In Santa Barbara, electrical bikes are unimaginable to overlook. Buzzing round downtown, zipping up State Avenue, there’s commuters on their technique to and from work, teenagers driving in twos, and vacationers on the favored white BCycle leases for day by day rides.
To the riders themselves, e-bikes supply a departure from day by day automotive use, making city commutes extra environment friendly and offering versatile transportation that may be charged at dwelling. However to pedestrians, motor-vehicle drivers, metropolis planners, or folks bored with dodging the daredevil youngsters swerving round, the recognition and prevalence of those e-bikes poses new challenges that should be addressed earlier than it’s too late.
In different California cities, the identical e-bikes — usually made by firms similar to RAD Energy Bikes or Aventon — have taken maintain with junior excessive and highschool age college students, however as legal guidelines surrounding e-bikes lag behind their reputation, the talk arises over what native governments might do, and whether or not they need to step in to create stricter pointers for e-bike use.
Dangerous Actors on Bikes
Santa Barbara Metropolis Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez, who himself is an avid e-bike rider, believes there needs to be a balanced strategy between villainizing bicyclists and holding them accountable for reckless driving.
He says that he “wholeheartedly believes” that almost all of the folks utilizing e-bikes on the town are “regulation abiding, accountable, and thoughtful,” although he described his personal private interactions with younger riders who’ve been “dangerous actors on their bikes.”
“They’re making all of us look dangerous, as a result of I actually have an e-bike,” Gutierrez instructed the Unbiased.
Relating to potential political or authorized measures, Gutierrez stated he doesn’t assume banning e-bikes outright, like some communities have completed, could be the best way to deal with the issue. “However we will regulate it,” he stated, “we will implement it.”
Particularly, Gutierrez stated he could be in favor of supporting native rules that require e-bike riders to have a license and be over the age of 16, or levying fines and penalties “within the hundreds” for offenses. “I don’t need these dangerous actors to smash it for me and for the opposite law-abiding folks which might be utilizing this expertise.”
Councilmember Gutierrez has introduced up the problem of electrical bike rules to the Santa Barbara Metropolis Council “a number of instances,” he stated, and whereas there may be help, town remains to be figuring out the specifics on “the authorized entrance.”
Enforcement of such legal guidelines poses challenges too, for the reason that onus of duty would fall on the police division, which, as Gutierrez identified, is understaffed and attempting to concentrate on main crimes. “They don’t need to be stopping children on bikes for not having their helmets on,” he stated.
However Gutierrez admitted that it’s “attending to the purpose the place we do should do one thing certain” earlier than there’s a main disaster. “As a result of we don’t need children getting harm,” he stated, “We don’t need aged getting harm. We don’t need anybody getting harm. So this can be a public security situation, and that’s one in all our main priorities.”
Dangerous Using
The recognition of electrical bikes skyrocketed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated by the demand for options to public transportation, particularly in increased city areas, and a need to spend extra time outside. Even whereas the worldwide marketplace for non-motorized bikes has taken important hits through the years, electrical bike possession and app-based rental providers similar to Citi Bike and BCycle have witnessed a surge in home reputation.
According to an uptick in e-bike utilization has been a rise of e-bike accidents nationally, up 70% from 2017-2020. Security considerations are particularly being raised for teenagers after tales of deadly and non-fatal crashes involving teenagers sprouted up across the nation.
On August 2, two younger ladies driving in downtown Santa Barbara have been injured and one suffered a leg damage whereas driving tandem on an electrical bike on State Avenue and Canon Perdido. The incident was one of many first instances a teen was reported injured driving e-bikes within the metropolis, although there have been a number of studies of smaller crashes between e-bikers and pedestrians with no accidents reported.
In Encinitas, 15 year-old Brodee Champlain-Kingman was killed whereas driving his electrical bike, prompting town council to declare a neighborhood emergency and to permit town to extra shortly put new security measures in place. In January 2021, 12-year outdated Molly Steinsapir crashed whereas driving on the again of a RAD Energy electrical bike in Los Angeles County whereas her pal, an 11-year outdated, drove. Steinsapir handed away from her accidents two weeks later.
