JUPITER, Fla. — The Jupiter Police Department is on the lookout this summer for e-bike/e-moto riders who break the rules of the road.
"We're going to do everything we can to keep the kids safe," said Jupiter Chief of Police David England.
In April, he announced the launch of an e-bike safety campaign after he said police had seen more electric bicycles in the past year than ever before.
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On Tuesday, residents spoke out about their experience with e-bike riders during Jupiter's Town Council meeting.
"These individuals will surround the vehicles, do wheelies, touch the car, mess with their mirrors, do certain things to illicit response," said one resident during public comment.
A different Jupiter resident by the name of Robert Jaegers spoke with our WPTV reporter Joel Lopez outside of the meeting about what he's seen on the roads.
"I see them around and they are very quick and very clandestine ways of getting around," said Jaegers. "When it's a kid it's usually a group of them. They don't really wear high visibility (clothes), and they're not usually wearing a helmet."
In April, Lopez reported on a 12-year-old who got into a crash on his e-bike and said his helmet saved his life.
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That same month residents reached out to Lopez asking for ways to protect both the riders and the car drivers on the roads.
England said the biggest offenders are middle school age students in the Abacoa area, who they expect to be on the roads this summer.
During an April interview, Lopez asked one concerned resident, Tiffany Higley questions.
"Are you opposed to kids having these tools?" Lopez asked.
"No, absolutely not, and I'm not saying we should ban them by any means," Higley said. "I just feel we should be much safer about it."
Since the department launched the bike safety campaign, England said in the first 30 days (mid-April to mid-May) they made 32 e-bike traffic stops, 30 of which were warnings and two were traffic tickets.
"Now here in June, are you still getting a lot of those phone calls from residents?" asked Lopez.
"So we are receiving complaints but not as many complaints as we would've had so we do believe we're making some headway on it," said England. "We're going to continue the process it's been going very well like I said we are seeing improvements we're seeing the number of violations going down."
England said an issue they've seen is people modifying the e-bikes and e-motos, rigging them to be able to hit speeds of upwards of 60mph according to England.
"If it's something that is not wearing a bicycle helmet, it may be $30 to $40, if it's running a stop sign or red light it could be the better part of $150, if it's doing a wheelie down the road it could be as much as a thousand dollars," said England.
Right now, Jupiter police are still on an educational focus but say they will be shifting to stricter enforcement.
England said they're also working to educate parents.
He said since the campaign launched in April they haven't had any e-bike crashes.
