While deaths, injuries and felonies related to e-bikes continue rising, a debate persists over how to best curb the worsening trend throughout Orange County.
Some say education and enforcement is key.
Others say infrastructure overhauls are also needed.
Meanwhile, there’s been a varied approach in Orange County through local laws and educational programs.
Cities throughout Orange County have been overhauling local laws aimed at addressing unsafe e-bike riders while OC District Attorney hosted an e-bike buyback program earlier this month – a buyback that ran out of money.
Spitzer said his e-bike buyback – a program usually reserved for firearms – earlier this month was aimed at getting e-bikes off the streets and rolling out education about the popular bikes.
Though, half way through the event, with hundreds of Southern California residents lined up outside Angel Stadium to turn in their bikes, the $100,000 allotted to fund gift cards for those turning over bikes ran dry.
Meanwhile, education and infrastructure to support safe e-bike riding has come a day late and a dollar short for many.
In October 2024, Orange County resident Jesse Hayes said he suffered a traumatic brain injury and was unresponsive for months after being hit by a car while riding his e-bike in Huntington Beach.
At the Sept. 13 buyback event, Jesse, alongside his mother Kasey Hayes, urged parents to understand the dangers of e-bikes before buying them for their children.
But Jesse’s mother said he was a safe e-bike rider, not one to ride at high speeds or do wheelies.
“There is a misconception of these kids that get hit, they’re all riding reckless, they’re all doing wheelies, they’re all out of control. That’s not true,” said Kasey Hayes at the buyback event.
Despite this, Jesse ended up on life support and in rehabilitation, still recovering two years later.
“There are many issues with these bikes and why they are unsafe: inadequate bike lanes, distracted drivers, kids not riding them properly,” Kasey Hayes said.
So are e-bikes – when safely operated – to blame for the deaths and injuries?
At Angel Stadium, Spitzer said the buyback is just part of a multifaceted plan to reduce deaths related to e-bike crashes, with education, prosecution and infrastructure all being major steps.
“I’m trying everything I can do. We have law enforcement, we have education, I have my prosecution,” Spitzer said in an interview with the Voice of OC.
But as deaths, injuries and felony charges surrounding e-bikes continue to ramp up, bike friendly infrastructure has largely remained unaddressed, while policing has continued to rise.
While a patchwork of local laws are in place with various e-bike crackdowns, infrastructure for bikes has largely remained unchanged.
Fullerton resident and e-bike user Anjali Tapadia – who chairs the city’s Active Transport Committee – said the buyback paints a negative image of e-bikes that are being used responsibly and safely, in the name of cutting down dangerous e-bike usage.
“I think it does (e-bikes) a disservice by treating them as dangerous objects that need to be bought back, similar to guns and by lumping them in with electric motorcycles, which are street illegal,” she said in a phone interview, adding that her comments don’t reflect the committee.
Tapadia sees e-bikes as a tool to help cultivate community, adding that being outside, riding a bike or walking allows residents to feel more connected and notice things where they live they may not have seen while driving a car.
“To me, biking is not just about getting from A to B, it’s about this whole conversation surrounding community, getting to know your neighbors,” she said. “Those are things that are very difficult to do in a car, but when you bike or walk they become readily available.”
However, with limited bike-friendly infrastructure and regulations still works-in-progress, it makes safety challenging.
To Tapadia, the most immediate change cities could make to protect cyclists is to implement designated bike lanes, providing cyclists different levels of protection from cars, depending on the type of bike lane.
“Most of the collisions that we see at intersections are at conflict points, because the road design is so poor in our country that it deliberately puts bicyclists and car drivers into conflict instead of resolving that conflict,” Tapadia said in the phone interview.
According to a report by the Mineta Transportation Institute and San Jose State University, updated infrastructure is one of the best options cities have to prevent injuries and deaths related to e-bike collisions.
The report also found that while most e-bike injuries come from solo accidents, most fatalities come from collisions with other vehicles.
Currently, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) offers support to create bikeways and plans, as well as grants that cities can apply for aimed at bike infrastructure.
According to an email from Megan Abba, communications specialist at OCTA, currently there are 1,000 miles of bikeways in OC and 54% of primary roadways have a bike lane.
It falls on cities to collaborate with the county transportation agency on these plans or receive grants.
“The point is that this is a real, meaningful type of conveyance that can really help our society, that can make our society stronger, that can save our society money, that can prevent death, that can really respect the value of human life,” she said in a phone interview.
