E-bikes and e-scooters have been riding through a legal grey zone, but legislation is beginning to catch up.
When you walk into a bar, it’s pretty normal to see signs banning the service of alcohol to under 18’s.
You walk up to an e-scooter, would you expect the same thing?
The Queensland parliament’s inquiry into e-vehicle safety proposes just that: a legal riding age of 16.
In addition to this, riders would also be required to hold a driver’s license, minimum learner’s level.
The siren song of an e-bike or e-scooter feels ever present; aside from their ridiculous speed, they can travel just about anywhere and picked up on most street corners.
If no one got me, I know a lime bike got me.
But the reality of e-travel is much darker. At least 2,000 Queenslanders were admitted to hospital last year due to e-mobility injuries, as reported by the Transport Coalition.
The lobby group has said “Queensland’s e-mobility crisis has reached tipping point”, hoping the inquiry will deliver safe, tangible change.
Their demands are simple: to crackdown on unsafe retailers, invest in safer infrastructure and to penalise illegal high-powered devices.
The LNP-dominated inquiry has instead recommended that the users of the e-vehicles be penalised.
In recent months, news cycles have been dominated by stories of reckless youths and hooligans terrorising the public on e-bikes. C
ausing chaos on the Harbour Bridge or on golf courses, hoards of youths have Australians clutching their pearls.
Complaints about traffic disruption and public disobedience against the kids feels distinctly middle-class.
Rather than seek out the cause of the behaviour, NSW will instead instate a minimum riding age for e-bikes.
Western Australia is the only state to implement an age limit, with any child under 16 caught riding an e-bike being fined $50.
Bicycle Queensland’s director of Advocacy, Andrew Demack, has called out the proposed legislative changes to be “really poorly thought through … there are so many gaping holes in it.”
Demack insisted that teens using ebikes, legally, was not the problem, and that “[people having] access to legal ebikes find them to be really helpful in their daily lives.”
Being ID’ed on a lime bike seems a rushed decision by a government not willing to research the issue properly, opting for a reactionary, bandaid solution instead.
