We’ve all seen them: e-bike riders popping wheelies along Birch Street and weaving through traffic down Wildcat Way. These riders ignore basic road rules by cutting off cars, blowing through stop signs, and riding at night without lights. But this rude riding is not the result of lax regulations or a lack of safety measures, but rather due to an e-bike subculture which prioritizes looking “cool” over personal and community safety.
What these riders — usually speeding, usually helmet-less, often tandem-riding — fail to consider are the very real dangers of e-bikes which can reach speeds of 28 miles per hour and weigh as much as 80 lbs.
Hospitalizations at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) alone from e-bike crashes have jumped dramatically over the past few years, from just seven cases in 2019 to 116 in 2024. Most of the injuries, which range from minor scrapes to broken bones to life-threatening brain injuries, involve riders aged 14 to 16.
On Jan. 16, 2025, two Brea Canyon High School students were severely injured after their e-bike slammed into a brick wall on State College Boulevard. According to Brea PD, the rider suffered life-threatening injuries, and the passenger sustained major injuries. Neither was wearing a helmet.
Incidents like this are terrible reminders of the weight ofresponsibility on riders. It might not feel cool to have a plastic helmet strapped to your chin or going five mph under the speed limit, but what’s actually cool is not suffering head trauma.
When riders weave through pedestrians on Birch Street and ignore red lights at intersections, they turn a vehicle meant for convenience and efficiency into something dangerous.
To address the issue, on Jan. 2, 2025, the city of Brea adopted an ordinance that prioritizes “enforcement on reckless or destructive behaviors.”
And just last week, with the passage of SB 1271, the consequences for reckless riders are greater than ever: The new state law stipulates that the parents of e-bikers who ride helmet-less, speed in school zones, or ride illegal bikes can incur hefty fines and have their bikes confiscated.
To address the growth of e-bike riding (a 63% growth in sales between 2019 and 2023), and the concurrent rise in e-bike-related injuries (up a staggering 1800% between 2018 and 2023), BOUSD has introduced an e-bike safety program which requires riders to complete a safety course to earn a permit sticker to allow e-bike riding on BOUSD campuses. It’s a necessary step to ensure rider safety, and needed now, more than ever: Currently, only 60% of e-bikes parked on the BOHS campus have permit stickers, leaving 40% of student riders untrained and a potential danger to themselves and to others.
Mandating permits and education of safe riding is a step in the right direction, but it shouldn’t take a mandated meeting with Brea PD for e-bike riders to treat riding seriously, and responsibly. E-bikes, after all, are a means of efficient transportation (necessary on steep Wildcat Way), not as theme park rides and props for TikTok posts.
Distributing permits, threatening consequences, and posting warning signs will not work if riders disregard both personal safety and the safety of those in their paths of their $1300 Movcan V30 Pro Max e-bike. Teen riders need to hold themselves accountable for their own safety.
That accountability can begin with attendance at the Brea police department’s e-bike safety class — a requirement for students who intend to ride e-bikes on the district’s campuses — in the BOHS cafeteria from 5 to 7 p.m. Jan. 13, March 11, and July 27.
The training and certification are necessary steps in the right direction, but lasting change won’t come from a sticker or slideshow or threat of a fine, but rather by an acknowledgment that swerving dangerously between cars, imitating difficult BMX tricks, and riding without a helmet are not cool, but irresponsible and reckless.
