OCOEE, Fla. \u2014 Ocoee is the latest Central Florida city to adopt a new ordinance regulating e-bikes, electric scooters and other micromobility devices, joining neighboring Winter Garden in an effort to improve safety on streets, sidewalks and shared-use trails.<\/p>\n
The ordinance, which took effect earlier this month, creates a 10 mph speed limit on sidewalks and shared paths, prohibits reckless riding and stunts, and allows police to issue citations for violations.<\/p>\n
Ocoee Police Chief Vincent Ogburn said he supports micromobility devices, but believes new rules were necessary because of the way some riders have been using them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese micromobility devices are going through the neighborhoods, just flying, just going fast there in the parks, on the turf and tearing up the parks,\u201d Ogburn said.<\/p>\n
While the ordinance gives officers another enforcement tool, Ogburn acknowledged catching violators won\u2019t always be easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to say it\u2019s a challenge, because we do have speed measuring devices, but it is a challenge because by the time you turn around or get your device to get a speed on, they\u2019re already gone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The ordinance carries a $15 civil citation for each violation.<\/p>\n
The ticket is not a criminal offense and does not add points to a driver\u2019s license. Parents can also be held responsible if the violator is a minor.<\/p>\n
Ocoee Police Department officials said there is not a dedicated unit to patrol sidewalks and officers are not using radar to measure e-bike speeds at this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully to educate them. That\u2019s our main thing, is to educate,” Ogburn\u00a0said. “Enforcement is a secondary tool, but if we have to enforce, we will enforce.”<\/p>\n
At Wheel Works along the West Orange Trail, where about half of all bike rentals are e-bikes, Jordan Sellers said he supports the new ordinance but believes enforcement will be difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see people going 40 miles an hour on bikes. It\u2019s ridiculous,” Sellers said. “Like, having more rules is definitely good. It\u2019s going to be really hard to enforce, I think.”<\/p>\n
Winter Garden enacted a similar ordinance in January, including a 10 mph speed limit, a minimum rider age, a helmet requirement and lights for nighttime riding.<\/p>\n
According to law enforcement, officers have made 18 traffic stops involving e-bikes. Most resulted in warnings, while four ended with standard traffic citations and two resulted in ordinance violations.<\/p>\n
Not everyone believes the rules are applied fairly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t apply to all bikes. So, I must go 10 mph \u2014 they can go 20, 25 miles an hour if they\u2019re pedaling fast and spandex,” said Deerfield Beach resident\u00a0Martin Manley. “You know, the real serious bikers can do that. They\u2019re whizzing by. So, it\u2019s not a consistency in the law that makes sense yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OCOEE, Fla. \u2014 Ocoee is the latest Central Florida city to adopt a new ordinance regulating e-bikes, electric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2967,274,28,115,1335,139,141,140,277,11881,278],"class_list":["post-354710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-florida","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-public-safety","tag-randy-rauch","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354710","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=354710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}