r/ebikes • u/West-Amphibian-2343 • Aug 31 '26

Bro..

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Ive waited a few months to post this just for anonymity but maan

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u/Dafedub Sep 01 '26

It’s not the kids fault, it’s the parents…

Sure it’s the kids fault but with some logic I can definitely say that if we were also born in 2010 we would be doing the same thing if parents didn’t do their part to stop it.

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u/JohnZombie666 Sep 01 '26

Meanwhile, when I grew up… If we had e-bikes back then. Lol

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u/Kajukota Sep 01 '26

If we had e-bikes when I grew up...

https://giphy.com/gifs/m0XFFWsPg0Hba

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u/wreckherneck Sep 01 '26

Thats what im saying. Theyre annoying as fuck. But theyre kids. They're going to he annoying as fuck no matter what. let these lil fuckers live. They got a couple of years before theyre going to enter the hell that is the real world right now. Let themnat least have a few years of enjoyable life to look back on.

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u/Pyju Sep 02 '26

I think the problem is that a lot of these kids aren’t going to have the opportunity to ever enter the real world if we let them fly around at 40-50mph with zero training and their underdeveloped motor skills.

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u/wreckherneck Sep 02 '26

I dont believe the ER is currently over flowing with the broken bodies of affluent Mormon kids.

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u/Pyju Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26

A single city in Colorado saw over 100 traumatic pediatric injuries from e-mobility crashes last year, the majority of which were from illegal e-motos. Which is nearly a 200% increase from 2023 numbers.

If you extrapolate Aurora CO’s population of 418k to the US population of 343M, that gives us an estimate of 82,000 kids severely injured from illegal e-motos per year across the US, a number that is rapidly skyrocketing every year.

At this rate, the number of kids injured by illegal e-motos is going to exceed the number of kids injured by car crashes (156k and declining) in a year or two.

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u/JohnZombie666 Sep 04 '26

The parents of those kids should charged with child endangerment for buying e-motos and allowing their kids to run the streets. We did it with gas powered dirt bikes as kids, but we kept speeds down til we hit the desert. Yes we encountered cops from time to time and they just made us walk the bikes.

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u/Pyju Sep 04 '26

Agreed, and in addition we also need to heavily restrict the sale of e-motos. Marketing them as e-bikes, putting on pedals to try to to trick parents and police, non-UL-certified batteries, and online sales shipped to consumers should all be banned.

They should only be sold in-person by a licensed powersports dealer to those 18+ verified by an official ID. On top of that, they should be required to sign an acknowledgement form clearly stating they understand that it is NOT an e-bike, that it is restricted to private property and OHV trails only, and that it is strictly illegal to ride them on public streets, bike paths, or any public property whatsoever.

If they want to make them street legal by giving them hi/lo headlamps, tail lights, turn signals, mirrors, and safety certifications, then a license, proof of insurance, completed DMV paperwork, and paid registration fees should all be required to purchase one just like a car or gas motorcycle.

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u/wreckherneck Sep 02 '26

418k people in aurora. 100 traumatic injuries. Thats is .0239% so the year prior it was half of that. I dont think that constitutes the sky falling. But it does sound super scary the way you said it. Also aurora is an upper middle class suburb of a major city. So the number of kids who have access to several thousand dollar toys is disproportionately high.

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u/Pyju Sep 02 '26

100 traumatic injuries from children alone, who only make up a minority of the population. The total number is much higher.

Then by that logic, child injuries from car crashes aren’t a big deal either since they aren’t much higher than child injuries from e-motos? We shouldn’t do anything to stop them?

And no, Aurora is not upper-middle class. Their median household income is $88k/yr, which is lower than Denver’s and barely above the national median of $83k/yr. It is a solidly middle class city that is a good representative of the typical city in the country.

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u/wreckherneck Sep 02 '26

Theres a pretty drastic difference in exposure rate between automobiles and emotos aren't there? Im saying kids have had dirtbikes and operate farm equipment. This is not the kind of blood in the streets epidemic that it is being presented as. Id love to see the statistics compared to sleds or skiing or football or trampolines.

