I personally think it could be a great alternative to cars and bikes for those who need to take a whole family somewhere or a decent amount of stuff.
Only modifications I would make would be ride-by-wire and an extra set of pedals (so you can have two people pedalling without the annoyance of normal tandem bikes having to pedal at the same rate), and a more powerful motor (only 250W is legal in France, where this was designed, whereas 500W is legal here in Canada)
Death trap, oh come on…
Apart from this here obviously being some prototype/DIY/research project, it’s pretty much the same as a delivery bike, e.g.: https://cargo.mubea-umobility.com/
Are those death traps? How many people have died in there? How many people have been killed by them?
Even fully loaded and at top speed, which is commonly limited at 25km/h in the EU, it maybe has 5 times the kinetic energy of a “normal bike”.
A car at 50 km/h easily has 100 times the kinetic energy of a bike.
Yes, if you run that thing into a pedestrian, that probably wouldn’t go well. But those accidents, even in countries with lots of cargo bikes, are extremely rare, all things considered.