JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 As e-bike crashes and injuries continue to rise, Florida lawmakers are looking to implement some statewide safety regulations, but the bills filed ahead of the session may get watered down in their first committee stops this week.<\/p>\n
From just three in 2023 all the way up to 115 in 2025, Wolfson Children\u2019s Hospital has seen the number of annual patients treated for e-bike crash injuries increase by more than 3,800 percent over the past four years.<\/p>\n
For Mike Rainka, those stats are concerning enough that when he came to purchase a bike for his son on Monday, e-bikes were off limits.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot until he gets much older and much more responsible. I\u2019ve seen way too many unfortunate accidents with children and adults alike,\u201d said Rainka.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n State law doesn\u2019t do much to regulate e-bikes.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no age limit, no restrictions on where you can ride them and no licensing requirements.<\/p>\n Even at the local level, there are few rules.<\/p>\n Locally, St. Johns County<\/a> and Atlantic Beach<\/a> both restrict e-bikes to 10 miles per-hour on pedestrian paths, but that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of parents are buying these things for kids. They\u2019re too accessible,\u201d said Jeffrey Page, owner of Open Road Bicycles. <\/p>\n Page said he feels like it\u2019s beyond time to set some statewide standard limitations.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially for the parents. If the kids get caught on these things, the parents should be liable,\u201d said Page.<\/p>\n Initially, it seemed Florida lawmakers may have been ready to take some concrete action.<\/p>\n Bills filed in the House<\/a> and Senate<\/a> would require a learner\u2019s permit or driver\u2019s license to operate Class III e-bikes, which can hit speeds of 28 miles per hour or higher.<\/p>\n They would also add e-bike-specific questions on driver\u2019s tests.<\/p>\n But amendments filled by the House<\/a> and Senate<\/a> sponsors will likely water down the bills.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Those amendments would remove the license requirements and instead commission a task force to study e-bike safety policy options.<\/p>\n They would also require law enforcement to track e-bike crash stats and allow agencies to ticket e-bike riders if they fail to slow down to 10 miles per hour or less when riding within 50 feet of pedestrians on shared walkways.<\/p>\n But Rainka wonders how that could be enforced.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like a more kind of a blanket regulation, either 16 years old or a learner\u2019s permit would make much more sense than just letting people kind of do whatever they want,\u201d said Rainka.<\/p>\n The Senate bill is up for its first hearing on Tuesday, and the House bill gets its first hearing on Wednesday. <\/p>\n From there, both bills will have two more committee stops each before reaching the House and Senate floors. <\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 As e-bike crashes and injuries continue to rise, Florida lawmakers are looking to implement some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11812,28,5052,116,118,117,44784,61778,634,61777,61779,12856,4214,6176,61776],"class_list":{"0":"post-124404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-atlantic_beach","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-house","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","13":"tag-jacksonville-news","14":"tag-jake_stofan","15":"tag-jeffrey_page","16":"tag-local","17":"tag-mike_ranka","18":"tag-ranko","19":"tag-saint_johns_county","20":"tag-senate","21":"tag-south_bank","22":"tag-wolfson_childrens_hospital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}