From today's Washiington Post
David Takemoto-Weerts
E-bikes are an e-menace
America’s streets are being swarmed by teens on fast, silent electric bikes, and injuries are rising.
I don’t want to give you something new to worry about, but I think our teenagers are trying to kill us.
I was in Hermosa Beach, California, the sweetest little beach town your toes can dig into, when I pressed the crosswalk button. The flashing lights came on, meaning: let’s go. I was one step into the street when a kid about 13 on a bike nearly sent me to my obituary.
But not just any bike. This was one of those e-motorbikes. Have you seen these things? They look like Suzuki dirt bikes, only cooler, quicker and deadlier, since you don’t hear them coming.
They even look fast when parked. If I were in middle school, I’d want one. Parents give in — at anywhere from about 800 bucks to a couple thousand or more. Then let the chaos begin.
But this kid wasn’t just riding his. He was pulling a wheelie on the thing while doing about 40 mph. His front wheel was up so high, it nearly took my face off. Which means he wasn’t looking at any stupid flashing crosswalk lights.
It was such a blur, it took me a second to realize what nearly ended me. The kid was 30 yards past me now, still flying along, looking back, laughing.
I yelled, “What the actual…” — you know the rest.
He grinned and yelled back, “Sorry, Pops!”
I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think he was sorry.
This is not the first time they’ve nearly nailed me. We have a house in Hermosa, and these e-motos are everywhere. They’re flying down the Strand like somebody’s giving away free vapes at the other end. The Strand is a beachside promenade for walkers and joggers and bicyclists (8 mph speed limit), but these little maniacs slalom between tourists and dogs and baby carriages, sometimes with two or three friends hanging on, working their phones.
You hear a new story every day. A couple was leaving a concert in the next town over, Redondo Beach, when a pack of teens on e-motos came flying by and nearly knocked them over.
The guy yelled at them to slow down, and the last kid flying past hit his girlfriend in the back of the head, knocking her down. The guy tried to grab the kid — uh-oh, mistake. They instantly surrounded him and started punching. He was lucky to come away with just facial scrapes, a concussion and bruised ribs.
It’s not just a California thing. It’s an everywhere thing. Police all over the country report gaggles of these mini-marauders wearing balaclavas, throwing rocks and M-80s, hassling anyone with the gall to be 20 or older.
You have any idea how hard it is to catch motorized teens who can go 50, screaming down alleys and up staircases?
In Elk Grove Village, Illinois, an e-gang was roving all over town in July, running reds, scaring the local citizenry.
“I was driving home and they were riding head on towards me basically playing chicken …” resident Erika Rachel posted online. “They weren’t moving over, so I stopped my car until all 10-15 kids rode past me.”
I hear you muttering, Ah, let ’em have their fun, Gramps.
Okay, tell it to the emergency room docs. Hospitals are up to their stethoscopes in these kids. The Children’s Hospital of Orange County, California, says e-moto injuries are skyrocketing. At Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in Baltimore, “we’ve seen a pretty dramatic increase,” emergency medicine physician Meghan Martin says. “It feels like almost every other trauma that’s coming in is related to an e-bike.” Then there are the ones who go to the coroner, riders and pedestrians.
“This isn’t going away,” says Hermosa Beach Police Chief Landon Phillips.
Hermosa made it illegal to use the bikes’ motors on the Strand, but that’s toothless. It’s like telling Shaq not to dunk. The kids just fake pedal when they go by a cop. Phillips admits, “We need the state to step up and figure out a bigger solution.”
Or, God forbid, parents step up.
“I say to parents,” Phillips says, “would you buy your kid a Yamaha 250 and let him out on the city streets? Because just a twist of the throttle makes it exactly like a motorcycle.”
You might wonder: How is this legal? Pure stupidity.
There are tons of e-bike rules and regs, but somehow it’s legal in many states to ride an e-moto on streets as long as it has pedals and can’t go over 28 mph. Kids just go on YouTube and learn how to defeat the speed limiter.
Next thing you know, they’re approximating the speed of a rocket-propelled grenade.
Enough.
Here’s what needs to happen:
First, parents, your kid should be on a bicycle.
Second, new law: Nobody gets to drive anything with a motor — electric or gas — without a driver’s license and registration. Not on the streets, not on the sidewalks and not into your spouse.
Third, when a kid gets caught riding one, the bike gets impounded until the parents pay a $1,000 fine and the kid spends a week mopping up blood in the ER.
Hopefully, it’s not his own.
Alan Forkosh
Alan Forkosh
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