Jasper Common Council tables e-bike ordinance again

The Jasper Common Council tabled the e-bike ordinance for another month as it works through the nuances of a regulation meant to keep kids safe.

Councilwoman Nancy Eckerle, who also serves on the Jasper Board of Public Works and Safety, has pushed for an ordinance for more than a year, citing the increasing prevalence of these vehicles and the subsequent crashes.

The Jasper Common Council again took up a proposed ordinance regulating e-bikes and other motorized devices at last month’s meeting and tabled it, asking for more public input and adding helmet requirements.

At Wednesday’s regular meeting, rather than moving on the ordinance, Mayor Ryan Craig opened the floor for discussion and called the ordinance a work in progress.

“We want to get this right,” he said, then invited Dr. Dean Beckman to address the council.

Dr. Beckman, a Jasper physician for 35 years who has evaluated concussions as a football team physician, urged the council to set a minimum age of 15 for riders of all e-bike classes. He told the council e-bike injuries have risen 7.5-fold since 2023, with about a third involving the head and neck.

“From what I’ve seen personally, these kids are on these bikes going 30 miles an hour,” Beckman said. “Hitting the pavement at 30 miles an hour versus 10 miles an hour from a hit from another football player is a big difference.”

He said the stakes come down to a single child. “I hate being blunt, but you hate having to share that news with the parents,” he said. “Spend a day in the trauma center at Riley Hospital. I mean, it’ll change your opinion quickly.”

Council members and Jasper Police Chief Chad Dick said a growing problem is bikes that don’t match their labels, or have no label at all.

Under the state’s classification system, Class 1, 2 and 3 e-bikes carry a sticker naming their class. Bikes without a sticker are unclassified. Councilman Phil Mundy said kids are buying those bikes now. He said he spoke with Ethan Trustee, owner of REM Fitness & Bicycle, who told him a neighbor assembled an unclassified bike and brought it in for adjustments. Trustee told Mundy he could get the bike up to 45 mph with throttle left to presumably go faster.

“The cheaper the bike is, the easier it is to manipulate the speed on those things,” Mundy said, relaying the shop’s view. He said Trustee believes some bikes in town could reach 60 mph. Some riders remove the pedals and add foot pegs, turning the bike into what is effectively an electric motorcycle, Mundy said.

Those bikes aren’t sold in local shops but are easy to find online, he added.

Councilman Paul Lorey described a customer who ordered two e-bikes from Amazon for camping. The bikes were rated at 750 watts. But the packaging included a second set of stickers labeling them as 1,000 watts.

Dick said that kind of mislabeling makes the ordinance hard to enforce. To make enforcement easier, he suggested the city define anything over 750 watts as an e-motorcycle, unless state law already does.

Another factor is that many parents buy the bikes without understanding their wattage or speed, according to Dick.

“It’s going to come down to education. It’s going to come down to the parents and the guardians of these kids to make sure that they are not getting these e-motorcycles because that’s exactly where they are,” Dick said, adding that the city offering training for riders was also important.

Regarding enforcement, he said officers cannot stop every rider; officers have to witness a violation. And for a busy police department, actively regulating what counts as an ordinance violation takes a back seat to felony investigations.

Mayor Craig acknowledged the problem would be hard to regulate but said the city needs rules in place.

“Something’s better than nothing,” he said. “We can at least slow somebody down and have a conversation.”

Before moving on, the council agreed with the mayor’s request to add helmet requirements to the ordinance for riders under 18. The council plans to address the ordinance at its next regular meeting on Wednesday, November 18, at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.