Cycle News Lowside
COLUMN
E-nough is E-nough
That’s it. I’m over it.
I’m so sick of nearly killing teenagers riding e-bikes—many of which are essentially small motorcycles—in my neighborhood. The police do absolutely nothing. The kids riding them are usually riding two-up with helmets that aren’t strapped on (and are probably cheapies from Amazon that wouldn’t cost more than $20 anyway), and they don’t even heed basic road rules—they deliberately flout them.
The latest episode happened a couple of days ago when I was turning into my street and three kids around 13-15 years old—two riding two-up and one solo—came ripping down the sidewalk (the sidewalk, not the road) at around 20 mph, made eye contact with me as I was halfway through turning across a two-lane road, and proceeded to get on the gas and miss my car by inches.
They also flipped me off after I yelled at them to learn how to ride.
God, I feel like a raging old man.
The main culprits are, dare I say it, teenage girls. Almost always riding two-up, with unstrapped helmets, and the one on the back is usually on her phone while the rider in charge hits the bike’s top speed. Guess how good even an Arai Corsair-X is going to protect you if it’s not strapped on, let alone a plastic Amazon bucket cap?
I’ve nearly taken two sets of girls out as they think the street is their own playground track. The lack of spatial awareness on one occasion even had the girl at the back rear-end her friend when he stopped (thankfully) at a set of traffic lights. I had a laugh about that.
The consequences of slamming into a turning vehicle at 20 mph while on an e-pedal bike don’t bear thinking about. And I wonder if I’d be at fault for whatever collision they cause because these kids have zero foresight and leave their safety up to everyone else—just like motorcycle riders who generally don’t live past 21.
The blame for this epidemic of kids who are given these loaded guns lies squarely with parents who either don’t care about their teenager’s safety or are so dumb as to how dangerous these things really are that it’s almost criminal.
People are buying these contraptions for their kids for thousands of dollars and just letting them into the wild with next to no two-wheeled experience other than a couple of years after the training wheels have been taken off.
I suppose I can’t be totally mad at the parents because local councils across the country have been ensuring there’s nowhere for kids to ride anymore for a long time. Tracks are being closed left and right, no new ones are being opened, and even in places like South Orange County in California, which has more green space than any developed municipality I’ve ever seen, is more concerned with implementing yet another bloody baseball field than giving kids somewhere safe to ride.
Perhaps it’s a conspiracy between the companies that build these bikes and the health insurance companies, because the more crashes and car impalements there are, the more money everyone makes.
These electric machines are motorcycles. Let that be clear. Yes, they are “pedal assist,” but no kid I see in my neighborhood is pedaling up a 45° incline with their friend on the back, and I sure as hell don’t see them pedaling on the way down when they are careening through stop signs and across four lanes of traffic. Trust me, it happens. I’ve seen it.
As such, these bikes should be treated as motorcycles. Kids should get licenses if they want to ride on the street. They should have to pass the same tests you and I do; they should have insurance, and they should be made by the police force to actually adhere to the rules.
Electric bikes fall into three categories—Class 1, 2, and 3—depending on their top-assisted speed and whether they include a throttle. Class 1 bikes provide pedal assistance up to 20 mph, Class 2 models have a throttle that can propel them to 20 mph without pedaling, and Class 3 bikes offer pedal assistance up to 28 mph. Personally, I find Class 2 bikes the most problematic since they allow riders to skip pedaling entirely.
As such, these bikes should be treated as motorcycles. Kids should get licenses if they want to ride on the street. They should have to pass the same tests you and I do.
In a CBS report by Lauren Toms (you can read it here), “According to the [Marin] county health department from October 10th to November 10th this year [2023] the rate of e-bike-related accidents for youth ages 10 to 19 years old was nine times higher than similar accidents of people over 20 years old.
“The report also showed that 22 percent of all 911 calls in the same period were for e-bike-related accidents and 71 percent of responses for all bike accidents among 10- to 19-year-olds were e-bike-related.”
Part of the blame has to lie with the manufacturers. I know they will retort and say, just like gun manufacturers, that they can’t control what people do with their product. And that is true. But there’s no background check when purchasing a Super73, Surron, or whatever other brand is out there. There’s no experience check, no courses the new riders can take, nothing. The fact that more kids are not missing limbs or, worse, buried six feet under is remarkable. Some kids and, by default, their parents are so damn reckless, and they should be held accountable.
I wouldn’t go as far as banning these bikes, but at least make it so the kids have to be 16—the same age you need to be to legally ride motorcycles on the road—to ride them.
I want more people riding motorcycles. I always have. But this is not the answer. The sale of these bikes won’t breed new motorcycle riders. All it will do is fluff up these manufacturers’ back pockets and, eventually, those of the medical insurance providers after the kid who doesn’t think the road rules apply to him goes smashing into the side of a truck.
Something’s got to change.CN
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