A state invoice proposed by Rep. Tasha Boerner – who represents North San Diego County, the place e-bike accidents involving teenagers have surged lately – would prohibit anyone beneath 12 from working any sort of e-bike and “create an e-bike license program with a web based written check and a state-issued picture identification for these individuals and not using a legitimate driver’s license.”
Learn how to Coexist
Lawyer Jessica Phillips, a associate on the Regulation Places of work of Maho and Prentice, a private damage agency primarily based in Santa Barbara, sat down with the Unbiased to assist in giving a broader perspective of the impression electrical bikes have had on the Santa Barbara space, and the authorized ramifications pushed by accidents and accidents,
Relating to the standard age demographics of the shoppers she represents in instances of accidents stemming from bicycle collisions, Phillips stated her agency represents people of all ages, not simply the children.
Out of the shoppers they’ve represented and instances they’ve checked out, Phillips stated there isn’t a constant get together at fault both, whether or not that’s motorists, e-bike riders, or pedestrians. Nonetheless, she did be aware {that a} shocking quantity of individuals don’t put on helmets whereas driving, which has led to vital trauma in instances.
“Issues like sporting a helmet and the rider being accountable might assist stop actually important and catastrophic accidents,” Phillips stated. “Simply from a human perspective, I feel it’s the protected and prudent factor to put on a helmet on a daily bike or an e-bike.”
Phillips famous that State Avenue and close to Stearns Wharf have been locations with most frequent accidents, a truth that’s per bike collision knowledge launched by the Metropolis of Santa Barbara Police Division.
From 2020-2022, police reported over 200 accidents involving electrical or non-motorized bikes within the Metropolis of Santa Barbara. The studies confirmed that over 15% of those accidents occurred on State Avenue, whereas Cabrillo Boulevard, Castillo Avenue, and Carrillo Avenue constituted round 7% every. In these three years (when the COVID-19 Pandemic triggered increased bike utilization), over a 3rd of all bike accidents in Santa Barbara occurred in high-traffic and pedestrian areas.
Phillips admitted that navigating the way to share these extra standard streets is complicated for everybody proper now.
“There have been so many adjustments on State Avenue not too long ago,” she stated. “There are parklets, which now a number of the parklets are gone. And it’s clearly marked generally in the course of State Avenue that this can be a bike lane, nevertheless it doesn’t say no pedestrians. Possibly if that was extra clear, that would improve security as properly, as a result of proper now you’ll be able to stroll wherever, and you may trip your bike wherever.”
Phillips completed by saying that e-bike security is about discovering stability between sustaining enjoyable and making a protected surroundings for everybody locally, even when meaning instituting extra formal ordinances.
For the foreseeable future, e-bikes will proceed to be a prevalent or (relying in your perspective) pervasive factor of the Santa Barbara space roads, and whereas the impression of expertise has vastly altered how bikes have appeared and operated from 1898 to 2023, at their core, bicycles —motorized or not — supply a technique to navigate the gorgeous city round us.
The introduction of electrical bikes could take some getting used to by society, simply as earlier modern technique of transportation required a interval of adaptation, however ultimately, like with planes, trains, and cars, e-bikes can be seen as a standard attribute of our day by day life — it’s solely a matter of time earlier than public security measures and rules meet up with their reputation.
And in spite of everything, these two-wheeled machines have lengthy been on the middle of Santa Barbara’s spirit, as Coucilmember Gutierrez identified when displaying one of many earliest maps displayed in Metropolis Corridor: “Whoever got here up with this map determined to spotlight totally different buildings that have been actually standard in that period,” he stated pointing to the highest proper nook.“Should you see right here, it says, Quick’s Bicycle Retailer.
“On the level after they drew this map, these buildings have been all actually standard to the group, together with the bike retailer,” he continued. “Bicycles have been part of Santa Barbara and its tradition for properly over 100 years to the purpose the place it was documented, they wished folks to know bikes are a part of our tradition, part of our id.”
