An Amherstburg councillor is pushing for more enforcement and education around e-bike and e-scooter usage.
Molly Allaire brought forward two notice of motions to council on Monday night.
One motion calls for more monitoring at Kings Navy Yard Park and Pat Thrasher Park - particularly on weekends and evening hours.
Her second motion calls for Amherstburg and Windsor Police to use social media to educate residents about the rules, including the 16-year-old minimum age, helmet requirement and maximum assisted speed of 32 kilometres an hour.
Allaire says the town has seen an increase in incidents involving e-bikes and scooters that have resulted in injuries and vandalism.
She says the goal is for young riders and their parents to understand the rules that are in place.
“You literally have to be 16 years or older and wear a helmet. And I think that’s one of my biggest arguments is I genuinely understand the excitement of an e-bike, but you’re not wearing a helmet... a bike is dangerous, let alone going at increased speeds, right? So we know how dangerous it is travelling in a car at 50 compared to 80 kilometres. Imagine travelling on a bike and then actually be going 50 kilometres.”
Allaire says there’s a lot of vandalism going on in the town as well.
“When people are like, ‘oh, why are you blaming e-bikers doing the vandalism?’ There have been cases where they’re doing burnouts on that smooth playground equipment. So like the flooring of the playground and it’s wrecking our playground flooring, that’s about $5,000 just to replace a patch of flooring. So they’re doing burnouts on the equipment like slides and stuff.”
She says there needs to be more education and enforcement as the situation worsens.
“It’s not one person, it’s a lot of people. It is a lot of the unknowns happening. People are saying ‘let kids be kids’, but I don’t think kids were given the information of how deadly and dangerous this actually is or how much money it is actually costing the municipality. So kids can be kids within rhyme and reason.”
She says there are also concerns about riders ignoring stop signs and other rules of the road.
Windsor Police shared information about Ontario’s e-bike rules on social media within hours of the council motion.
Allaire is encouraging residents to report problems to police so incidents can be tracked and patterns identified.
-with files from CTV Windsor’s Robert Lothian