by Mark McDermott
The rider was on what looked like an e-bike and was blasting down Artesia Boulevard when the siren went off. It was a day early in June, and what Manhattan Beach Police Department patrol officers discovered when they began talking to the rider took them by surprise.
First, he was 13. Second, his ride wasn’t an e-bike, but an e-motorcycle made by a maker of e-bikes, a brand called Surron. The cycle was meant for off-road use, and so lacked side mirrors mandatory for road use. It was also capable of speeds up to 50 mph and with a few hacks readily available on YouTube even faster.
The young rider was cited for being unlicensed. A photo of the e-motorcycle being impounded appeared on MBPD social network feeds on June 5.
“Well we tried to warn you,” the post read. “We totally get that electric vehicles are the wave of the future and that everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere. HOWEVER, giving a 13-year-old an electric bike that exceeds 30 mph, that lacks required safety equipment, and a driver without any sort of understanding of the rules of the road is just a recipe for disaster.”
Police and city leaders have been working to avoid such a disaster ever since e-bikes began to proliferate a few years ago. The incident with the Surron was an outlier but indicative of the public safety challenges presented by e-bikes.
“E-bikes are an issue for us,” said MBPD Sgt. Andy Abreu. “Many people are complaining because they’re not obeying the rules of the road. The Surrons we’re seeing more of — these kids have them, and they are e-motorcycles. We’ve impounded three of them, I think.”
Due to affluence, parking scarcity, and local love for bicycling in general, fewer places see higher per-capita usage of e-bikes than Manhattan Beach and surrounding beach cities. And as the bikes gained popularity, nobody loved them more than kids. This has raised concerns for MBPD because within the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ classification system, only one of the three classes of e-bikes — those that are motor-assisted at speeds over 28 mph — requires a driver’s license.
The upshot is that city streets suddenly have a new type of motorist: very young and entirely unschooled in the rules of the road.
MBPD has stepped up enforcement. MBPD Sgt. Andy Abreu said that traffic citations for e-bikes have sharply increased over the past year.
“We’ve upped our enforcement because it seems like it’s a bigger issue than it was a year ago. We are actively out there trying to curtail the problem,” said Abreu. “We’re also not trying to be the anti-fun police. We want kids to go and have fun, but we want them to do it safely. That’s the message we really want to send to kids: we want you out there riding your bikes, having fun with your friends, but do it safely. The last thing we want is one of these kids getting hurt, or worse getting killed on one of these e-bikes.”
MBPD, with help from Councilperson Joe Franklin and resident volunteers, has over the last year waged a proactive education program that has included assemblies at local schools, a PSA announcement, and brochures. Franklin said the idea was simple. “Educate,” he said, “then legislate.”
Education has taken many forms. Franklin has cycled all over the world but his closest brush with serious injury was when a pedal fell off locally and he tumbled to the concrete. His helmet cracked, but his skull did not. At school assemblies, which are conducted with MBPD school resource officers, his most attention grabbing trick has been to take a watermelon, put on a bike helmet, and drop it to the floor, where the melon bounces but stays intact. Then he drops the melon without a helmet, and it shatters. “This is your head,” he tells the kids.
Parent volunteers Monica Chun and Lisa Newman helped create a social media campaign, and their sons, Alex Chun and Justin Newman, created a dryly funny PSA for the Instagram handle “ebsafe” that reenacted Franklin’s watermelon stunt, albeit with a hammer (and a looming sword hanging overhead). The volunteer team also created door hanger-style brochures about the “Rules of the Road” and e-bike safety. Local bike shops agreed to include the hangers on all the e-bikes for sale in their shops.
Mayor Richard Montgomery lauded Franklin’s efforts.“ Joe Franklin has been the leader on this issue for the council,” he said.
But the mayor is also ready to advance legislation to address the issue. At the July 18 meeting, Montgomery placed an item on the next council meeting agenda to propose asking state legislators to place age limits on all e-bikes.