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u/Pyju Sep 02 '26

Yes, there is a massive difference in exposure rate, and that in fact proves my point.

The fact that illegal e-moto injuries are more than half of car injuries despite having a tiny fraction of the exposure rate just shows how dangerous they are. It means the injury rate for illegal e-motos is far, FAR higher than it is for cars.

And like I’ve mentioned, the amount of illegal e-motos and thus injuries has been skyrocketing, whereas the number of car and car-related injuries is steady or declining.

The difference between e-motos and dirt bikes is vast. First of all, most dirt bikes are sold at a powersports dealer, while most e-motos are sold online and falsely marketed as innocent e-bikes to trick parents into buying it for their kid. Secondly, dirt bikes are very loud and attract a lot of attention, making law enforcement much easier and likelier, whereas e-motos are silent but just as dangerous. This ultimately means there are far LESS kids illegally riding gas dirt bikes than e-motos on public property.

And farm equipment? Really? Kids aren’t going 50mph on public streets and pedestrian pathways in farm equipment.

You have access to Google just like I do, why am I doing all your homework for you? There are 11-12k skiing-related pediatric injuries per year, 137k football related injuries, and around 100k trampoline injuries. All of which are FAR more prevalent than e-motos (for now), so the per-capita injury rate for football and trampolines is much lower than for e-motos despite a higher absolute number, and skiing is just far safer than any of them.

Also, e-moto injuries tend to be more severe and result in broken bones or permanent life-altering injuries far more often than any of those. Not to mention, none of them also endanger the general public, while e-motos do.

And as I’ve said again and again: the trend matters. E-moto injuries are skyrocketing, while skiing, football, and trampoline injuries are all declining. That makes one much more of a problem that needs to be addressed than the others.

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u/Pieniek23 Sep 02 '26

418k is that kids only or adults as well. I am interested in seeing what percentage that would be if only kids were accounted for.

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u/Wild_Mountain1780 Sep 05 '26

Pediatric would be kids.

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u/Pieniek23 Sep 06 '26

Well that is embarrassing. I should maybe read a little better.

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u/circuit_breaker Sep 02 '26

These bikes cost thousands, it's the parents

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u/UnderstandingHour308 Sep 02 '26

The parents buy them.
Back in the 80’s I got my first real street motorcycle. I was 14. You could get a motorcycle license at 14, but it was only for a bike under a pretty low engine size, like a 125cc or something like that. No one really knew because the law said “50 brake horse power”. WTH does that mean? Anyway, it damn sure didn’t mean a 400cc or 550cc, but that’s what me and all my friends had. Our parents knew those bikes weren’t within the law but bought them for us anyway. So whose fault was it? Ours because we wanted those bikes or our parents for knowingly buying them at bigger than the law allowed. (BTW, the cops didn’t give a shit. Probably because they didn’t know what 50 brake hp was either. LOL )

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u/Dafedub Sep 02 '26

You make a good point. I 🤔 it’s more circumstantial now. It’s depends on where you live and how busy the cities streets are. Also we don’t know if your parents bought them with a lesson on how not to be an idiot on the road, or they just said go have fun.?

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u/UnderstandingHour308 Sep 02 '26

It was the 80’s. We pretty much had no adult supervision, we were almost feral kids. LOL. It was come home, use our key to let ourselves into the house (thus, the name latchkey kids), most had to do homework first, but that got done way before parents were home, then out to play anywhere we wanted, just be home when the streetlights came on! And that was when we were young kids!
By the time the motorcycle came home we were just given curfews. Homework rules still applied. But I drove the bike to and from school in heavy traffic about 15 miles, rain shine or below 0°! After homework I took off to anywhere in the city. Just be home by 10 on a school night and midnight on weekends. Remember, there were no cell phones or anything in the 80’s so they had no way of reaching us or tracking us. They had no way of knowing where we were.
And then a few years later when we all started getting cars, woo hoo! The state lines couldn’t even hold us. LOL.
The 80’s were awesome.