She said the increased police crackdown on e-bikes is tarnishing the public image of e-bikes.
“We are losing the opportunity every single day that we do this.”
E-bike Education Across OC
While their speed and wide availability make e-bikes appealing for younger riders, purchasing one often does not require education or even a drivers license.
According to Spitzer, one of the biggest modes of accident prevention for people on e-bikes is education, especially for young riders and their parents.
“Kids are dying because they don’t understand the vehicles that they’re driving,” Spitzer said at the buyback.
“We don’t want to prosecute, we don’t want to arrest, we don’t want to incite young people. We want them to get educated and we want them to ride these vehicles responsibly.”
Tim Weisberg, deputy director of communications and public affairs at the California Office of Traffic Safety, said that increased education options should not only be for e-bike riders, but for their parents.
“There are great benefits (to e-bikes) – less leg power, you can go places faster, travel longer distances, but that only matters when you are safe and responsible riding e-bikes,” Weisberg said in an interview with Voice of OC.
There is no streamlined direction from the county on e-bike education, meaning each city is responsible for their own education program.
Currently, Huntington Beach is the only city in OC with its own e-bike education program, as the police department has teamed up with local school districts to mandate the learning course for students looking to ride their e-bike to school.
The 70-minute program puts e-bike riders through simulated real-world experiences, like emergency braking and proper helmet use, and teaches California laws.
It allows youth who have been cited for improperly riding an e-bike to waive a citation, as long as they attend with their parents.
Injuries and Fatalities on the Rise
While the county and city leaders have grappled with ways to regulate e-bike usage and look to implement safe infrastructure over the past few years, injuries have spiked, particularly among youth.
In May, a 13-year-old boy died in Garden Grove after he hit a center median traveling 35 miles per hour on an e-motorcycle, according to the Garden Grove Police Department.
Last fall, two Cal State Fullerton students were struck while riding e-scooters near the campus. One of the students later died from her injuries related to the incident.
In an email to Voice of OC, Makenzie Ferguson, injury prevention educator at Rady Children’s Health Orange County, formerly known as CHOC, wrote that the hospital has seen a sharp increase in injuries related to e-bike collisions in the past 5 years.
Since just the beginning of this year, the hospital has cared for 142 patients involved in e-bike crashes, with the peak age being 14. Only 50% wore helmets, she said.
Now, e-bike related injuries are the number one reason for trauma visits to the children’s hospital.
Ferguson said most of these injuries come from bikes traveling over 20 miles per hour, meaning that they had been modified and would be street illegal.
“Because of this, we encourage parents to purchase e-bikes that do not exceed these speeds and to make sure their child’s e-bike has not been modified to go faster than intended, Ferguson wrote.
However, limited public outreach and changing local regulations can make it hard for parents to know what is considered legal.
How to Best Regulate E-Bikes?
The buyback comes at a time when cities across Orange County, and the county itself, grapple with regulations on the electric bikes as deaths, injuries and criminal charges rise.
While cities are looking to use police and code enforcement officers to crack down on those riding unsafely, the DA’s office is taking a stronger approach – prosecuting parents who knowingly allowed their kids to ride recklessly or helped modify the bikes.
The DA’s office wrote in a news release that they have filed three child endangerment charges since January because of teens’ alleged irresponsible actions and speeds on e-motorcycles.
In April, an Aliso Viejo mother was charged with felony child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter after it was alleged her son, who prosecutors say was doing wheelies on an e-motorcycle, critically injured an 81-year-old Vietnam veteran who died two weeks later.
Additionally, a Yorba Linda father is facing felony child endangerment and abuse after helping his son modify an e-motorcycle to run up to 60 miles per hour.
Several cities in OC have ushered in their own e-bikes laws, but they vary widely from city to city, making it challenging for e-bike riders to know what is legal and where.
Fullerton allows e-bikes on sidewalks, but riders must go 5 miles per hour.
Neighboring Buena Park doesn’t allow e-bikes on sidewalks at all, while Anaheim, another close city, refers to state law, without any local codes.
Cities like Brea, Irvine and Yorba Linda have also brought in regulation, widely varying from each other.
However, there is a lack of consensus across OC’s 34 cities on how the bikes should be regulated – one that the OC Grand Jury called out more than two years ago.
“There is an urgent need to have consistent ordinances for the regulation and enforcement of safe E-bike use in all cities, school districts, parks, and unincorporated areas.”
Michelle King is a Voice of OC reporting fellow. You can reach her atmichelleking.news@gmail.com.
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