E-bikes seem to be everywhere these days, from neighborhood side streets to busy urban thoroughfares. Too often, they’re also darting in and out of traffic; hopping curbs from sidewalk to street and back again, and generally wreaking havoc with motor vehicles on the road. 

The riders in such cases, typically young and, often enough, too young to be licensed drivers, are placing themselves at great risk. The casualty toll involving e-bike riders is cause for alarm. As The Gazette reported last week, serious injuries involving e-bikes, e-scooters and children have risen significantly in Colorado over the past year and a half.

Traumatic injuries involving e-bikes have risen 184%, according to Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Anschutz campus. Injuries involving e-scooters have risen 84%, with the hospital this year seeing more injuries involving e-scooters than in all of 2025.

That’s not to mention the toll on the public’s peace of mind. Motorists and residents alike feel besieged. Grievances about e-bikes can overtake some threads on social media like Nextdoor. 

And it doesn’t help calm the public’s nerves when mass swarmings of e-bikes and electric, four-wheeled ATVs overtake roads and shut down intersections for impromptu rallies — making national news as they did in the nation’s capital over the summer.

In Colorado, law enforcement’s ability to respond has been hampered by what authorities say are inadequate laws.

As noted in The Gazette’s coverage, local officials say the vehicles generating the most complaints and safety concerns are often not supposed to be on our roads to begin with — which actually makes them harder to rein in. Such “off-highway” vehicles include electric versions of all-terrain four-wheelers and widely popular dirt bikes.

“Off-highway vehicles are not allowed on the roadway at all, ever. They’re off-road only,” a Douglas County Sheriff’s Office official told Douglas County commissioners. “But if you were on the roadway (with such a vehicle), it is a $50 fine only. That doesn’t change behavior.”

Some other commonsense precautions for kids on e-bikes also aren’t addressed in state law, like requiring helmets for minors — again, because they aren’t recognized under current law as street legal in the first place.

The upshot is law officers haven’t had all the tools they need to crack down.

So, local governments have begun filling in the blanks. As The Gazette also reported, a growing number of communities around the Denver metro area and along the Front Range have been beefing up local ordinances given state laws that have failed to keep pace with the phenomenon. Notably, local governments have been adopting stiffer penalties as well as provisions allowing police to hold parents culpable.

In Littleton, for example, a draft ordinance now under consideration would create a section of traffic regulations governing electrically assisted bicycles. Among its provisions is a requirement that e-bike operators, riders and passengers under age 18 wear a helmet.

Significantly, parents or legal guardians could be cited under the proposed Littleton ordinance if they knowingly allow a minor under 18 to operate an e-bike on public property in violation of city regulations.

That’s the ticket — so to speak. Empower law enforcement, and engage parents. 

Sounds like the right response for a lot of teen lawlessness, in fact.

Other Colorado cities and counties looking to rein in the current wave of e-bike chaos would do well to take the same sensible steps.