Coral Springs Police continue e-bike safety campaign after responding to three crashes in a single day
Coral Springs, Florida – Coral Springs police are renewing their safety message about electric-powered devices after responding to three separate e-bike crashes on Tuesday, including incidents involving juveniles who were not wearing helmets, just as schools across the city released students for summer break.
The cluster of crashes has added urgency to an ongoing safety campaign that officials say is becoming increasingly necessary as the use of e-bikes, e-scooters, and other electric vehicles continues to rise. Police have not released detailed information about the individual crashes that occurred Tuesday, but they confirmed the incidents are part of a broader pattern they are monitoring closely.
In response, city officials released a new episode of the “Under the Sun” podcast late Tuesday, featuring a Coral Springs police officer speaking directly about the growing concerns surrounding electric vehicle safety. The officer emphasized that many of the devices being used are not traditional bicycles as some parents and children believe, but rather more powerful machines that function similarly to motorcycles.
“Parents are buying these kids what they want to call electric bicycles, but they are not, Coral Springs police said. They are motorcycles. They are getting on e-bikes, e-scooters, e-motorcycles, and they are riding them recklessly in the roadway.”
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Officials say the issue tends to escalate during summer months, when students are out of school and more young people are using electric-powered transportation for recreation and travel around neighborhoods. With increased usage, police say they are seeing a steady rise in crashes involving these devices.
As of April, the Coral Springs Police Department had already responded to 49 crashes involving electric vehicles. Officials say that number has continued to grow since then, adding pressure to ongoing enforcement and education efforts.
During the podcast discussion, the officer stressed that riders of e-bikes and similar devices are required to follow the same traffic laws as cars in many situations, depending on where they are operating. The message, police say, is aimed at correcting misconceptions about how these vehicles can be used safely and legally.
“You have to abide by all the same traffic laws that a car does,” said the police officer in the podcast, who was not identified in the social media post. “You have to abide by all the same traffic laws a pedestrian does, depending on where you are at.”
The officer also warned against dangerous behavior that has been observed on local roads, including running red lights, ignoring stop signs, weaving through traffic, and performing stunts such as wheelies in public areas.
“Just because you are on one of these e-bikes does not mean you can run a red light or a stop sign or weave in and out of traffic in the roadway and doing wheelies down the road.”
The safety concerns are underscored by a series of recent serious and fatal crashes in Coral Springs involving electric-powered devices. In April, 60-year-old Guy Scott was killed in a crash involving an electric motorcycle and a marked Coral Springs Police Department vehicle near the 4300 block of Riverside Drive.
Earlier in the year, another fatal crash claimed the life of 62-year-old Franklin Osorio, who was involved in a collision between an e-bike and a pickup truck at Coral Ridge Drive and Eagle Trace Boulevard. In a separate incident in January, a juvenile riding an electric motorcycle was airlifted to a hospital after a serious crash, while in November, two children on an electric bicycle were hospitalized following another collision.
Police say they do not want to see more preventable tragedies involving young riders, especially during nighttime hours when visibility is low.
“We do not want to respond to a call where a kid is riding through the road in the middle of the night with no lights on and gets hit by a car,” the officer said. “It is terrible. If you get in an accident with a vehicle, you are going to lose — every time.”
Under current Coral Springs local law, e-bikes and motorized scooters are allowed on sidewalks, but must not exceed 15 miles per hour and must slow to 5 miles per hour in areas near pedestrians. Devices that exceed standard e-bike specifications are treated as motorcycles under state law, meaning they require proper licensing and registration to operate legally on public roads.
As summer begins and more young riders take to the streets, Coral Springs police say they will continue both enforcement and education efforts in an attempt to reduce crashes and prevent further injuries.
