ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — Jeremy Anderson never expected to be the one pedaling for bike safety, until seeing his 12-year-old son, Parker, put in the hospital after an e-bike crash.
“Never in a million years did I think this would happen to us,” Anderson said, speaking with Action News Jax from his son’s therapy room.
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Action News Jax first told you last week when Parker Anderson was flown to the hospital after crashing an e-bike outside the Julington Creek neighborhood, in the same area where another local middle school student was hurt in an e-bike crash three days later.
Parker is expected to fully recover and return home by the end of the week, but his father is now hoping the county turns toward implementing stricter laws on e-bikes.
“Something needs to be done,” Anderson said. “It’s just a slip of a tire or a bump in the sidewalk and, the next thing you know, you’re in the hospital.”
The St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners started the conversation on working to make more safety rules around e-bikes during its meeting on Tuesday.
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Some of the ideas mentioned included adding barriers or other safety precautions to the areas of sidewalks that run beside ditches, making it mandatory for people to watch safety videos when buying e-bikes, and creating stricter enforcement of age limits for riding multiple kinds of electric vehicles.
The conversation is coming up a few days after Action News Jax got a copy of a new county rule being considered adding more restrictions to riding e-bikes.
One of them would set speed limits at 10 mph on the beach, while Florida law right now allows them to travel at 28 mph.
Action News Jax asked the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office about how it’s enforcing e-bike laws now and what it would look like if this drafted county law were to be approved.
The agency’s patrol division said it’s added more patrols to its traffic and bicycle units, monitoring e-bikes mostly in the northern half of the county.
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“With all of the concerns that we’re hearing, we’ve been upping our patrols in the area,” Lt. Todd Boger, acting commander of the north patrol division, said. “We’re educating as much as we can because a lot of times, kids just don’t know [the law].”
The sheriff’s office said it’s also speaking with the HOAs of neighborhoods in the county about ways to create their own community rules regarding e-bikes, both to encourage people to follow Florida’s law right now and whatever new law the county may pass later.
The agency tells Action News Jax if more speed restrictions were to be passed at the county level, they would hope to use it as a chance to educate as many families as possible rather than go on a ticketing spree.
“We are doing this thing together as a community, not just one side where the law enforcement is just coming in to try to enforce their way out of it,” Russ Martin, director of patrol for the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, said.
READ SJSO’S LETTER TO THE COMMUNITY ABOUT E-BIKES BELOW:
E- Bike Letter by ActionNewsJax on Scribd
County commissioners say it will be going over a new possible e-bike law in its meeting on May 20.
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