Health and safety professionals on the Cape and Islands say collisions involving electric bikes, scooters, and similar devices are on the rise.
Public awareness of how to ride such devices safely and legally is lacking, they say. Some support more regulation to make enforcement easier.
“We've seen a significant increase in all sorts of different electric devices, all over the island,” Nantucket Police Chief Jody Kasper said. “We noticed it certainly last year, and we worked on it in the fall, with a direct targeted enforcement initiative."
The issue subsided over the winter. But come spring, it was back.
“We have just seen a huge number of these devices on our paths and on our roadways,” she said. “Me, personally, I see it as one of our most significant public safety issues on the island right now.”
Kasper applauds the idea of e-bikes generally — “It’s actually great, right?” — because they get cars off the road, reducing traffic and providing an earth-friendly mode of transportation.
A problem arises, she said, when people ride something faster and heavier than a Class 1 or Class 2 e-bike on bike paths.
“That's what we see here quite a bit, is people who are on, essentially, dirt bikes and motorcycles and things that are very heavy and go much faster than they should, and they're operating on our bike paths,” she said.
Massachusetts law defines electric bicycles in two classes. On a Class 1 e-bike, the electric power only helps when a rider pedals. On a Class 2 e-bike, the electric power can help even when a rider does not pedal.
In both cases, power assistance must stop when the bicycle reaches 20 mph.
Right now, faster devices do not fit the legal definition of e-bikes. Nantucket bars e-bikes that travel more than 20 mph from the island’s bike paths.
In Oak Bluffs last month, a man and his 6-year-old son were seriously injured on a shared-use path when the electric dirt bike they were riding collided with a pickup truck.
Bike paths are also known as “shared-use paths” or “multi-use paths" because most are also used for things like walking and running.
Injuries from small personal transportation devices — sometimes called “micromobility devices” — appear to be increasing.
“Anecdotally, there's an uptick, I think, because these devices are becoming more popular,” said Scott Weissman, a family nurse practitioner at the Outer Cape Health Services clinic in Provincetown. “They're becoming cheaper, so … people own them. Kids like them because they can go fast, and they don't need a license, so that's also a low barrier to entry.”
Injuries run the gamut, from road rash to far worse.
Last September, a Brewster woman walking on the Cape Cod Rail Trail got hit from behind by someone riding an e-bike. She lost most of her vision in one eye.
The nurse practitioner from Provincetown said e-bikes are fast and quiet, increasing the risk of collisions.
“I think we can all have the experience of, like, the Tesla or the Prius creeping up on us in a parking lot. Same thing with e-bikes and e-scooters,” he said.
If someone is going for a walk on a bike path, or just walking down Commercial Street in Provincetown, he said, “I don't think they're subconsciously ready to get passed by a silent device going 20 or 30 miles an hour.”
The Nantucket police chief convened a meeting on micromobility devices in July that included the Nantucket Fire Department, Nantucket Cottage Hospital, and others. From that meeting, it became clear that, like many communities, Nantucket has little data on e-bike crashes, she said.
“The reason why is because at the Police Department, we really only take reports of vehicle-involved collisions with vulnerable road users — so a pedestrian or another car or a cyclist,” she said. “If there's a car involved and there's any sort of bike, be it electric or not, we have data on that.”
But if a cyclist crashes into another cyclist, a pedestrian, or a fixed object, police may not be called, and such collisions are not tracked in the same way.
“That is one of the things that is, I think, our biggest challenge, is trying to figure out who is operating all these different devices, and where are all these collisions occurring, and what injuries are we seeing,” she said.
Some manufacturers produce devices sold as e-bikes that go faster than 20 mph. And the varied design of bikes, dirt bikes, scooters, and mopeds can be confusing for the public.
“My message to the public is: Do some research on what you are buying, and particularly to parents or caretakers, if you're buying a device for your child, you must understand that most of these devices, even though they may say on the box that they are an e-bike, they probably are not, under the definition of Mass General Law, if they go too fast,” she said.
Beyond that, most e-bikes can easily be modified to go faster, she said.
Summer tourism on Cape Cod makes e-bikes and e-scooters especially popular, Weissman said. They provide transportation for seasonal workers, including J1 visa students and others who come to the Cape for the summer without cars.
Some riders may ride too fast for the conditions, or without a proper helmet or lights, or try to mix with car traffic, he said. And some J1 students work hours that put them on the road in the dark.
“It's not unexpected to see somebody riding one of these devices at night, not lit up, without reflectors, in a really unsafe environment,” he said.
E-bikes are also popular with tourists, who may be renting and riding them with little experience.
Weissman said there is a general sense in the medical community that such devices are dangerous, but “they're also really fun, and oftentimes that can cloud people's judgment.”
Kasper, the Nantucket chief, said she supports a bill before the state Legislature, called the Ride Safe Act; it would classify devices by their maximum speed, not just design.
Gov. Maura Healey filed the bill in May, based on recommendations from a statewide commission.
“Micromobility is already a part of how people get to work, school and around their communities, but right now, the rules are unclear and inconsistent,” she said in a press release at the time.
Under the proposed law, speeds would be divided into four tiers, each with its own rules about where the device can be operated and other factors. Riders under 16, for example, could only operate devices in the lowest speed tier, up to 20 mph.
Kasper said current law is not designed for the array of micromobility devices sold today, and the bill would provide more clarity both for operators and for law enforcement.
