. 6 Chen, the owner of the No. 1 electric car, bears 40% of the civil liability.
At the same time, Lin was convicted of fire accident liability and sentenced to one year and seven months in prison.
In addition, in a case in Guilin, Guangxi, the owner of a rental house, Qin, did not take relevant safety measures to allow renters to park and charge their mopeds and electric vehicles in the lobby on the first floor. Qin was found to be a crime of a major accident. , Sentenced to eight months in prison.
A reporter from Beijing Youth Daily combed through the cases of electric bicycle fires judged by the court since 2020 and found that in cases of death due to electric bicycle fire, most of the courts imposed light punishments in the judgment, and most of them were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of less than three years; In death cases, most prison terms are more than three years without probation.
At the same time, the court will consider whether the electric bicycle that caught fire has been privately modified to change the battery circuit.
If there is an act of modifying an electric bicycle, it is difficult to punish lightly.
In a case that occurred in the early morning of August 8, 2020 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, Lu's electric car caught fire indoors, causing the death of three residents living on the third floor.
It was identified that the cause of the fire was that the battery compartment at the pedal of the electric vehicle lost its airtight and fixed function after being remodeled, which caused the electric vehicle to splash out and ignite the surrounding electric vehicle after the battery failed.
In the end, the court sentenced Lu to the crime of fire and sentenced him to three years and six months in prison.
Text/Reporter Zhang Ziyuan