EDITORIAL: Go easy on e-bikes

What should we do about e-bikes?

A good answer would be: Something, but as little as possible.

The question is being asked in Ozaukee County by community and county officials in reaction to complaints that the increasingly popular motorized bicycles are a safety threat that needs to be regulated.

Calls for e-bike restrictions gained traction when two serious accidents involving e-bikes were reported in Wisconsin cities. 

In Sheboygan, a 14-year-old boy riding an e-bike was killed when he rode through a red light into an intersection where he was hit by a car. The driver of the car was not at fault.

The collision occurred in June on the same weekend that a 4-year-old boy was run over and seriously injured by an e-bike at a Menasha playground.

E-bikes are not fundamentally dangerous, but their appeal as sporty vehicles that can produce some of the same fun for riders as gas-engine-powered mopeds, motor scooters and motorbikes has led to conflicts with pedestrians, traditional bicycles and automobiles.

That doesn’t change the fact that e-bikes are a marvelous invention that has broadened access to the enjoyment and health benefits of bicycle riding. The concept of a small, quiet, innocuous electric motor assisting human bike pedaling when called on has not diminished the fitness rewards of biking—e-bike riders can pedal as hard as they want—but rather has made them available to people of various ages and physical abilities who, for whatever reason, were not likely to be riders of traditional road and mountain bikes.

E-bikes are especially appealing to older folks, so it’s ironic that they have become toys for some children. Adolescents are zooming around on e-bikes. This plays into the safety issue, but it’s also a rather unsettling comment on the times. 

Bike riding, from learning to balance a two-wheeler without training wheels as a child to riding to middle school or high school with a backpack full of books, is a rite of growing up, an outlet for the boundless energy and exuberance of youth, building muscles and coordination pedaling up hills, scooting through alleys, riding on sidewalks and on streets out of the traffic lane to visit a friend.

A milestone in the lives of many of those young cyclists is the day they get the adult-sized bicycle they have dreaming about, maybe one with 26-inch wheels and multiple gears.

Now the dreams could be about an e-bike (generally priced between $1,500 and $5,000).

Seen in Port Washington in early August: two e-bikes with boys who looked to be 11 or 12 years old at the handlebars, riding at the speed of the motor vehicles around them in the middle of a stream of traffic on Grand Avenue, side by side between a truck behind them and an SUV ahead. One of the boys expertly popped a few wheelies—leaning back with the front wheel high off the pavement.

Bad behavior on a two-wheeler is not limited to kids on e-bikes. On a recent day in Port Washington’s Coal Dock Park, an adult man, dressed in bike racing-team colors, furiously pedaling his 22-geared carbonfiber road bike, weaved through a parade of people on the dock promenade, including mothers with children in strollers, an elderly couple using walking sticks and other pedestrians, some with leashed dogs, without a word of warning to those he was passing at a speed that could get a motor vehicle driver a ticket in downtown Port Washington. He ignored a chorus of “Slow down!” shouts.

These sightings confirm the obvious—the bike safety problem is not about the equipment, but about the person operating it.

Cities all over the country are regulating e-bikes in one way or another. Restrictions meant to discourage e-bikes on sidewalks and other places where they could easily endanger pedestrians seem reasonable. 

And the Wisconsin state law requiring electric bikes capable of speeds faster than 28 mph to be registered and licensed like gas-motorized two-wheel vehicles and driven only by licensed riders should be strictly enforced.

But whatever officials of Ozaukee communities decide to do, they should craft any restrictions in a way that has minimum impact on responsible e-bikers.

One place where no regulations affecting basic e-bikes should be needed is the Ozaukee Interurban Trail. For more than two decades, this remarkable roadway closed to motor vehicles has been safely shared by walkers and bikers. The fact that these days some of the bikes get a quiet boost from an electric motor should not change that.