Law enforcement agencies and health care professionals from across San Diego County came together Monday in Mission Beach to raise awareness about the need for safety when riding an e-bike, as well to clarify the laws concerning e-motorcycles.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement has seen a rising trend of kids driving high-speed e-motorcycles. Just as worrying: Many times, kids are riding e-motorcycles on city streets, which is against the law.<\/p>\n
“You cannot ride an off-highway electric motorcycle on any square inch of the city of San Diego,” said Nick Tamagni, a traffic officer with the San Diego Police Department. “That includes our trails, boardwalks, bike lanes. There is nowhere you can lawfully ride an electric motorcycle in the city of San Diego.”<\/p>\n
While San Diego police officers can use their discretion after observing an e-motorcycle on the street, Tamagni said he has a zero-tolerance policy.<\/p>\n
“If I see an electric motorcycle on the roadway, then you are subject to being stopped simply for being on that e-motorcycle on the roadway,” Tamagni said. “You don\u2019t need to run a stop sign. You don\u2019t need to break the speed limit. I can impound them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
E-motorcycles are different from e-bikes in that there’s no need for pedaling. E-motorcycles are fully electric motor-powered vehicles designed for higher speeds without pedaling. While e-bikes generally reach speeds between 20-40 mph, some e-motorbikes can reach speeds of 40-80 mph.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Tamagni has personally witnessed more e-motorcycle accidents lately and said law enforcement agencies are seeing a surge of such incidents across San Diego. Oftentimes, e-motorcycle accidents are more violent than e-bike crashes<\/p>\n
\u201cThe faster you go, the harder you fall \u2014 it\u2019s simple physics \u2014 so when we have kids that are crashing their motorcycles, now they are getting motorcycle-level injuries,” Tamagni said.<\/p>\n
Various Scripps hospitals across San Diego said they are seeing a roughly 20% increase in e-bike and e-motorcycle injuries since 2021.<\/p>\n
“We see head injuries, we see torso injuries, internal injuries, rib fractures,\u00a0 spine fractures and, most common of all, extremity fractures,” said Dr. Vishal Bansal, chief of trauma at Scripps Mercy Hospital. <\/p>\n
A big part of Monday’s news conference was geared toward parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times, what we\u2019re seeing is parents don\u2019t even realize the e-motorcycles they are purchasing for their kids are illegal,” said Carlsbad PD chief Christie Calderwood. “So that\u2019s when I say the call to action is for parents to get involved. Before you go buy your kid that present and new bike, make sure you educate yourself if it\u2019s legal, what the rules of the road are. Before your kid takes off, make sure you are an active participant in educating them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both health care professionals and law enforcement also said accidents on electric vehicles operated by adults have been increasing since the pandemic as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Law enforcement agencies and health care professionals from across San Diego County came together Monday in Mission Beach…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":211492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,7264,31009,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-211491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-sandiego","13":"tag-sdpd","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115171572501036559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}