OC weighs e-bike safety fixes as injuries rise

Orange County officials, residents and safety advocates are weighing education, enforcement, buybacks and road upgrades as e-bike injuries and deaths draw new scrutiny, Voice of OC reported.

The debate spans city rules, school-based training, hospital trauma data and criminal prosecutions, with disagreement over whether rider behavior, vehicle modifications, distracted drivers or street design should be the focus.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office held an e-bike buyback at Angel Stadium on Sept. 13, but the $100,000 set aside for gift cards ran out while hundreds of Southern California residents were still waiting, according to Voice of OC.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said his office is using several approaches. "I’m trying everything I can do. We have law enforcement, we have education, I have my prosecution," Spitzer told Voice of OC. At the buyback, he said, "Kids are dying because they don’t understand the vehicles that they’re driving,"

Kasey Hayes, whose son Jesse Hayes suffered a traumatic brain injury after a car hit him while he rode an e-bike in Huntington Beach in October 2024, pushed back on blaming all young riders. "There is a misconception of these kids that get hit, they’re all riding reckless, they’re all doing wheelies, they’re all out of control. That’s not true," Kasey Hayes said at the event, according to Voice of OC. She also said, "There are many issues with these bikes and why they are unsafe: inadequate bike lanes, distracted drivers, kids not riding them properly,"

Fullerton resident Anjali Tapadia, an e-bike user and chair of the city’s Active Transport Committee, said the buyback sends the wrong message. "I think it does (e-bikes) a disservice by treating them as dangerous objects that need to be bought back, similar to guns and by lumping them in with electric motorcycles, which are street illegal," Tapadia told Voice of OC.

Infrastructure is also part of the debate. A report by the Mineta Transportation Institute and San Jose State University found roadway improvements are among cities’ strongest tools to reduce e-bike injuries and deaths, according to Voice of OC. The Orange County Transportation Authority said the county has 1,000 miles of bikeways and that 54% of primary roads have bike lanes.

Health and law enforcement data show the stakes for young riders. Rady Children’s Health Orange County has treated 142 e-bike crash patients since the beginning of 2026, after seeing 201 such injuries in 2025 and one in 2021, Voice of OC reported. The hospital said the peak patient age this year is 14 and only 50% wore helmets.

Huntington Beach is the only Orange County city described in the article as having its own e-bike education program, a 70-minute course covering California law, emergency braking, helmet use and simulated riding situations.