“We need to call on our assembly members and state senators and say, ‘Change the law,’” Montgomery said. “Number one, raise the minimum age. Right now, there is no limit. Anyone from age 2 to 95 can ride an e-bike.”
“We’ve been lucky here that no one’s been killed. A lot of them are kids who are racing through stop signs, which is bad enough, but then they’ve also got no helmets,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery suggested a minimum age of 12 or perhaps 14 for all forms of e-bikes. And while working towards legislation, he has urged greater enforcement on local e-bike riders who break traffic laws.
“I am not saying that every person riding an e-bike is not following the rules. That’s not true,” he said. “Many are. However, many are not. And a lot of kids in our city are not following the rules, without consequence. So we’ve started citing them more.”
One of the key consequences, Montgomery said, is impounding bikes that kids are riding illegally. Many kids shrug off citations, he said, because their parents pay the fines for them. He hopes legislation can also enable stricter enforcement mechanisms.
“It’s not just the money, but taking the bike away, impounding it,” he said. “Those are $1,000 bikes. At some point, you got to make a difference. Any infraction, even a first infraction, we impound the bike, that’s what I want. I am not saying that what police have to do, but give them the authority to do it. Until people can follow the rules, and understand the responsibility of riding and the consequences of not riding correctly.”
Franklin is a lifelong cyclist whose own experience has informed his advocacy on this issue.
“I love bicycles,” he said. “I’ve had so many great experiences with them.
I rode across Europe. I rode from the Grand Canyon down to Mexico. I rode from San Francisco down to LA. You know, they are just a lot of great exercise. It comes down to enforcement. But I think we can do impactful enforcement now. We don’t have to wait for Sacramento.”
Franklin had an epiphany more than year ago that helped inspire the idea for the e-bike safety campaign. He was at the beach exercising early one morning and saw about 15 e-bikes parked near the pier, then realized it was a Mira Costa High School PE class who’d all come to the beach via e-bike. He asked the teacher if he could talk to the kids.
“I found out that it’s easier for them on an e-bike than to get on a bus and come down here,” Franklin said. “And I remember, years ago, there was a line of cars that would be there early in the morning, right? You know, all these SUVs all lined up dropping their kids off and then there would be the line coming to pick them up. So this, to me was the ideal, kids riding safely on their e-bikes, going down there — we just cut the emissions from all these cars, not to mention the kids get some exercise and fresh air and are away from their screens. If you can multiply that by hundreds and then also extend that across the day, you could have kids and families coming down to eat by e-bike to the restaurants or shopping and doing it safely. Most kids, and most parents, don’t realize they have got to follow the same rules of the road as automobiles. And that’s a big thing, because the kids don’t go through driver training until 15. So for education, the sweet spot is 12 to 15.”
There has been another kind of group of kids riding e-bikes together, not quite as safety-conscious. They are mostly middle schoolers and have formed e-bike “gangs,” including one called the “MB Goonz” that a few months ago was involved in street fight behind the downtown Von’s grocery with a Redondo e-bike gang that sent at least one kid to the hospital.
Abreu said MBPD is aware of them. Patrol officers and school resource officers (SROs) who also ride e-bikes, know all the kids, he said.
“I don’t want to call them gangs,” he said. “What I would say is there’s a lot of these juvenile kids and they’re all meeting up and they’re hanging out. And you know, and that’s what we’re trying to curtail. Our SROs know these kids and have been really big on educating them….They have a very good rapport with these kids, so I would say that that’s that’s helping us more than anything, is that the actual respect and bond that our SROs have with with all these with a lot of the juveniles in our town.”
Abreu said the approach to these groups is consistent with MBPD’s larger approach towards e-bikes.
“It’s not like we’ve taken a sit down approach to it,” he said. “We’ve seen the complaints, heard the complaints, we’ve witnessed it for ourselves and we’re actually taking action. Our traffic unit has gotten together and kind of led the charge on this as far as getting out there and enforcing, but also educating. So it’s not only just giving kids tickets, but it’s also educating them on bike safety and rules of the road.” ER
