On Sunday, Kimberley Pierce-Lynne’s nine-year-old son met up with several friends to ride bicycles and scooters around Belmont Shore — his first outing without parents.
“Within five minutes, he called me hysterically crying,” Pierce-Lynne said. A group of about 10 middle schoolers riding electric bikes had chased Pierce-Lynne’s son and his friends, shooting them with gel pellets that left welts on their backs and faces, parents said.
Pierce-Lynne hopped in her car and found the middle schoolers, some riding dirt bikes without helmets and “speeding around the neighborhood,” she said. It’s a common sight for Pierce-Lynne and other parents, and a problem that city officials and schools are attempting to address. But some parents want swifter action and stronger enforcement.
E-bikes present safety concerns for all Long Beach residents, but for children, the dangers are especially great. The city has received increasing complaints of “young and inexperienced riders operating high-speed e-bikes without helmets or training,” according to a memo from the city manager addressed to the City Council.
Across the state, youth injury rates due to e-bikes are increasing, the memo said. In response, some California communities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Torrance, are establishing helmets and safety standards, creating no-ride zones and educating residents. Long Beach has also proposed new rules to regulate the vehicles.
California law classifies e-bikes by top speed, pedal assist and throttle. Under state law, anyone can ride classes 1 and 2, which have a top speed of 20 miles per hour, though riders under 18 must wear helmets. To use class 3 e-bikes, the most powerful e-bikes, which can go as fast as 28 miles per hour, riders must be at least 16 years old.
Some other high-powered vehicles, such as electric motorcycles, or e-motos, and dirt bikes, can go even faster and require licenses. And children are riding all of them.
Photos reviewed by the Long Beach Post show the middle schoolers who targeted Pierce-Lynne’s son appeared to be violating many rules: riding e-motos underage without helmets — sometimes two to a bike. Multiple parents said in interviews that these students went to Rogers Middle School.
Travis Moran, a history teacher at Rogers, opens the bike racks for students every day after school and sees “all the new toys that come in,” including illegal e-bikes and electric motorcycles, which have increased in number, he said.
On the Rogers campus, Moran said he has seen students riding these vehicles the wrong way, while distracted and without helmets, and he elevated the concerns to the principal. At the end of last semester, Long Beach police, Public Works and the Health Department’s “Walk and Roll” team came to the Rogers campus to educate students on e-bike safety.
These groups have been focusing on middle schools — including Stanford and Franklin, with future programming planned at Hamilton — because of data showing middle schoolers are riding illegal vehicles and because so many requests are coming from middle school PTAs and principals, said Biana Ruiz, who oversees the Walk and Roll program.
“Youth are more likely to be impacted by bike and ped[estrian] injuries,” Ruiz said. School-based programming is a way to prevent accidents before they happen, she said. Her team gives out reflective gear to students, explains the risks of riding at high speeds and shares resources on which vehicles are allowed.
“It’s very important that we educate the kids,” said Willie Walker, the city’s parking and mobility officer. “But it’s not the kids purchasing the bikes, it’s really the parents,” he said.
A spokesperson for Long Beach Unified said that at Rogers, several e-bikes and e-motos were flagged as illegal, and the students who owned them were sent home with notices for their parents. The district declined to make the Rogers principal, Renny Chu, available for an interview to answer additional questions. Parents who spoke with the Post said Chu has been responsive to the problem, though the school’s authority is limited, especially when incidents like Sunday’s occur off campus and on the weekend.
In that case, Pierce-Lynne’s friend called 911, and police arrived at the scene, but Pierce-Lynne said “the police aren’t helping us with this very much,” and she knows the situation could have been worse “had it been an eye or in the mouth” rather than the back, where her son was shot.
Some parents want more action. Misty Wagner and her husband, parents of a child shot with gel pellets on Sunday, were spurred to start a petition to require driver’s licenses for all motorized vehicles, which would help kids “better understand the traffic laws and the expectations of riding something motorized.” Since she started the petition on Monday, she has received over 1,000 signatures.